1 курс / English For Philology Students
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Map of UK Accents
Different places in the UK have different accents. Look through the examples to get familiar with some of them.
1.Place: Dundee Accent: Dundonian
Example: “Am awa up the street fur the messages.” Translation: “I‟m going down the road to buy some food.” Example: “I dinna ken.”
Translation: “I don‟t know.”
2.Place: Glasgow
Accent: Glaswegian
Example: “Aye nae bother.”
Translation: “It‟s not a problem/ Don‟t worry about it.”
Example: Dae ye wanna swallay?” Translation: “Would you like a drink?”
3.Place: Newcastle + Tyneside Accent: Geordie
Example: “Whey aye man! I‟m clamming for a drink n it‟s almost hoyin‟ oot time.”
Translation: “Hi! I really need a drink and it‟s almost time for last orders.”
4.Place: Manchester
Accent: Mancunian
Example: “I went on t‟internet and got meself some gig tickets. After we went on the razz n got tanked up. Was a right proper top night.”
Translation: “I got myself some tickets for a concert. After the concert we went out drinking and got very drunk. It was a great night.”
5. Place: Liverpool
Accent: Scouse/ Liverpudlian
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Example: “Ah, me ma had a right cob on when I went home cos me pa forgot to pay the lecky.”
Translation: “My mother was angry when I went home because my father had forgotten to pay the electricity bill.”
6.Place: Birmingham Accent: Brummie
Example: “Oy kwoyt loik it.” Translation: “I quite like it.”
7.Place: Rhonda
Accent: Welsh
Example: “Y‟not from round hyer?”
Translation: “You‟re not from around here, are you?”
Example: “Right, I‟ll be there in a minute like.”
Translation: “I‟ll be there in a minute.”
8. Place: London
Accent: Cockney
Example: “Oi mate, have a butchers at the barnet on „erl!” Translation: “Look at that girl‟s hair!”
Independent Reading
25. Read the following text, divide it into parts and entitle each of them. Write a short summary.
The English language
Where did English come from? The obvious answer is England. However, in the past two thousand years very many people came to England and changed the language. Perhaps most of the language comes from the Anglo-Saxons who came to England in the fifth to the seventh centuries. But there are also Roman words from the time when England was a part of the Roman Empire: the ending – “chester” in the name of
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an English town comes from the Latin word “castra” and shows that there was a Roman town there. The Vikings brought many words with them, such as “they” and “their”; the Normans governed England for many years and brought French words with them. Then the English brought many words from different countries – “kangaroo” from Australia, “pyjamas” from India, and “anorak” from Canada.
But what is English now? It is no longer spoken just in England and there are many different kinds of English in different parts of the world. In a book, Peter Strevens gives the following diagram:
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Standard English |
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American English Family |
British English Family |
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United States |
Canada |
West Indies |
Britain Australasia Africa |
He says that there are two main families of Standard English, the American and the British. American English is spoken in the USA and in Canada. British English is spoken in the West Indies, Britain, Australasia, and Africa. However, many other parts of the world also use English. In India English is an official language still and there is a special kind of Indian English. In several African countries, such as Nigeria and Ghana, English is spoken in schools and colleges. In many sciences English is the language of communication. There are about 300 million people who speak English as a first language, and there are another 300 million who use it as a second language. So English is now an international language and is useful to people who never go to England.
26. Read the following text, divide it into parts and entitle each of them. Write a short summary.
The Origins of English
English is basically a Germanic language with a lot of Latin words in it. In simple terms, that means that the grammar and many of the most frequent words are Germanic, and the more formal or technical vocabu-
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lary is Latinate. There is much of this Latinate vocabulary that English is sometimes called a semi-Romance language.
This linguistic mixture is a result of historical events. But the simple historical facts appear not to explain everything about the development of the language. One interesting question is why did the British not learn Latin from the Romans? After all, France, Spain, Portugal and Romania all kept the imperial language after the end of the Roman Empire. The answer may be the distance from Rome; the province of Britannia was on the wild and uncooperative margins of Europe. Although the Romans were here for 400 years, they did not leave very much behind them. It is hard to know how much the Celtic language of the Britons took on a Latin flavour. Actually its living descendant, Welsh, has a lot of Latin roots in it, so perhaps in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD they were on their way to creating another great Romance language. But it was not to be. The Anglo-Saxons who took over from the Romans in Britain were relatively untouched by Latin influences, so Celtic was replaced by Germanic, and the British romance with Romance was, temporarily, over.
In 1066, the French-speaking Normans invaded England. Over the next 300 years, their French merged with Anglo-Saxon to create a new language: the writing of Chaucer (1343–1400) is not very far from modern English. As in the rest of Europe, Latin, especially in its written form, remained for a long time the language of science, philosophy and the Church. But English was growing stronger; it was soon not only the language of everyday life but also that of a flowering literature. Caxton introduced printing into the country in 1476, and that did much to standardize forms – spelling was very inconsistent at that time. Latin and Greek classics and the Bible were translated into English. By the time of Shakespeare (1564–1616), the language was highly developed.
