British English, or UK English or English English (BrE, BE, en-GB[1]), is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere.[2] There is confusion whether the term refers to English as spoken in the British Isles or to English as spoken in Great Britain,[3] though in the case of Ireland, there are further distinctions peculiar to Hiberno-English.
There are slight regional variations in formal written English in the United Kingdom (for example, although the words wee and little are interchangeable in some contexts, one is more likely to see wee written by someone from northern Britain or from Northern Ireland than by someone from Southern England or Wales). Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described as "British English". The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken[citation needed] and a uniform concept of "British English" is therefore more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English (p. 45), "[f]or many people...especially in England [the phrase British English] is tautologous," and it shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word British, and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity".
Contents |
|
Boston Globe
Samuel Johnson, born 300 years ago last week, has long been known as one of the great wits and wordsmiths of the English language: poet, ...
