Sprechen Sie English?

A REMINDER CULTURE: The sum total of a group of people’s ways of living

Sociofacts

Social expressions… Political Forms Economic Forms

Mentifacts

Value expressions… Religious Forms Philosophic Forms

Artifacts

Material expressions… Food and Possessions Clothing and Shelter

Culture

Language, along with religion and ethnicity, make up a culture’s Mentifacts… its collection of beliefs and values.

FOR STARTERS

Language is a system of communication through speech.

A literary tradition is a system of written communication that often couples a language, and orthography is the art of writing words with proper letters according to standard usage.

A person who speaks a single language is called monolingual and a person who speaks two languages is called bilingual.

An official language is the one a country’s government adopts as the language for laws, reports and public objects (signage, money, stamps, etc.).

A common language is considered a centripetal force for a country, a force that brings unity and helps create a common sense of cultural identity.

A plurality of languages spoken in a country can act as a centrifugal force, a force that leads to division and strife in a country’s population.

FOR STARTERS Like the traits of material culture, language has a hearth (a place of origin) and a method of diffusion (the way in which a trait spreads).

ORIGINS OF ENGLISH

English originated in the British Isles.

Although the Isles had been inhabited for thousands of years, we know little about the language(s) spoken there until the arrival of the Celts c. 2000 BCE.

C. 450 BCE, invaders from mainland Europe pushed the Celts into Northern and Western Britain (Cornwall, Scotland and Wales).

The Invaders were Germanic speaking tribes: Jutes from northern Denmark Angles from southern Denmark Saxons from northwestern Germany As a group, they are called the Anglo-Saxons.

The name England comes from Angle’s Land (spelled Engle’s) The Angle’s language was called Englisc.

Modern English has derived from the language of the Anglo-Saxon languages.

Other groups then invaded the isles over the years and added elements of their language to Anglo Saxon.

Viking tribes from Norway conducted a series of raids starting in the 9 th century. Many returned home, but some stayed and blended languages.

In 1066, French speaking Normans from the Normandy region of France invaded and conquered England.

French was the official language in England for the next 300 years.

England lost control of Normandy in 1204 and fewer and fewer English wanted to speak French. In 1362, the English became the official language back to English.

Modern English is the blend of the pre-invasion Anglos-Saxon with French.

INVASION ROUTES

DIFFUSION

Like traits of material culture (artifacts), language diffuses over space. It does so primarily by relocation diffusion, migration of its speakers.

The British colonized all over the world and took their language with them to their colonies. The Americas in the 17 th century.

Ireland in the 17 th Century South and Southeast Asia in the mid 18 th century South Pacific in the late 18 th and early 19 th century Africa in the late 19 th century

DIFFUSION

The United States has been responsible for diffusing English more recently, especially to the Philippines.

English today is spoken in over 100 countries.

DIALECTS

A dialect is a regional variation of a language.

Dialects are made distinct by: Vocabulary Spelling Pronunciation When speakers migrate to a new location and remain there in relative isolation, new dialects may develop.

This pattern accounts for the differences in American and British English.

English also varies by region within English speaking countries.

In a language with multiple dialects, a Standard Language is the dialect recognized as the most acceptable for government, business, education and mass communication use.

Much of the English speaking world recognizes the English of upper-class Britons in the London area as the standard language. It’s called British Received Pronunciation (BRP).

DIALECTS

The book will go into detail about the development of numerous different dialects of English in England in different time periods.

Today the three main dialect groups: Northern Midland Southern Please read about them.

WHY DON’T THEY SPEAK AMERICAN?

English was brought to the Americas as the British colonized the Eastern Seaboard of the US.

American dialects developed so distinctly due to isolation… 1.

Before revolution, most communication with 2.

the colonies was in writing, not by voice After revolution, well… no communication Therefore, English developed separately in the two places during the 18 th and 19 th centuries with three primary differences: Pansy!

Poofter!

Vocabulary Due to difference of experience. New: Animals (chipmunk, moose, raccoon) Objects (canoe, moccasin, squash) Different names for inventions bathroom/Water closet, elevator/lift, flashlight/torch, trunk/boot Spelling Lexicographers like Merriam and Webster wanted to distinguish American national identity through spelling Honor/honour, color/colour, theater/theatre, shop/shoppe, calender/calendar, defense/defence Pronunciation Exchanges between colonists and the mother country were written Soft versus hard A British dropping of R before consonants American emphasis of unaccented syllables

AMERICAN ENGLISH

Differences in US dialects emerged due to the dialectical differences between the original settlers.

New England States: settled almost entirely by English settlers. 2/3 were puritans from East Anglia (SE ENGLAND) .

Southeastern Colonies: only ½ the settlers were English; those also came from southeast England BUT with variety of socio-economic backgrounds. Middle Atlantic colonies: settlers were diverse, English, Scotch, Irish, German, Dutch, Swedish. Non-English speakers learned English from their neighbors and the Mid-Atlantic dialect varied greatly from New England and the Southeast.

Major dialectical differences still exist in the US today, primarily along the East Coast.

The dialect regions are determined by studying the diffusion and use of certain words.

Every word that is NOT used nationally has some limited geographic extent of use. Some words, therefore, have boundaries.

An ISOGLOSS is the geographic boundary of a word’s use; various word’s isoglosses join to form regions. There are 3 main US dialect regions.

NORTHERN pail brook bossie spider MIDLANDS bucket run sookie skillet SOUTHERN bucket branch wench frying pan

US DIALECT MAP

This map of US dialects was made by mapping and then categorizing the isoglosses of a number of different words.

ARE YOU A REBEL OR A YANKEE?

NPR Interview with Robert Beard Hey, ya’ll, wochiss.

Dr. Beard’s Website and Test Hey, youse guys, check this out.

ISOGLOSS

An isogloss is the geographic extent to which any given word is used (a word’s formal region).

“needs washed isogloss” (As in, “My car needs washed.”