39. Informal vocabulary.

Informal vocab-y is used in one's immediate circle: family, relatives or friends. Inf style is free-and-easy, familiar and unpretentious. Inf words and word-groups are traditionally divided into 3 types: colloquial, slang and dialect words and word-groups.

Colloquialisms are used by everybody, and their sphere of communication is comparatively wide, at least of literary colloquial words. These are inf words that are used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups. Inf words appear in dialogues in which they realistically reflect the speech of modern people.

Pal and chum -friend; girl, when used coll-lly, denotes a woman of any age; bite and snack stand for meal; hi, hello are inf greetings. A number of shortenings are found among words of this type. pram, exam, fridge, flu, prop, movie.Verbs with post-positional adverbs are also numerous among coll-s: put up, put over, make up, make out, turn in. Literary coll-l words are to be distinguished from familiar coll-l and low coll-l. The borderline is not always clearly marked. familiar coll-l used mostly by the young and the semi-educated. Low coll-l- uncultivated speech.

Slang-lang-ge of a highly coll-l style, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense. Each slang is rooted in a joke, but not in a kind or amusing joke. This is the criterion for distinguishing slang from coll-s: most slang words are metaphors often with a coarse, mocking, cynical colouring. used by the young and uneducated. (mug-face,dogs-feet, blinkers-eyes) Gene ral slang includes words that are not specific for any social or professional group, whereas spec ial slang is peculiar for some such group: teenager slang, university slang, public school slang, Air Force siang, football slang, sea slang, and so on.

Dialect-a variety of a language which prevails in a district, with local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation and phrase. So dialects are regional forms of English. brass -money;to lake-to play; nivver –never, summat-something; nowt-nothing; mich-much;тип-must; ay- yes.

Western and Southern. Every group has 4 or 5dialects.

Cockney - Southern dialect (London). It exists in 2 levels: as spoken by educated and uneducated people. Features of Cockney dialect Interchange between [W] and [V]: [vel] - [wel] - well

The voiceless and voiced dental spirants: [O] - [f] fing - thing; [ ] - [v] faver - father.

Formal Style

1. Learned words.

They are associated with printed pages.

Sphere of usage; they are used by educated and highly educated people.

They are subdivided into:

Scientific prose - identified by their dry flavour: comprise, compile, homogeneous.

Officialese - words of the official, bueurocratic language. They should be avoided in speech: to assist - to help, to proceed - to go, approximately - about.

Literary words - described as refined, they are used in descriptive passages of fiction. They are represented by the words of Roman languages and though fully adopted to English phonetic system still sound foreign: solitude, sentiment, fascination, cordial, allusive.

Modes of poetic diction - they are lofty, high-flown, archaic, coloured, used only in poetry: alas, constancy - верность, duth - do.

Archaic and Obsolete Words

rchaisms, obsolete words and historisms, their general characteristics.

Obsolete words - are no longer in use, especially out of use for at least a century. Archaic words - are current in earlier times, but rare in present usage. Historisms - are words denoting objects and phenomena, which are thing of the past and no longer exist.

Features:

They stand close to the learned words (modes of poetic dictions)

Archaisms are associated with printed pages.

They are moribund, are out of circulation, rejected by living lang. and are not used in conversational situations.

They are met in historical novels and poetry. They are used to create a particular period of time.

Sometimes archaic words may undergo a sudden reveal: kin used to be archaic word.

E.g.: thou - you, thy - your, nay -no, aye- yes.