27. Read the text carefully, identify key points. Express your opinion on the problem in English or in Russian when being tested on your progress in independent reading.
Britain’s Languages
The Celtic peoples who gave way to the Anglo-Saxons did not disappear – they moved north and west, and their descendants live today in
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Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Cornwall. They went on speaking their Celtic languages, but of course shared the islands with a very dominant majority culture. From the 17th century onwards, the English imposed their language on huge areas of the world, from the north of Canada to the south of New Zealand, so the chances of the Celtic language surviving in Wales were pretty slim.
In fact, it is the Welsh who have preserved their linguistic identity more than any of the other Celtic peoples. The last native speaker of Cornish died in 1777 and of Manx (the language of the Isle of Man) in 1974. Gaelic in Scotland is spoken by no more than 80,000 people, mostly in the islands off the north-west coast; the only monolingual speakers are young children who have not yet been exposed to English. Irish Gaelic has about 100,000 speakers confined to small areas on the west coast. The Welsh language, by contrast, has a solid heartland in the north-west of the country and is spoken by half a million people: there is a TV channel and a lot of radio in Welsh, it is taught in schools and used by the nationalist political party, Plaid Cymru.
It is hard to find evidence that the English actually tried to kill off the Celtic languages in a systematic way – to commit linguicide. Their decline has been more a result of indifference from London, and a lack of will to preserve them on the part of the Celtic speakers themselves. But there have been abuses. In the 19th century, the English education system was imposed, and children were not allowed to speak Welsh at school: if they did, they were forced to wear a wooden board across their shoulders. Echoing this, a Welsh nationalist wrote: ”Dy iaitb ar ein bysgwyddau megis pwn” (“Your language is like a burden on our shoulders”).
28. Read the text carefully, identify key points. Express your opinion on the problem in English or in Russian when being tested on your progress in independent reading.
ENGLISH
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The World’s Biggest Brand
Imagine a brand bigger than Nike, bigger than Gap, bigger than CocaCola. Imagine a brand used by 1.5 billion people the world over.
The brand is English.
How did English achieve global dominance? And what does it mean for the future of English and the rest of the world’s languages?
Past
Why English became the number 1 language:
1. Empire
At its height, the British Empire included over one quarter of the world‟s population and landmass. “Britain‟s colonial expansion established the preconditions for the global use of English, taking the language from its island birthplace to settlements around the world,” says
David Graddol, author and Open University lecturer.
2. Adaptibility
“We don‟t just borrow words,” says writer James D. Nicoll. “On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
The fact that it came into contact with a multitude of other languages turned it into a kind of linguistic mongrel. English “borrowed” (some say stole) words from over 350 other languages, making it richer and more adaptable than other well-established tongues.
3. America
Even as the British Empire declined, the rise of the U.S. as a global superpower ensured that the English language continued on its path to world domination. TV, Hollywood, rock „n‟ roll, and now the Internet are all foot soldiers in the march of the new lingua franca.
Present
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Why English is still number 1:
1. It‟s the language of technology
As the old joke goes, the international language of technology is
“broken English”. And it‟s true that technology plays an important role in the language‟s continuing dominance. 80 % of electronically stored information in the world is in English. According to the British Council, 66 % of the world‟s scientists read in English; and, of course, it‟s the language of international air traffic control.
2. It‟s the language of business
Whether you‟re a Japanese executive on business in Brazil, a Mexican computer scientist at a conference in India, or a Norwegian tourist haggling in a Moroccan street market, you‟re probably speaking English.
There‟s never before been a language that‟s been spoken by more people as a second than a first language,” says English-language expert David Crystal, author of English as a Global Language.
3. It‟s a big business
Britain alone boasts a 1.3 billion pounds English Language Teaching industry. It is predicted that by 2020 it will be the UK‟s biggest export, earning 20 billion pounds a year.
One of the fastest expanding markets is China. Although Chinese is the world‟s top language in terms of the number of native speakers, the Chinese themselves are gripped by English Fever – they even have their own term for it: Yingwen re.
“Crazy English” – a method developed by ex-newsreader, Li Yang – is taught in huge sports stadiums to classes of thousands. As one 12- year-old Chinese student puts it: “If you can‟t speak English, it‟s like you‟re deaf and dumb.”
Future
Two future consequences of English being the number 1 language:
1. The impact on other languages
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“While there are obvious benefits in terms of global intelligibility,” says David Crystal, “on the other side of the coin, when you have one language that is so dominant, the other six and a half thousand languages in the world will naturally feel under threat.”
