Peculiarities of British Dialects

• They like to use "'Tis" rather than the more standard contraction "It's".
• It is also common to end sentences with 'no?' or 'yeah?':

"He's not coming today, no?"

Он сегодня не придёт, да?

"The bank's closed now, yeah?"

 Банк уже закрыт, да?

• Irish English also always uses the "light l" sound, and the pronunciation of the letter 'h' as 'haitch' is standard.
• Somebody who can speak a language, 'has' a language - a very rural construction:

"She doesn't have Irish" - Она не говорит на ирландском.

Turns of phrase.

• "Am not" is abbreviated amn't by analogy with "isn't" and "aren't" ("Aren't I" would be considered ungrammatical in Ireland). This can be used as a tag question: "I'm making a mistake, amn't I?" – Я делаю ошибку? or as an alternative to "I'm not": "I amn't joking" – Я не шучу.
• Reduplication is not an especially common feature of Irish; nevertheless, in rendering Irish phrases into English it is occasionally used: ar bith corresponds to English ‘at all’, so the stronger ar chor ar bith gives rise to the form ‘at all at all’

"I've no money at all at all" – У меня совсем-совсем нет денег.

• Yoke is typically used in place of the word "thing", for instance, "gimme that yoke there" – дай мне ту вещь.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

The most widespread language in the world is English, which is considered to be the international language. During many centuries English was exposed to the influence of different cultures and underwent many changes. That’s why this is not surprising that British English has so many dialects. Dialect is a complete system of verbal communication (oral or signed but not necessarily written) with its own vocabulary and/or grammar. It is used by people from a particular geographical area the size of which can be arbitrary. It follows that a dialect for a larger area can contain plenty of (sub-) dialects, which in turn can contain dialects of yet smaller areas, etc.

Our work embraces the majority of British dialects, i.e. Geordie, Yorkshire, Scouse, Derbyshire, Nottingham, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Black Country, Brummie, Norfolk, Estuary English, Cockney, Cornwall, Scottish, Wenglish and Hiberno-English. The information about all of them was taken from magazines, newspapers, books, scientific works and websites. The main source of information was Internet because of the lack of information in libraries.

According to the studied materials we can make such conclusions:

•       The concept dialect should be distinguished from accent. The term dialect refers to a specific variety of a language, which differs systematically from other varieties in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, but which is still generally comprehensible to speakers of other dialects within that language. Varieties of dialects can be distinguished not only by their vocabulary and grammar, but also by differences in phonology. If the distinctions are limited to phonology, one may use the term accent. Accent refers simply to different pronunciation patterns and, despite popular belief to the contrary everybody speaks with an accent. In other words, dialect is an umbrella term for a variety of linguistic features, one of which is accent - the sound patterns of a specific dialect. Thus, within England, a northerner using naught to mean nothing is an example of lexical variation, but a Liverpudlian pronouncing the word nothing differently from the way a Londoner might say it is a difference in accent. People from different geographical places clearly speak differently, but even within the same small community, people might speak differently according to their age, gender, ethnicity and social and educational background.
•      There are two types of dialects: geographical and social. Geographical are used by people of some particular territory. Social are used in one and the same social class or educational group.
•  One should distinguish between standard dialect and non-standard dialect. Standard dialect is such a dialect that is supported by institutions in the state. It may be approved by government and presented as a "correct" form of a language in schools. Non-standard dialect isn’t supported by institutions.
• Each culture made a lot of changes during the development of English language. That’s why, for example, Brummie has some unusual tones which are similar to Scandinavian, Cornish trace its roots back to Celtic tribes, Geordie reflects old Anglo-Saxon pronunciations, etc.
• There is a great difference between Standard English and dialect speech. Thus two people from different counties of one and the same country can’t understand each other in spite of the fact that their native language is English. Some words and constructions of sentences are absolutely incomprehensible.
• From all British dialects 76% accounts for dialects of England; 8% - for Scotland and the last 16% - for Wales and Northern Ireland.
• The phonetics also plays a very important role. The way individuals pronounce certain words is often a good clue to their background. Speakers who do not pronounce the initial “h” in the word house, for instance, immediately reveal something about themselves. Perhaps the most salient feature of pronunciation in Great Britain is the distinction between speakers in the north who generally pronounce words such as bath, grass and dance with a short vowel – rather like the vowel in the word cat – and those in the south, who use a long vowel for these words – rather like the sound you are asked to produce when a doctor examines your throat. Thus one can immediately deduce something about a person who pronounces baths to rhyme with maths or pass to rhyme with mass.
• Grammar refers to the structure of a language or dialect. A grammar describes the way individual words change their appearance, such as when the word walk becomes walked to indicate an event in past time and also the way in which words are combined together to form phrases or sentences. In Yorkshire dialect, for instance, a speaker might mark the past tense of to be by saying I were, you were, he, she and it were, we were, they were whereas speakers of other dialects might differentiate by using I was and he, she and it was. You should avoid the temptation to draw misguided conclusions about what is “correct” and “incorrect” grammar, however: the Yorkshire pattern is in fact more regular and indeed mirrors the model for every other verb in English – I played, you played, I went, you went and so on. Instead you should make a distinction between “standard” and “non-standard” grammar, where “standard” grammar refers to a variety that has become widely acknowledged as a prestigious form, mainly due to its use by people in positions of authority and because of its universal acceptance as the written norm. Just as speakers with a broad accent do not reflect their pronunciation in writing, most people whose speech is characterised by features of non-standard grammar, consciously switch to more standard forms in writing. However, there is a great deal of difference between written and spoken language, both in terms of purpose and audience and this is reflected in their different grammars.

 

Language by its very nature is dynamic and constantly evolving, new words and expressions are almost daily being absorbed and some older words are falling into disuse.

With communication and travel nowadays being so easy and fast, language is evolving more rapidly now than at any other time and some people are commuting daily over greater distances than they would have considered travelling for an annual holiday 50 years ago. People are moving house more often, they settle in new areas and thus the regional lines are becoming blurred. In the course of time dialects are mixing and their number reduces progressively. But this doesn’t mean that dialects will die out someday. They will continue to exist and develop with people’s help. That’s why it’s very important to study British dialects.

¹ Dictionary of contemporary English, Longman

² Trudgill, P. (1990) The dialects of England, Oxford: Blackwell.

³ In 1945 the Yiddisch linguist Max Weinreich formulated the much quoted metaphor in "YIVO and the problems of our time," _Yivo-bleter_, 1945, vol. 25, no. 1, p. 13.

⁴ Hughes, A. and Trudgill, P. (1996) English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of British English, Third Edition, London: Arnold.

⁵ http://www.picturesofengland.com

⁶ прозвище жителя или уроженца графства Нортумберленд

⁷ Frank Graham (1998) The New Geordie Dictionary

⁸ Trudgill, P. (1990) The dialects of England, Oxford: Blackwell.

⁹ Kellett, A. (1992) Basic Broad Yorkshire, Revised Edition, Otley: Smith Settle.

¹⁰ Kellett, A. (1992) Basic Broad Yorkshire, Revised Edition, Otley: Smith Settle.

¹¹ Trudgill, P. (1990) The dialects of England, Oxford: Blackwell.

¹² Rosewarne, David, 1984 Estuary English. Times Educational Supplement, 19 (October 1984).

¹³ Crystal, David 1995 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

¹⁴ Britain, David 2003b Dialectology.