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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Standard vs. 'proper' English
Question:
Is ''proper'' English really proper at all? The Brits love to view their version of the language as ''standard'' but if they changed it, then it is not standard at all. Whose pronunciation has changed the most -- the British or the American?

Noah Webster said that the snobbery of British aristocracy changed the language in England. (Wikipedia). But I don't know if this was just his patriotism speaking or if it was the truth, or when this took place. Obviously he made this comment in the first few decades of our nation's history. Webster gave us Americans spellings such as center, color, neighbor, and so on.

From a Hungarian colleague I have learned that British English has changed more in vocabulary then American English. This is determined by viewing writings by authors of the same era on both sides of the Atlantic, and comparing it with current usage.

Thank you,
- Steve

Reply:
Hi, Steve,

Dr. Pyatt makes good points and is basically right, I think. The standard *is* what educated people speak, and varies quite a bit from place to place. 'Proper' language, on the other hand, tends to be what wealthy &/or powerful people speak (that used to be = educated people, approximately) in a certain locale.

There is a somewhat different take on this issue, although it is somewhat a different issue. There are some varieties of any language which are *understandable* to a wider range of different speakers than others (example from English: Mid-Western American English). These varieties tend to be, whether from leveling of differences or a lower rate of adding changes, those varieties with, in some sense, words (for example) that might be viewed as a sort of base for deriving pronunciations in other varieties. Thus, Mid-Western American English speakers generally pronounce nearly all the r's in words, independent of their position in the word. Many other varieties (Boston, New York, 'Southern' English, London English, etc.) can be viewed as having *added* a sort of rule to (in many cases, optionally) not pronounce r's in some positions (eg, at the end of a syllable). To Midwesterners, this tends to make such speakers more difficult for them to understand than vice versa, because the relatively r-less speakers are, at least unconsciously, aware of the relation of their own r-lessness to other varieties which have r's in the same words, or have them more frequently. As I tried to indicate, this does not mean that MWAE has changed less, necessarily, from, say, Middle English than, say, London English or Boston English has. It is just a reflection of the current state of both varieties with respect to a certain phenomenon. Of course, this does not explain everything, since each variety has lots of words and expressions that the other one lacks, for example.

I hope this is of some help.

Jim

James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México

Reply From: James L Fidelholtz    click here to access email
Date: Oct-20-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Standard vs. 'proper' English Elizabeth J Pyatt    (Oct-20-2009)
  2. Re: Standard vs. 'proper' English Suzette Haden Elgin    (Oct-20-2009)
  3. Re: Standard vs. 'proper' English Anthea Fraser Gupta    (Oct-21-2009)
  4. Re: Standard vs. 'proper' English Joseph F Foster    (Oct-20-2009)
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