Crystal has little sympathy for the anti-English sentiments of alreadyhealthy languages such as French, Spanish and German, which are worried about the influx of English words into their lexicons. After all, openness to foreign-language influences is one of the factors that has resulted in English‟s amazing growth.
However, the threat of extinction is very real for other languages. “Something like half the languages of the world are so seriously endangered that they are almost certainly going to die out in the course of the present century,” warns Crystal. These languages must be protected for the same reasons we protect endangered animal species.
2. The impact on English itself
As for native speakers of English, their mother tongue has ceased to be under their control. Three quarters of English speakers are nonnative, and that proportion is growing. “The population growth in countries where it is a mother tongue, like Britain, America and Australia, is about a third of the rate of the population growth in countries where it is a second language, like India, Ghana and Nigeria,” Crystal points out.
The result of this is hard to predict, but it seems clear that these new English speakers are not simply learning the language – they are shaping it. If some Asians have trouble making that “th” sound, why spend hours trying to master it when they will be perfectly well understood saying
“one, two, tree”? If you keep forgetting to add “s” in the third person, why not dispense with it altogether? Nobody is going to misunderstand you if you say: “My mother work in an office” – indeed, leaving out the “s” is perfectly well acceptable in the grammar of Jamaican patois.
So does this mean that the next time you get your English homework back and it‟s covered in red-pen corrections, you can explain to your teacher that you didn‟t actually make any mistakes – that, as a nonnative speaker of global English, you were shaping the language? We wouldn‟t recommend it.
But it is true that the international language belongs to you as much as anyone else. English is yours to keep. Try not to break it!
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29. Read the text and render it in Russian or in English.
Tireless Champion of American English
The most famous of all American dictionary-makers, Noah Webster was as influential in the history of American English as George Washington in the American Revolution. From his Dissertations on the English Language in 1789 to his great monument of 1828, an American Dictionary of the English language (referred to simply as “Webster‟s”), his work is a real landmark in American history.
Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and, like many of the American revolutionaries, turned from law to teaching as a means of making his living. It was one of those career changes that transforms a man‟s life. Britain was at war with the colonies, and schoolbooks, traditionally imported from London, were in short supply. Besides, in Webster‟s view, they were unsatisfactory. So, very much in the spirit of the New World, he set about filling the gap. Between 1783 and 1785 while still in his twenties, Webster published three elementary books in English, a speller, a grammar and a reader. The American Speller turned out to be a runaway bestseller, selling over 80 million copies in Webster‟s lifetime (second only to the Bible).
The success of the American Speller gave Webster more than enough to live on, and he now devoted the rest of his life to the championing of the cause of the American language, its spelling, its grammar and its pronunciation. He wrote: “Our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as in government.” An old printer, recalling his apprenticeship, told the story of the day when a little pale-faced man came into the office and handed him a printed slip, saying, “My lad, when you use these words, please oblige me by spelling them as here: theater, center, etc.” It was Noah Webster travelling about the printing offices and persuading people to follow his “improved” conventions.
In 1806, Webster published his first Dictionary, the next step in his program to standardize the American language, and continued to call for the “detachment” from English literary models. From 1812 to 1822 Webster lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he helped to found Amherst College. In 1825, having devoted more than twenty years to the
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study of the English language and having travelled in both England and France, Webster returned to new Haven to complete the work of his life.
The culmination of Webster‟s efforts came with the publication of his
American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, larger than Samuel Johnson‟s by about a third and containing much American usage. But Webster‟s importance does not rest only upon the size of his book.
His precise definitions are models of lexicography style. Also, by the inclusion of thousands of technical and scientific terms, Webster laid the groundwork for the modern comprehensive dictionary. Despite its now honored place in the history of American English, the first Webster‟s sold only 2,500 copies and he was forced to mortgage his home to bring out a second edition. The rest of his life was dogged by debt and he died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1848 with much of his effort unrecognized and unapplauded.
In retrospect, Webster‟s influence on American spelling was enormous. It is to him that Americans owe “color”, for “colour”, “fiber” for “fibre”, “tire” for British “tyre”, etc. Webster‟s dictionaries had a great influence on American Speech rhythms and resulted in the remarkable uniformity of much American speech.
Translation Practice
30. Translate the text into English.
Миллиард людей говорит на английском, две трети ученых всего мира пишут на английском и около 80 % электронной информации хранится на английском языке. Одним из последствий этого стало то, что британцы ужасно ленивы в том, что касается изучения других языков. Самый важный фактор при изучении языка – это мотивация, а у жителей Великобритании ее просто нет.
Однако это вовсе не означает, что они самодовольно наслаждаются всемирным статусом своего языка. Большинство британцев прекрасно понимают, что сегодня он вышел из-под их контроля: причины популярности английского либо затерялись в истории, либо больше связаны с мощью и силой по другую сторону Атлантики.