Geographical Variation of English.

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The first 200 words of this essay...

Topic: Geographical Variation

Student ID: 03912211

Name: Hu Chun-Shan

Tutor: Dr Mark Garner

Number of Words: 2800

Geographical Variation of English

Introduction

As we know, English is the global language and due to this phenomenon it has changed a lot over time, such as historical variation, situational variation and geographical variation. Only a few centuries ago, the English language comprised a collection of dialects spoken in a small island by monolinguals (people who use only one language). Nowadays, it has varieties of distinction such as pidgins and creoles, "new Englishes", and a range of differing standard and non-standard varieties that are spoken in more than sixty different countries all over the world. As a matter of fact, most people tend to associate English with different English-speaking areas. But when they consider regional varieties of English, they also have to confront the issue of dialect. The difference between accent and dialect seems relatively simple to describe. For example, accent consists of pronunciation; dialect consists of grammar; words and their meanings, and pronunciation, but it is hard to define the boundaries. (Graddol et al., 1996)

In this assignment, I will focus on the geographical