British English (or BrEn, BrE, BE, en-UK or en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere. The Oxford English Dictionary applies the term to English "as spoken or written in the British Isles; esp the forms of English usual in Great Britain", reserving "Hiberno-English" for the "English language as spoken and written in Ireland". Nevertheless, Hiberno-English forms part of the broad British English continuum. Others, such as the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, define it as the "English language as it spoken and written in England."
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, wee (as an adjective) is almost exclusively written by some people from some parts of northern Great Britain (and especially Scotland) or from Northern Ireland, whereas in Southern England and Wales, little is used predominantly. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English. The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken, so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English, "For many people . . . especially in England 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."
Read more about British English: History, Dialects, Standardisation
Other articles related to "english, british, british english":
... Clive Upton is professor of English language at the University of Leeds, England, specializing in dialectology and sociolinguistics ... He has acted as a consultant on British pronunciation for the English-language dictionaries published by Oxford University Press, including the Oxford English Dictionary, the Shorter Oxford ... He was also responsible for the British element of the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English (2001) ...
... Men Show is dubbed from American English, Canadian English, British English, Australian English and New Zealand English ... Rude, the American English, Canadian English, British English and Australian English cast of voices is completely different from the New Zealand English ... are then shipped to the New Zealand English for overdubbing, where the New Zealand English cast mimics the US, AUS, CAN and UK cast, matching the existing lip movements ...
... phallus) and tail-end trunk, in American English, particularly when describing large buttocks "junk in the trunk" apple, referring to the similar shape of the fruit, derived from the 1970s ... trouserless butt bum – in British English, used frequently in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other English speaking ... Butte, a geographical mound, known since 1805 in American English, from (Old) French butte "mound, knoll") and orbs – shape-metaphors ...
... As with English around the world, the English language as used in the United Kingdom is governed by convention rather than formal code there is no ... with time words are freely borrowed from other languages and other strains of English, and neologisms are frequent ... the form of language spoken in London and the East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education within ...
... In English-speaking society, the most universally accepted forms of address to another person, known or unknown, and regardless of station, are "Sir" (to men) and "Madam", sometimes shortened to "Ma'am", (to women) ... Bloke (Man, British and Australian English) Blood or Blud derived from variants blood clot and bludclot, Jamaican slang for a sanitary towel Boo, (urban slang) significant other ... Buddy or Bud ("Buddy" is especially common in Newfoundland English) B'y Newfoundland pronunciation of "Boy", used as a general form of address primarily to a male but now increasingly to females ...
Famous quotes containing the words english and/or british:
“So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The British tourist is always happy abroad as long as the natives are waiters.”
—Robert Morley (1908–1992)