Реферат: Lexicology. Different dialects and accents of English

Preface

Every language allowsdifferent kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the mostobvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form ofthe standard national language and others. It is the national language of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>England</st1:place></st1:country-region> proper,the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>,<st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>,<st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>New Zealand</st1:place></st1:country-region>and some provinces of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>.It is the official language of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Wales</st1:place></st1:country-region>,<st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Scotland</st1:place></st1:country-region>,in <st1:place w:st=«on»>Gibraltar</st1:place> and on the <st1:place w:st=«on»><st1:PlaceType w:st=«on»>island</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName w:st=«on»>Malta</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>.Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national languageand local dialects. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standardliterary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the soundsystem, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms.

            StandardEnglish – the official language of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> taught at schools anduniversities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken byeducated people may be defined as that form of English which is current andliterary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever Englishis spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or dialectisms belonging to various local dialects. Localdialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts andhaving no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literaryform are called variants. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under thepressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivatedby radio, television and cinema.

The differences betweenthe English language as spoken in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region> areimmediately noticeable in the field of phonetics. However these distinctionsare confined to the articulatory-acousticcharacteristics of some phonemes, to some differences in the use of others andto the differences in the rhythm and intonation of speech. The few phonemescharacteristic of American pronunciation and alien to British literary normscan as a rule be observed in British dialects.

<span Comic Sans MS";mso-bidi-font-family:«Times New Roman»; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-weight:normal">AMERICAN ENGLISH

The variety of Englishspoken in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>has received the name of American English.The term variant orvariety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannotbe called a dia­lect although it is a regional variety, because it has aliterary normalized form called Standard American, whereas by definition givenabove a dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors, like H. L.Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own.From the lexical point of view one shall have to deal only with a heterogeneousset of Americanisms.

An Americanism may bedefined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language asspoken in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>.E.g. cookie 'a biscuit'; frame house 'a house consisting of askeleton of timber, with boards or shingles laid on'; frame-up 'a stagedor preconcerted law case'; guess 'think'; store'shop'.

A general andcomprehensive description of the American variant is given in Professor Shweitzer's monograph. An important aspect of his treatmentis the distinction made between americanismsbelonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang.The differ­ence between the American and British literary norm is notsystematic.

The American variant ofthe English language differs from British English in pronunciation, some minorfeatures of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will dealwith the latter.1 Our treat­ment will be mainly diachronic.

Speaking about thehistoric causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that AmericanEnglish is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time ofthe first settlements, that is on the Eng­lish of the 17th century. The firstcolonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonizers were contemporariesof Shakespeare, Spenser and Mil­ton. Words which have died out in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, orchanged their meaning may survive in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Thus, I guess was usedby Chaucer for I think. For more than three centuries the Americanvocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and, wasinfluenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words forthe unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bull-frog 'a large frog', moose(the American elk), oppossum, raccoon(an American animal related to the bears), for animals; and corn, hickory,etc. for plants. They also had to find names for the new conditions of economiclife: back-country 'districts not yet thickly populated', back-settlement,backwoods 'the forest beyond the cleared country', backwoodsman 'adweller in the backwoods'.

The opposition of anytwo lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic andheuristic value because it furnishes ample data for observing the influence ofextra-linguistic factors upon the vocabu­lary. American political vocabularyshows this point very definitely: absentee voting 'voting by mail', darkhorse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', togerrymander 'to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce afavorable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer'an adept of decisive meas­ures'.

Many of the foreignelements borrowed into American English from the Indian dialects or from Spanishpenetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several otherlanguages, Russian not excluded, and so became international. They are: canoe,moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe ofpeace, pale-face and the. like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanishborrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are veryfamiliar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force ofhabit that linguists still include these words among the specific features ofAmerican English.

As to the toponyms, for instance, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan,Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns,rivers and states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in allcoun­tries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names tracesof the earlier inhabitants of the land in question.

Another big group of peculiaritiesas compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specificfeatures of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [ae] for  in ask,dance, path, etc., or Ie] for [ei] in made, day and some other.

The American spelling isin some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects justdifferent. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armorand humor are the American variants of armourand humour. Althostands for although and thru for through. The table belowillustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive. Fora more complete treatment the reader is referred to the monograph by A. D.Schweitzer:

<span Franklin Gothic Medium",«sans-serif»; mso-bidi-font-family:«Times New Roman»;font-weight:normal;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">British spelling<span Franklin Gothic Medium",«sans-serif»; mso-bidi-font-family:«Times New Roman»;font-weight:normal;mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">                                   <span Franklin Gothic Medium",«sans-serif»;mso-bidi-font-family: «Times New Roman»;font-weight:normal;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Americanspelling

offence                                                offense

cosy                                                     cozy

practice                                               practise

thralldom                                            thralldom

jewellery                                             jewelery

traveling                                              traveling

In the course of timewith the development of the modern means of communication the lexicaldifferences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanismspenetrate into Standard English and Britishisms cometo be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific inmanuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the <st1:place w:st=«on»>Atlantic</st1:place> or substituted by terms formerly considered asspecifically British. It was, for instance, customary to contrast the Englishword autumn with the American fall. In reality both words areused in both countries, only autumn is somewhat more elevated, while inEngland the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in somedialects and surviving in set expressions: spring and fall, the fall of theyear are still in fairly common use.

