SCHOOL 2077 Nomination SEARCHERS Students Alina Berezina Anastasiya

SCHOOL # 2077 • Nomination SEARCHERS • Students Alina Berezina Anastasiya Pazukhina • Teacher Olga Tasenyuk, ELT of HC Moscow 2014

«POPULARITY AND VARITIES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. AMERICAN VARIANT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE»

Aims • • finding out why English is so popular and why it has numerous variants gaining an understanding of peculiarities of American English and grounding the differences between British and American English Objectives • to consider geographical spreading of the English language and the reasons of its popularity • to analyze differences between British and American variants of English • to determine which of the two variants is more conservative

The Roots of the English Language • The 5 th century: the Anglo-Saxon tribes came to the British Isles and brought their language. English rose from it, it was called Old English. • Before it – Celtic and Latin had coexisted.

Historic events and Three periods in the history of English • The introductory of Christianity • The substitution of the Latin alphabet • The Anglo-Saxon Invasion • The Scandinavian Invasion • The Norman Conquest • The introduction of printing • The Old English period from the 5 th until the 11 th cent. • The Middle English period from the 11 th until the 15 th cent. • The New English period from the 15 th century up to now 70 % - borrowings 30% - OE words

The Expansion of English The first reason – the beginning (1853) and the growth of the • • • British Empire 1603 – Scotland Ireland 1620 – the first English settlers in America, the colonization of the New World The 18 th century – Canada, India, Australia “The sun never sets on the British Empire” Towards the beginning of the 20 th century the British Empire territory – 30 mln sq km population – 500 mln people The second reason – the growing economic and cultural influence of the USA and its status as a global super state since World War II.

Modern English-speaking World It is the main language in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, but it is also the main language in many countries of Africa and the Caribbean, on the islands of the Pacific, Indian and the Atlantic oceans: Fiji, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malta, Botswana, Cameroon, Dominica, the Federal states of Micronesia, the Marshal Islands, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leona, the Solomon Islands, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, South and West Africa. English is “semi-official” in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Malaysia, Тhe Arab Emirates and Israel.

Popularity of the English Language • English is the most taught and the most studied language in the world. • English, precisely – American English is turning into universal global language. • Today milliards of people in the whole world speak English on this or that level. • Nowadays the English language is the language of international communication; it is the language of up -to-date global economy; it is the language of the advanced science and high technologies. English is the universal language of communications – from the international language of aviation and tourism to the language of e-mail, the Internet and computer language.

Variants of English The following varieties of the English language are distinguished: British, American, Australian, Canadian, Caribbean, East African, Indian, Irish, New Zealand, Scottish, South African, Welsh and West African.

American variety of the English language The distinctive peculiarities of American and British varieties of the English language are especially seen in the areas of semantics, spelling, pronunciation and grammar. Semantics. Type I: same objects, different names (sweets – candy) Type II: same word, different meanings (American/English “false friends”: chips – fries; crisps – chips) Spelling. Some of differences affect individual words; some of them involve particular letter sequences, they are regular and predictable (our-or, tre-ter, nce-nse, l-ll) Pronunciation. Sounds [a: ]-[э]; [o]-[a]; [ju: ]-[u]; r-colouring; nasalization of the vowels. Different patterns in stress and intonation (the latter are less “rich”; high-low tunes are “smoothed”) Grammar. Forms of the past tense and past participle; subject-verb agreement; use of the Present Perfect Tense; preference to “old” synthetic forms

Conservatism of American variety of English Most of the peculiarities of American pronunciation, spelling, semantics and grammar are not innovations, but rather preserved features of British English of the 17 -th and 18 -th centuries. The basis of American variant is the language which was brought to America by the first settlers on the ship “Mayflower” in 1620. A lot of processes, which were taking place in the development of the English language, had not been completed yet. The settlers were simple, ordinary, badly educated people. They were very far from science and tendencies of the development of the language. That is why the Americans speak English which has not undergone all changes of the third period and remained at the level of the 17 -th century. It concerns pronunciation of the vowels, differences in spelling and grammar, their preference to the old synthetic forms, some old forms of participle II.

Difficulties we faced Use of this work • The level of our knowledge of English • Work with dictionaries of different types • Work with referential and scientific literature in both languages • Presentation of stages of the project at the lessons • Giving information to our students about things they have never heard before • “Up-grading” the level of our English • Experiencing the jobs of translators, researches and linguists

To sum up • • • We have considered geographical spreading of the English language across the world and grounded the reasons why so many countries use this language. We have analyzed all found information in which areas there are more differences between British and American varieties of English and have systematized this information. We have concluded that American English is more archaic, conservative and is behind British English in its development; but at the same time it easily accepts new words of emigrants. • We carried out the aim – we have gained an understanding of differences between American English and British English; analyzed and grounded these differences.

The main conclusion We realized the importance of learning English. Not knowing it may become a very serious obstacle to social adaptation and a person’s development in our new global world. Global English is gradually, and very fast, becoming the most spreading language in the world, and will probably be the second language of the mankind very soon.

Materials Used • • M. Benson, E. Benson, R. Ilson. The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English. – M. : The Russian Language, 1990. M. Goldenkov. Cool English. – Minsk: Galaxias, 1996. A. S. Hornby. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. – Oxford. : OUP, 1995. A. Kunin. English – Russian Phraseological Dictionary. M. : State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries, 1956. Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners. – Oxford: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2006. A. I. Smirnitsky. Lectures on the History of English. – M. : “Dobrosvet”, 2006. http: //miresperanto. narod. ru

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