Introduction

So far we have been talking about standard English as if it were a single language with universally agreed conventions. However, given the enormous number of speakers of English in the world, it is inevitable that there are many varieties of English, such that some writers talk about World Englishes, rather than World English. This unit looks at some of the many varieties of English, including those used by speakers whose first language is not English.

Tasks

1 Language change

Language varieties emerge as languages change, and language change is inevitable. As one scholar puts it, ‘Language is of its nature unstable. It is essentially protean in nature, adapting its shape to suit changing circumstances’ (Jenkins 2003). As it spreads globally, English, more than many languages, has had to adapt to very different circumstances. But even within its birthplace, Britain, it has evolved to such an extent that it is now difficult to read a text such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written just over 600 years ago, without a ‘translation’.

To illustrate these changes, here are some short quotes about English, taken from texts written from 1350 to the present day. Can you order them from oldest to most recent? What clues help you to do this?

• a The English language as it is spoken by the politest part of the nation, and as it stands in the writings of our most approved authors, oftentimes offends against every part of grammar.

• b I am of this opinion that our tung shold be written cleane and pure, vnmixt and vnmangeled with borrowing of other tunges.

• c Not only the several Towns and Countries of England, have a different way of Pronouncing, but even here in London, they clip their words after one Manner about the Court, another in the City, and a third in the Suburbs.

• d Boþe lered and lewed, olde and onge, Alle vnderstonden English tonge.

• e We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

• f Our tong is (and I doubt not but hath beene) as copious, pithie, and significative, as any other tongue in Europe.