Practical Course of English [antikvár]

INTRODUCTORY TEXT Part IV of the book "Practical Course of English" includes six texts by American authors. Therefore we find it advisable to preface the book with an introductory text outlining somé basic differences between the British and the American variants of English. standard american speech and writing In writing, there is an American Literary Standard, which so closely resembles English Literary Standard as to establish no basic, no important difference. But is there, in American speech, a received standard? Although there is, in the United States, no speech that can be classified as Received Standard with the same feeling of certainty as Public School 1 speech can be said to be Received Standard in England, yet the speech of the cultured elements of American society is as close to being a Received Standard as can be expected in so vast and many-peopled a land as the United States. That the criterion is neither so severe nor so rigid as that of English Received Standard does not make it any the less a genuine criterion. But in America even more than in Great Britain, the speakers of Modified Standard * are more numerous than the speakers of Received Standard. (Compiled from "Usage and Abusage" by Eric Partridge) differences between the british and the american variants of english Differences in pronunciation between British English and American English are numerous though nearly all the British peculiarities have their counterpart in one section or another of the United States. King's English gives a broad [a:] sound to words like bath and dance, but so do several New England varieties. The fiat [ae] sound in bath and dance is common in General American. The sound given by most Englishmen to words containingso-called "short" [o] (pot, lot) is more like a shorten* Modified Standard is Standard English that differs from Received, considered to be the best, mainly in pronunciation.