Table Of ContentGREAT BRITAIN
Supplementary texts for the Third Year Students of the Translation department
Хмельницький національний університет
GREAT BRITAIN
Supplementary texts for the Third Year Students
of the Translation department
ВЕЛИКОБРИТАНІЯ
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Протокол № 7 від 20.04.2005.
Хмельницький 2005
Chapter 1: GREAT BRITAIN
GEOGRAPHICAL DEFINITION
With an area of 229 850 km² (88,745 sq. mi.) the island of Great
Britain is the largest of the British Isles, an archipelago that also includes
Ireland and the Isle of Man. It is the largest island in Europe, and eighth lar-
gest in the world. It is the third most populous island after Java and Honshu.
Great Britain stretches over approximately ten degrees of latitude
on its longer, north-south axis. Geographically, the island is marked by low,
rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predo-
minate in the western and northern regions. Before the end of the last ice
age, Great Britain was a peninsula of Europe; the rising sea levels caused by
glacial melting at the end of the ice age caused the formation of the English
Channel, the body of water which now divides Great Britain from the
European mainland.
The climate of Great Britain is milder than that of other regions of
the Northern Hemisphere at the same latitude, because the warm waters of
the Gulf Stream pass by the British Isles and exert a moderating influence
on the weather. Cool, but not cold, temperatures, clouds more often than sun,
and abundant rain are the rule in most years.
POLITICAL DEFINITION
Politically, Great Britain describes the combination of England,
Scotland, and Wales. It includes outlying islands such as the Isles of Scilly,
the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland but does not
include the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands.
Over the centuries, Great Britain has evolved politically from
several independent countries (England, Scotland, and Wales) through two
kingdoms with a shared monarch (England and Scotland), a single all-island
Kingdom of Great Britain, to the situation following 1801, in which Great
Britain together with the island of Ireland constituted the larger United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The UK became The United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the 1920s.
HISTORY
The term Great Britain was first widely used during the reign of
King James VI of Scotland, I of England to describe the island, on which
co-existed two separate kingdoms, both at that time ruled by the same
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monarch. Though England and Scotland each remained legally in existence
as a separate country with its own parliament, collectively they were
sometimes referred to as Great Britain. In 1707, an Act of Union joined
both parliaments. That Act used two different terms to describe the new all
island nation, a “United Kingdom” and the “Kingdom of Great Britain”.
However, the former term is regarded by many as having been a description
of the union rather than its name at that stage. Most reference books
therefore describe the all-island kingdom that existed between 1707 and
1800 as the Kingdom of Great Britain.
In 1801, under a new Act of Union, this kingdom merged with the
Kingdom of Ireland, over which the monarch of Great Britain had ruled.
The new kingdom was from then onwards unambiguously called the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, twenty-six of Ireland’s
thirty-two counties gained independence to form a separate Irish Free State.
The remaining truncated kingdom has therefore since then been known as
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The United
Kingdom now also formally includes a number of Overseas Territories.
USAGE OF THE TERM GREAT BRITAIN
Great Britain is also widely, but incorrectly, used as a synonym for
the political nation properly known as the United Kingdom
This common usage is technically inaccurate as the United
Kingdom includes the province of Northern Ireland in addition to the three
countries that make up Great Britain, as shown by its full name “The United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. The British themselves
occasionally use the abbreviation GB, such as in the Olympic Games where
the British team is sometimes informally referred to as “Team GB”. The
UK also uses the international foreign vehicle identification code of GB.
This is discussed further under Britain.
There is similar situation with the terms Britain and British, which
are used to relate to the whole of the UK and not just the island of Great
Britain. This usage is generally considered to be correct. Examples of this are
“British monarchs”, “British culture” and “British citizens” – which would
generally be considered to embrace the whole of the United Kingdom.
NOMENCLATURE
The name Britain is very ancient, and came from the name
Britannia used by the Romans (from circa 55AD). This is thought to derive
from an earlier term, Brigantes for which the earliest known form is
believed to date back to about 325 BC
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There are in fact two “Britain’s: the island of Britain in the British
Isles, and the land of Britain in France. In French these are known as
Grande Bretagne and Bretagne, in English as Great Britain and Brittany.
The word “Great” in this context has its old meaning of “large” as in “the
sea was great and vast” or “Greater London”. Likewise, the ending “-y” on
the end of “Brittany” has the meaning “little”, as in “doggy”, meaning
“small dog”, or “Jimmy”, meaning “little Jim”.
In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae from the
middle ages, the British Isles were referred to as Britannia major and
Britannia minor. The term “Bretayne the grete” was used by chroniclers as
early as 1338, but it was not used officially until King James I proclaimed
himself “King of Great Britain” on 20 October 1604 to avoid the more
cumbersome title “King of England and Scotland”.
