Book contents
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor’s Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Ancient World
- Part II The Pre-Modern World
- Part III The Modern World: Continuing Traditions
- 15 China from c. 1700
- 16 Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese from c. 1800
- 17 Turkish and Persian from c. 1700
- 18 South Asia from c. 1750
- 19 Arabic from c. 1800
- 20 Modern Hebrew
- 21 The Slavic and Baltic Languages
- 22 The Germanic Languages Other than English from c. 1700
- 23 Standard Varieties of English from c. 1700
- 24 Regional Varieties of English
- 25 The Romance Languages from c. 1700
- Part IV The Modern World: Missionary and Subsequent Traditions
- Appendix 1 The Language Varieties
- Appendix 2 The Lexicographers
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index
24 - Regional Varieties of English
from Part III - The Modern World: Continuing Traditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2019
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor’s Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Ancient World
- Part II The Pre-Modern World
- Part III The Modern World: Continuing Traditions
- 15 China from c. 1700
- 16 Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese from c. 1800
- 17 Turkish and Persian from c. 1700
- 18 South Asia from c. 1750
- 19 Arabic from c. 1800
- 20 Modern Hebrew
- 21 The Slavic and Baltic Languages
- 22 The Germanic Languages Other than English from c. 1700
- 23 Standard Varieties of English from c. 1700
- 24 Regional Varieties of English
- 25 The Romance Languages from c. 1700
- Part IV The Modern World: Missionary and Subsequent Traditions
- Appendix 1 The Language Varieties
- Appendix 2 The Lexicographers
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index
Summary
For centuries now, English has been the language of villages and nations throughout the world, and it varies, we say, according to something we call ‘region’, though we could hardly come up with a vaguer term. The most familiar dictionaries of English describe a standard variety, though different regions may develop different standards over time – Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language accounts for Standard American English, while The Macquarie Dictionary does the same for Standard Australian English, and so on (for both, see Chapter 23). Some dictionaries of regional English represent a nation’s distinctive lexical features, while others represent local features, with dictionaries of every imaginable scope in between those extremes. ‘No nation is of a piece’, writes F. G. Cassidy – editor of both the Dictionary of American Regional English and the Dictionary of Jamaican English – ‘It is no accident therefore that language, which reflects conditions in the society, is nowhere all of a piece either.’ Regional dictionaries assemble non-standard pieces of English into complex pictures of regional language, history, and culture.
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- The Cambridge World History of Lexicography , pp. 509 - 529Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019