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The Cambridge History of the English Language is the first multi-volume work to provide a full account of the history of English. Its authoritative coverage extends from areas of central linguistic interest and concern to more specialised topics such as personal names and place names. The volumes dealing with earlier periods are chronologically based, whilst those dealing with more recent periods are geographically based, thus reflecting the spread of English over the last 300 years. Volume 5 looks at the dialects of England since 1776, the historical development of English in the former Celtic-speaking countries of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and at varieties of English in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. This unique volume will be welcomed by all those interested in the spread of English around the world.
This introductory chapter provides overview of the book and the subsequent chapters. The subsequent chapters give an account of the history and development of a number of distinct and highly diversified varieties of English those varieties in varying degrees are recognisably different from one another and from standard British and standard American English. In Wales and Ireland the retreat of the mother-tongue Celtic languages has been less dramatic but has followed the same general pattern. In each case an originally monolingual community, for social and political reasons, gradually acquired a second language, namely English, for commercial, administrative and other business. In due course the retreat of Welsh and Irish reached a point where the number of monolingual English speakers exceeded the number of bilingual speakers. The transported Englishes of three of the former British colonies, namely South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, were, to begin with, those of 'emigrant communities speaking several different dialects'.
Barry Tomalin, presenter of BBC English by Radio's weekly magazine Speaking of English, recently raised some grammatical issues with DR ROBERT BURCHFIELD, Editor of the Supplement of the Oxford English Dictionary.
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