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Chapter 2: LANGUAGES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
The United Kingdom has no official language. English is the main
language and the de facto official language, spoken monolingually by an
estimated 95 % of the UK population. It should be noted that Norman
French is still used in the Houses of Parliament for official business
between the clerks of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and
on other official occasions such as the dissolution of Parliament.
However, some nations and regions of the UK have frameworks
for the promotion of autochthonous languages. In Wales, English and Welsh
are both widely used by officialdom, and Irish and Ulster Scots enjoy
limited use alongside English in Northern Ireland, mainly in publicly
commissioned translations. Additionally, the Western Isles region of Scot-
land has a policy to promote Scottish Gaelic.
Under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,
which is not legally enforceable, the UK Government has committed itself
to the promotion of certain linguistic traditions. Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and
Cornish are to be developed in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall respectively.
Other native languages afforded such protection include Irish in Northern
Ireland, Scots in Scotland and Northern Ireland, in the latter territory
officially known as “Ulster Scots” or “Ullans” but in the speech of users
simply as “Scotch” or “Scots”, and British Sign Language.
STATISTICS
According to the most recent census, Welsh is spoken by about
20 % of the population of Wales, giving it around 600 000 speakers.
However, there is some controversy over the actual number who speak
Welsh. Some statistics choose to include people who have studied Welsh to
at least GCSE standard, not all of whom could be regarded as fluent
speakers of the language. Unlike Scottish Gaelic, which is sometimes
viewed as a regional language even in Scotland itself, but like many other
minoritised languages, Welsh has for a long time been strongly associated
with nationalism, making it harder to get an accurate and unbiased figure
for how many people speak it fluently.
Scottish Gaelic has about 60 000 speakers according to the 2001
census (roughly 1 % of the population of Scotland). In Northern Ireland,
about 7 % of the population speak Irish Gaelic according to the 2001 census
(around 110 000 speakers) and 2 % regional forms of Scots according to the
1999 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (around 30 000 speakers).
Alongside British Sign Language, Irish Sign Language is also used. Cornish
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is spoken by roughly 3 500 people (about 0,6 % of the population of Corn-
wall). Scots is spoken by 30 % of the Scottish population according to the
1996 estimate of the General Register Office for Scotland (approximately
1,5 million speakers). British Sign Language is understood by less than
0,1 % of the total population of the UK.
Further complication arises from language ability. Some low ability
learners/users record themselves as speakers of various languages, while
some who are (near-)fluent may choose not to, due to the stigma attached to
some minority languages.
CONTROVERSIES
The main subject of debate is what constitutes language and
dialect; for many this is clear, but public perception is still very much
divided. Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are generally viewed as being
languages in their own right rather than dialects of a single tongue, since
they are not usually mutually intelligible, but the relationship of Lowland
Scots and English is less clear, since there is usually partial mutual
intelligibility. Recently the same has been true of Ulster Scots and Lowland
Scots in Scotland, though in the political rather than the linguistic sphere,
since there is almost absolute mutual intelligibility between contemporary
speakers, and a common written form was current well into the 20th century.
While in continental Europe closely related languages and dialects may get
official recognition and support, in the UK there is a tendency to view
closely related vernaculars as a single language. Even British Sign
Language is mistakenly thought of as a form of “English” by some, rather
than being language in its own right, with a distinct grammar and
vocabulary. The boundaries not always being clear cut can lead to problems
in estimating numbers of speakers.
In Northern Ireland, the use of Irish Gaelic and Ulster Scots is
sometimes politically loaded. This is despite both having been used by all
communities in the past. Also, some resent Scottish Gaelic being promoted
in the Lowlands, although it was once spoken everywhere except the
extreme south-east of the country, an area annexed from the Northumbrian
earldom. An area with mostly Norse-derived placenames (and some Pictish),
the Northern Isles (Shetland and Orkney) were ceded to Scotland in lieu of
an unpaid dowry in the 1460s, and never spoke Gaelic, their own national
language Norn, a derivative of Old Norse mutually intelligible with
Icelandic and Faroese, dying out in the 18th century.
Scots within Scotland and the regional varieties of English within
England receive little or no public support, and are often used for comedy
purposes in British media. The dialects of Northern England share some
features with Lowland Scots that those of Southern England do not.
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BRITISH ENGLISH
British English (or UK English) is a collective term for the forms of
English spoken in the British Isles. When used by British speakers, it often
refers to the written Standard English and the sociolect known as Received
Pronunciation (RP).
The people who live in the British Isles do not use this term often.
According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English, the
phrase British English 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.”
WRITTEN LANGUAGE. HISTORY AND DISTINCTIONS
The written language is normally Standard English, which dates
back to the early 16th century. It is primarily based on dialects from the
south-east of England and is used by newspapers and official publications.
