The spread of English since the late 16th century

3. How do you understand Gramley's term General English (do we have similar term for Czech)? In which ways it is useful?

• covers both StE and non-standard GenE X does not refer to traditional dialects or creoles
• two poles - highly standardized variety used for published writing or formal discourse X colloquial type including a great deal of non-standard English
  • these non-standard items may be found across the ENL world and therefore they are similar enough to be easily comprehensible
    • e.g. third person singular present tense don't, the use of ain't or multiple negation
  • these two poles share most of their grammar, vocabulary and phonology
  • there is widespread agreement on the vocabulary and the central grammatical categories

-> the local, regional or national varieties are easily comprehensible and not likely to be misunderstood (e.g. despite different pronunciation)

• for Czech we have similar term - Common Czech (obecná čeština)
  • an interdialect spoken in Bohemia and west Moravia

5. Characterize the spread of English in North America and Australia with regard to the dialectal and social status of the immigrants.

• turbulent situation in 17th century England – suppression of religious dissenters → emigration
  • up to the Civil War: new middle class, better educated than average, familiar with the emerging standard
  • with the outbreak of the Civil War: poorer, less well educated people, uprooted from rural life, became part of the urban proletarian class = less affected by the written standard, but giving up their regional varieties in favour of the new spoken urban varieties (esp. London, to become GenE)
• North America
  • early settlers were the better-educated separatists and Puritans that settled in New England, and the genteel classes that were to become planters of Virginia and the Carolinas
  • new waves of immigrants: from London, the Home Counties, the North of England, Scotland, Ulster = largely speakers of non-standard general English
• Australia
  • officers in charge of the administration – closer to StE
  • transported prisoners – lower classes, non-standard English
• the contact between the various dialects, the different environment, and different native languages English came into contact with caused changes to the language → new local standards developed and spread across the territory (North America, Australia, ...)