CHARACTERISTICS OF BRITISH ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION

South East England and the Home Counties (the counties bordering London) reflect the interface between the London region and other regional accents. These districts are associated with a slightly RP accent, reflecting their middle and upper class residents.

Received Pronunciation is a form of pronunciation of the English language, which for a long time has been perceived as uniquely prestigious amongst British accents. About 2% of Britons speak with the RP accent in its purest form. With the term Received Pronunciation we refer very often to the “Queen’s language” or the “BBC language”, because it is considered the purest variety of British English.

Recently, many people have begun to speak other regional and class varieties; in particular the younger people tend to consider the Received Pronunciation of less importance and use it less. Many regional dialects are now heard in the BBC.

There are three different forms of RP: Conservative, as to say i.e., a traditional accent associated with older speakers with certain social backgrounds; General, as to say i.e., the neutral form regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker; and Advanced, as to say i.e., the variety of the younger generation of British people.

PHONOLOGY

1. Nasals and liquids may be syllabic in unstressed syllables.

2. /ð/ is more often a weak dental plosive; the sequence /nð/ is often realized as [n̪n̪].

3. /h/ becomes [ɦ] between voiced sounds.

4. /ɹ/ is postalveolar unless devoicing results in a voiceless fricative articulation (see below).

5. /l/ is velarized in the syllable coda.

Vowels:

Examples of short vowels: /ɪ/ in kit and mirror, /ʊ/ in put, /e/ in dress and merry, /ʌ/ in strut and curry, /æ/ in trap and marry, /ɒ/ in lot and orange, /ə/ in ago and sofa.

Examples of long vowels: /iː/ in fleece, /uː/ in goose, /ɜː/ in nurse, /ɔː/ in north and thought, /ɑː/ in father and start.

The long vowels are diphthongized, especially the high vowels /i:/ and /u:/.

Diphthongs:

RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in ire and /aʊə/ as in hour.

RP is a “broad A” accent, as to say that words like “bath” and “chance” are pronounced with a /ɑː/ and not with a /æ/.

RP is a “non rhotic” accent, as to say that /r/ does not occur unless it is followed immediately by a vowel.

The young people have begun to use a new type of RP, which has some characteristics, like the “tapped-t”, as to say a sound produced by flicking the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, making only very brief and rapid contact. Another pronunciation of t is the “t-glottaling”, as to say substituting a glottal stop for a t-sound between vowels or at the end of a word. T-glottaling is a characteristic referred to the younger speakers and it is a British innovation.

In the South of the Country there is a strong tendency to use a rising intonation on ordinary declarative statements and it is used particularly by young females.

MORPHOLOGY

NOUNS:

In British English collective nouns can take either singular or plural verbs forms, according to whether the emphasis is, respectively, on the body as a whole or on the individual members (ex. A committee was appointed vs. the committee were unable to agree…). Proper nouns that are plural in form take a plural verb (ex. The Beatles are a well-known band).

VERBS:

The past tense and the past participle of the verbs learn, spoil, dream, smell and others can be either irregular or regular. In British English the regular forms are very used; in some cases there is a tendency toward the irregular forms, especially by speakers using the RP.

Lit as the past tense of light in UK is much more common than lighted. By contrast, the past of fit is fitted.

British English uses the “present perfect” tense to talk about an event in recent past and with words like “yet, already, just”.

The form have got can be used for possession, while the form have got to is used to express the “modal of necessity”. The forms that include GOT are usually used in informal contexts and the forms without GOT are used in formal contexts.

“Shall” in opposition to “will” is very used in British English.

Before some words beginning with h with the first syllable unstressed, like hallucination, British people prefer to use an over a (ex. An hallucination caused by an illness).

LEXIS

There are some expressions that are very typical in British English. For example, go missing as synonyms of disappear, bespoke as an alternative of custom-made, or run up with the meaning of “period preceding an event”. There are some words that were born in Britain, as naff with the meaning of unstylish.

The expression “to table an item on an agenda” means “to open it up” for discussion.

The word “football” in British English has the synonym of “soccer”.

The expression “to murder a fag” indicates a compulsion to smoke a cigarette.

The term fall for autumn is obsolete in British English.

In British English the expression “he sits for an exam” is used very often.

British people refer to transport, while American people refer to transportation. The last one can’t be used in British English with the same meaning of American English because in British English it refers to the punishment of the criminals by deporting them to an overseas penal colony.

“Professor” in British English indicates the highest academic rang, followed by Reader, Senior Lecturer and Lecturer. In the UK only degree and above level students can graduate. The word student is used for people studying at the post-secondary educational institution.

Season’s Greetings is an expression introduced in Britain referring to the greetings without make any explicit religious reference.

Referring to the theme of luck, British people use the expression “touch wood”.

In British English speech titles may precede names, but not descriptions of offices (ex. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister).

SYNTAX

Where a statement of intention involves two separate activities, speakers of British English use for example to go and plus bare infinitive. The same happens with come because Britons say to come and plus bare infinitive.

British people use the prepositions before the days of the week all the time (ex. “she resigned on Tuesday”), while American people don’t.

In the UK, from is used with single dates and times more often than in the United States (ex. “the new museum will be open from Tuesday”).

Adding at to the end of the question is considered superfluous in British English, while in American English it is very used. However, some south-western dialects use to at the end of the question (ex. “where are you to?” That means “where are you”).

TEXTUALITY

Informal British English tends to use above all coordination, instead of subordination. It uses above all conjunctions like “and”, “but”, “nor”, “or” for coordination, elements like “if”, “because”, “since” for subordination.

British people make a lot of use of deictics like:

now vs. then

here vs. there

this vs. that

me vs. you vs. him/her

go vs. come

Moreover, they make a great use of “disambiguation”, as to say an implicit assumption about the world belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. If they say “Do you want to do it again?” it means that there is a presupposition that the action has been done at least once. [A RATHER TRITE EXAMPLE, DON'T YU THINK? ]

NORMATIVE PRAGMATIC

British people are well known for their indirectness, so also in giving orders they don’t impose anything, they tend to ask a question that, in reality, is an indirect order: “Why don’t you go outside and have a walk with your friends?”, in this case an hypothetical mother is ordering to her son to go out, without being too hard with him.

They tend to not use superlatives for their sense of “moderation”. So, if American people can tell say “Gorgeous Marvelous!!!” about a movie, English people would tell say“Not too bad” for the same film.

Many British people are involved in the make use of “understatement” and tend to not use “effusive language”. Moreover, they tend to use “qualifiers” like “perhaps”, “it could be”, “maybe”.