Although standard written English is similar in every English-speaking
country, there are differences in spelling – such as colo(u)r, travel(l)er –
punctuation and vocabulary.
USE OF -ise AND –ize
Words of the sort organize/organise and their derivatives can be
spelt with either s or z. The -ize forms are promoted by the Oxford English
Dictionary and are the forms used by most publications issued by the
Oxford University Press and in much other academic publishing. This is
sometimes known as OED spelling and may be marked by the registered
IANA language tag en-GB-oed. It is the spelling used by the Encyclopædia
Britannica, by the United Nations (mostly), and by the majority of
international standards groups. The -ize forms are also given priority in all
dictionaries issued by Oxford, Cassell, Collins, Longman, and Penguin, and
also in dictionaries issued by Chambers for international use. These forms
were used by The Times until the mid-1980s. The -ise forms are now
generally used by the British government, within the European Union, by
Cambridge University publications, by the media and is taught in the British
school system. The -ise forms are preferred in dictionaries from Reader’s
Digest (UK) and by Chambers in their native-speaker dictionaries and are
used by most British publishers and in most British newspapers. Pam Peters
(2004, -ize/-ise) relates that British National Corpus data indicates the ratio
of popularity for -ise forms to -ize forms in Britain is 3:2. The -ize forms
were introduced by Noah Webster in the USA in his American Spelling
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Book and subsequent dictionary, on the grounds that they more correctly
reflected the original Greek etymology of the -ize suffix.
DIALECTS
The British Isles is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in
the English-speaking world. Significant changes in dialect (pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary) may occur within one region. The four major
divisions are normally classified as Southern English dialects, Midlands
English dialects and Northern English dialects, and Scottish English and
the closely related dialects of Scots and Ulster Scots (varieties of Scots
spoken in Ulster). There is also Hiberno-English (English as spoken in
Ireland) and the form of English used in Wales. The various English
dialects differ in the words they have borrowed from other languages. The
Scottish and Northern dialects include many words originally borrowed
from Old Norse; the Scottish dialects include words borrowed from Scots
and Scottish Gaelic. Hiberno-English includes words derived from Irish.
There are thus many differences between the various English
dialects. These can be a major impediment to understanding between people
from different areas. However, modern communications and mass media
have reduced these differences significantly. In addition, speakers of very
different dialects may modify their pronunciation and vocabulary, towards
Standard English.
English Dialects:
1. England: English English
А. Northern English
− Northumberland (e.g. Geordie, Pitmatic);
− Durham (e.g. Mackem);
− Cumbrian;
− Yorkshire;
− Lancashire;
− Merseyside (Scouse)
В. Midlands English
East
− Norfolk;
− Cambridgeshire;
− Derbyshire;
− Nottingham;
− Lincolnshire;
− Leicestershire;
West
− Black Country (Yam Yam);
− Birmingham (Brummie);
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С. East Anglian
− Norfolk (Broad Norfolk);
D. Southern English
− Estuary English;
− Cockney (London);
− Somerset;
− Devon;
− Cornwall.
2. Scotland: Scottish English.
3. Wales: Welsh English.
4. Northern Ireland: Hiberno-English.
5. Mid Ulster English.
ENGLISH OUTSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES
American English, Canadian English, Australian English, New
Zealand English, Caribbean English, Indian English, and Pidgin English are
among the many dialects that have emerged since the period of emigration
from the British Isles during the expansion of the British Empire. Dialect
differences are not, in general, an impediment to understanding, as the dia-
lects are, for the most part, linguistically close to one other since, apart from
Pidgin, they are mainly based on Standard English. A literate, educated
English speaker will generally know many forms. Due to the wide reach of
the US media and the Internet, knowledge of American English in Britain is
more common than the reverse.
Ironically, a growing number of British English phrases have ente-
red American English in recent years. The expression “went missing” or
“gone missing” provides a case in point. In 1994, “went missing” or “gone
missing” were used just eight times in articles in the Washington Post and
New York Times in the whole of 1994. By contrast, in 2004 the expressions
were used 91 times in the same newspapers. Similarly, neither National
Public Radio nor NBC used “went missing” or “gone missing” in 1994 but
by 2004, however, NPR used one or the other 31 times; NBC, 38 times.
According to former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans, the reason
for this lies in the greater vividness and precision of some British
expressions: “Gone missing,” he says, is “more active” than “disappeared”.
Professor Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford University‘s Center for the Study
of Language and Information suggests that using British expressions
"makes you sound pragmatic, a little cynical.” The increasing reach of
British media in the United States, such as the BBC America television
channel, has also been cited as a reason for the growing fashion for British
English in the United States.
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