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Contents

Foreword and acknowledgements
Symbols used in the book

1 Background
1.0 Background: introduction
1.1 Theoretical background
1.2 Historical background
1.2.1 The emergence of English dialects
1.2.2 The spread of English
1.2.3 Possible classifications of English accents
1.3 Revision and practice
1.4 Further reading and references
1.5 Links

2 The British Isles 1: England and Wales
2.0 England and Wales: introduction
2.1 England and Wales: historical background
2.2 England and Wales: pronunciation
2.3 England and Wales: grammatical and lexical features
2.4 Wells' anecdotes
2.5 Revision and practice
2.6 Further reading and references
2.7 Links

3 The British Isles 2: Linguistic conservatism in the Celtic countries
3.1 The Celtic countries: historical background
3.2 The Celtic countries: pronunciation
3.3 The Celtic countries: grammatical and lexical features
3.4 Revision and practice
3.5 Further reading and references
3.6 Links

4 North America and/versus the southern hemisphere
4.1 Former British colonies: background
4.2 North America and the southern hemisphere: pronunciation
4.2.1 The pronunciation of eastern US English
4.2.2 The pronunciation of the linguistic south in the US
4.2.3 The pronunciation of North American English
4.2.4 The pronunciation of southern-hemisphere English
4.3 North America and the southern hemisphere: grammar and lexis
4.4 Wells' anecdotes
4.5 Revision and practice
4.6 Further reading and references
4.7 Links

5 Pidgins, creoles, Black English and other ethnic varieties
5.1 Pidgins and creoles
5.1.1 Pidgins and creoles: background
5.1.2 Pidgins and creoles: pronunciation
5.1.3 Pidgins and creoles: grammatical and lexical features
5.2 Black English
5.2.1 Black English: history
5.2.2 Black English: pronunciation
5.2.3 Black English: grammatical and lexical features
5.2.4 British Black English
5.3 Other ethnic varieties
5.4 Anecdotes
5.5 Revision and practice
5.6 Further reading and references
5.7 Links

6 RP vs. GA: Systematic and non-systematic differences
6.1 RP vs. GA: background
6.2 Systematic differences
6.2.1 RP vs. GA: vowels
6.2.2 RP vs. GA: consonants
6.3 RP vs. GA: non-systematic differences
6.4 Revision and practice
6.5 Further reading and references
6.6 Links

7 Lexical differences between British English and American English
7.1 Lexical differences: background
7.2 Lexical differences: examples
7.3 Idioms
7.4 Revision and practice
7.5 Further reading and references
7.6 Links
8 Grammar differences between British English and American English
8.1 Grammar differences: background
8.2 Typically BrE structures
8.3 Typically AmE structures
8.4 Revision and practice
8.5 Further reading and references
8.6 Links

9 Spelling differences between British English and American English
9.1 Spelling differences: background
9.2 Systematic differences in spelling
9.3 Non-systematic differences in spelling
9.4 To hyphenate or not to hyphenate
9.5 Differences in punctuation
9.6 Revision and practice
9.7 Further reading and references
9.8 Links

Pronunciation of names and technical terms
Subject index

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Foreword

This coursebook has emerged from a series of seminar handouts and my notes from various readings, which I gradually collected as teaching material to be used in the one-term elective dialectology seminar I started as an experiment at the Department of English, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, in spring 2006. It immediately turned out that my initial conception that this topic is very much in demand among the students was right: the course continued to be considerably popular in the terms to come. It soon became evident that we needed a coursebook which suited both our purposes and the circumstances we were working under: a coherent text written for a non-native audience, available in Hungary, and meant to be covered in one term (cca. 12 weeks). That was the motivation driving me to start compiling this material at the beginning of 2007. Its construction has been just as gradual as the collection of its sources: a number of draught versions have been tested in subsequent classes, whose members I owe gratitude for being the involuntary guinea pigs. In addition, special thanks should go to Kinga Földváry, who enthusiastically supplied me with sample material from the very beginning, who took up the teaching for two terms when I was not around, and who, as a consequence, found herself one fine day in the role of tester and proof-reader for this text, too. I am also grateful to my reviewers, András Cser and Patrick Honeybone, for their invaluable comments, and a whole lot of people who sent me photos to be used as illustrations in the book, kindly relinquishing copyright: (in alphabetical order) Melinda Dickerson (Mount Rushmore), Zsófia Ferencz (U.S. Capitol), Orsolya Hubert (Ireland), László Kristó (Wales), Andrea Laczay (skyscrapers in San Francisco), Dávid Palatinus (Sydney Opera House, Parliament House in Canberra), Károly Pintér (Statue of Liberty, cable car in San Francisco), Csaba Seregélyes (Canada) (and a few others, whose photos could not eventually find their way into the final version). The rest of the illustrations and maps were produced by myself.

The coursebook is supposed to be suitable for its primary target audience, advanced (especially BA) students of English, who have a pretty good command of (standard) English and some background knowledge of English pronunciation and grammatical terminology. The first half of the book surveys the major regional dialects of English, in comparison to the standard varieties. It concentrates on pronunciation differences for at least two reasons. First, the topic of the book is too wide for a single coursebook to be covered in 12 weeks, so it must be narrowed down somehow - the choice strongly reflects my own taste. Second, pronunciation is the very area where the differences are the most common and systematic. Consequently, the discussion is quite heavily loaded with phonetic terminology - the brief introduction entitled Symbols used in the book, immediately following this Foreword, is meant to clarify the interpretation of the most frequent special characters found in the text.

Then, the second half of the book takes the differences between Standard British English and Standard American English under scrutiny: besides pronunciation, we also discuss vocabulary, grammar and spelling differences in considerable detail. It needs to be pointed out, however, that the text of the book itself is written consistently according to the regularities of British English grammar and orthography.

Each chapter concludes with questions and exercises for revision and practice, a list of recommended further reading and of the references in the text, and, finally, a (not in the least exhaustive) list of electronic links, some of which may be far from academic in their content but still, they may motivate the students to do further browsing and research. At the end of the book an appendix is found entitled Pronunciation of names and technical terms (containing the expressions marked with an asterisk * in the text) followed by the Subject index (containing the boldfaced expressions), both of which are supposed to help the reader.

As can be guessed from the acknowledgements above, the book is full of illustrations: maps, drawings, photos. In most cases they are closely connected to the topic they accompany, but some of them are just there to interrupt the monotony of the text. I hope the reader will find the discussions informative, and the illustrations entertaining.

Katalin Balogné Bérces
December 2008

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