DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

By Govind Nair In Languages & Culture September 16, 2018

https://cudoo.com/blog/different-varieties-of-english-language/

English is the most widely-spoken language in the world, having the distinct status of being the official
language of multiple countries. While the English language is uniform with major variations in spelling
present between American English and British English, the dialect or accent is usually the factor that
enables one to distinguish the various types of English out there. Like most languages, there are varieties
of English too, however, the difference is not as prominent as you may see in other languages.

From the thick Ugandan English to the French-themed Canadian English, the varieties of accents present
are both diverse and beautiful. Apart from accents, there is a tendency for people to mix English with
their local lingo to form a hybrid variety of English language that is as colorful as the culture in that
country.

Read on to find out more about the various types of English language that are present in countries
around the world.

VARIOUS ENGLISH LANGUAGE DIALECTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

BRITISH ENGLISH

British English is the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly,
throughout the British Isles. Slight regional variations exist in formal, written English in the United
Kingdom.

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by
Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands.
The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic—the insular variety of
continental Celtic, which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages (Welsh,
Cornish, Cumbric) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness
from the Germanic languages, influence on English was notably limited.

AMERICAN ENGLISH

American English sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the
English language native to the United States and widely adopted in Canada. English is the most widely
spoken language in the United States and is the common language used by the federal government,
considered the de facto language of the country because of its widespread use. English has been given
official status by 32 of the 50 state governments.
AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

Australian English is a major variety of the English language, used throughout Australia. Although English
has no official status in the constitution, Australian English is the country’s national and de facto official
language as it is the first language of the majority of the population.

Australian English began to diverge from British English after the founding of the Colony of New South
Wales in 1788 and was recognized as being different from British English by 1820. It arose from the
intermingling of early settlers from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of the British
Isles and quickly developed into a distinct variety of English.

CANADIAN ENGLISH

Canadian English is the set of varieties of English native to Canada. According to the 2011 census, English
was the first language of approximately 19 million Canadians (57% of the population) the remainder of
the population were native speakers of Canadian French (22%) or other languages (allophones, 21%).

The term “Canadian English” is first attested in a speech by the Reverend A. Constable Geikie in an
address to the Canadian Institute in 1857. Canadian English is the product of five waves of immigration
and settlement over a period of more than two centuries. The first large wave of permanent English-
speaking settlement in Canada, and linguistically the most important, was the influx of loyalists fleeing
the American Revolution, chiefly from the Mid-Atlantic States – as such, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and West Virginia. Canadian English is
believed by some scholars to have derived from northern American English.

INDIAN ENGLISH

English public instruction began in India in the 1830s during the rule of the East India Company (India
was then, and is today, one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world). In 1835, English
replaced Persian as the official language of the Company. Lord Macaulay played a major role in
introducing English and western concepts to education in India. He supported the replacement of
Persian by English as the official language, the use of English as the medium of instruction in all schools,
and the training of English-speaking Indians as teachers.

The view of this language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to
associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India, albeit
with an Indian twist, popularly known as Indian English.

PHILIPPINE ENGLISH

Philippine English is any variety of English (similar and related to American English) native to the
Philippines, including those used by the media and the vast majority of educated Filipinos. English is
taught in schools as one of the two official languages of the country, the other being Filipino (Tagalog).
Philippine English has evolved tremendously from where it began decades ago. Some decades before
English was officially introduced, if not arguably forced, to the Philippines, the archipelagic nation has
been subject to Spanish rule and thus Spanish was the language of power and influence. However, in
1898, when the Spanish gave the United States control of the nation, the English language, although
initially not favored, became widely used in a matter of years, which was catalyzed by the coming of
American teachers.

UGANDAN ENGLISH

Ugandan English, or Uglish (pronounced you-glish), is the dialect of English spoken in Uganda. As with
similar dialects spoken elsewhere, Ugandan English has developed a strong local flavor. The speech
patterns of Ugandan languages strongly influence spoken English. Uganda has a large variety of
indigenous languages, and someone familiar with Uganda can readily identify the native language of a
person speaking English. Ugandan speakers will alter foreign words to make them sound more
euphonic.

The English language is an amalgamation of cultures, intricacies, and experiences. A lot of the common
words used have strange origins.

Circles of English in the twentieth century

https://www.lexico.com/explore/circles-of-english-in-the-twentieth-century

It has become conventional to represent the diversity of varieties of English in the form of three
concentric circles (an idea introduced by the linguist Braj Kachru in 1985).

Circles of English

The inner circle

The English of the ‘inner circle’ is essentially that of native speakers, used by members of the dominant
culture: the English, that is, of countries such as the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand. At the end of the twentieth century there were about 400 million native speakers of
English in the world, or just over 5.5% of the world’s population.
The outer circle

The second or ‘outer’ circle consists of areas where English is widely learned and used as a second
language. This typically includes countries, such as India and Nigeria, that were once under British rule,
and in which English often acts as a communicative bridge between communities that speak different
indigenous languages. Beyond this there is the so-called ‘expanding circle’, encompassing all those who
learn and use English, with varying degrees of expertise, as a foreign language.

The expanding circle

This expanding circle has been the great growth area of English since the middle of the twentieth
century. It has become the world’s lingua franca for business and technology, an essential tool for
trading negotiations, academic interchange, and electronic communication between those who do not
have a native language in common. So crucial has this role become that several attempts have been
made to develop an artificially simplified form of English that would be easier and quicker for foreign
learners to master. The most high-profile of these is probably ‘Globish’, created in 2004 by Jean-Paul
Nerriere, which uses a subset of English grammar and has a vocabulary of 1,500 English words (not too
different, in concept and form, from the ‘Basic English’ devised in the 1920s by the linguist C.K. Ogden
with the aim of facilitating international communication). It is hard to give a precise figure for the
number of people who occupy the third and last circle of English, but it has been estimated that at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, English speakers and users of all three categories account for
between 20 and 25 per cent of the world’s population.

It should not be imagined, though, that all across the globe other languages are in retreat in the face of a
rising tide of English. In some parts of the English-speaking world the reverse is the case. In the USA, for
example, 11.4 per cent of citizens now have Spanish as their first language, and the proportion is
growing. Melbourne, Australia, now has the third-largest Greek-speaking population of any city in the
world, after Athens and Thessaloniki.

Please click the following link for more information about the varieties of English language.

Please feel free also to research on this topic, you may find other videos which may help you a lot.

Happy viewing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvbEODnJVTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdJQdt3xkFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XT04EO5RSU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_q9b9YqGRY