        Cinema and TV are probably the mostimportant channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> andother languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and theFrench speak of Vautomatisation. Theinfluence of American publicity is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is howthe British term wireless is replaced by the Americanism radio.The jargon of American film-advertising makes its way into British usage; i.e. ofall time (in «the greatest film of all time»). The phrase is nowfirmly established as standard vocabulary and applied to subjects other thanfilms.

The personal visits ofwriters and scholars to the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.

The existing cases ofdifference between the two variants, are con­veniently classified into:

1) Cases where there areno equivalents in British English: drive-in a cinema where you can seethe film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorists buy thingsstaying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch used as a summer residencefor holiday-makers from the cities'. The noun dude was originally acontemptuous nickname given by the inhabitants of the Western states to thoseof the Eastern states. Now there is no contempt intended in the word dude.It simply means 'a person who pays his way on a far ranch or camp'.

2) Cases where differentwords are used for the same denotatum, such as can,candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets,pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorryin England.

3) Cases where thesemantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement,for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor andthe like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. The derived meaningis in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>England</st1:place></st1:country-region>'the footway at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalkfor this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.

4) Cases where otherwiseequivalent words are different in distribu­tion. The verb ride inStandard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle,more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In Amer­ican English combinationslike a ride on the train to ride in a boat are .quite usual.

5) It sometimes happensthat the same word is used in American Eng­lish with some difference inemotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, forexample, is a much milder expression of disapproval in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>England</st1:place></st1:country-region> than inthe States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politicianin <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>England</st1:place></st1:country-region>means 'someone in polities', and is derogatory in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Professor Shweitzer, pays special attention to phenomena dif­feringin social norms of usage. E.g. balance in its lexico-semanticvari­ant 'the remainder of anything' is substandard in British English andquite literary in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>America</st1:place></st1:country-region>.

6) Last but not least,there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-tablewhich occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

This question of differentfrequency distribution is also of paramount importance if we wish toinvestigate the morphological peculiarities of the American variant. Practicallyspeaking the same patterns and means of word-formation are used in coiningneologisms in both variants. Only the frequency ob­served in both cases may bedifferent. Some of the suffixes more frequently used in American English are: -ее(draftee n'a young man about to beenlisted'), -ette — tambourmajorette'one of the girl drummers in front of a procession'), -domand -ster, as in roadster 'motor-carfor long journeys by road' or gangsterdom.

American slang usesalongside the traditional ones also a few specific models, such as verbstem-1- -er+adverb stem +--er:e.g. opener-upper 'the first item on the programme'and winder-upper 'the last item', respectively. It also possesses somespecific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary Colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie/sy,as in coppo 'police­man', fatso 'a fatman', bossaroo 'boss', chapsie'fellow'.

The trend to shortenwords and to use initial abbreviations is even more pronounced than in theBritish variant. New coinages are incessant­ly introduced in advertisements, inthe press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by thenewest creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30's, makes one of hischaracters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbreviations: G.F.and P. F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery.

<span Times New Roman",«serif»;font-style:normal;mso-bidi-font-style: italic">«What about Roy Stewart?» asked the man in bed.

<span Times New Roman",«serif»;font-style:normal;mso-bidi-font-style: italic">«Oh, he's the fella I was telling youabout,» said Miss Lyons. «He's my G. F B. F»

<span Times New Roman",«serif»;font-style:normal;mso-bidi-font-style: italic">«Maybe I'm a D.F. not to know, but would yoatell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?»                              

<span Times New Roman",«serif»;font-style:normal;mso-bidi-font-style: italic">«Well, you are dumb, aren't you?» said Miss Lyons. «A G.F.,that's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knewthat»

The phrases boyfriend and girl friend, now widely used everywhere, originated inthe <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>.So it is an Americanism in the wider meaning of the term, i.e. an Americanism«by right of birth», whereas in the above definition it was definedAmericanism synchronically as lexical units peculiar to the English language asspoken in the USA. Particularly common in American English are verbs with thehanging postpositive. They say that in <st1:City w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Hollywood</st1:place></st1:City>you never meet a man: you meet up with him, you do not studya subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructionsserve to add a new meaning.

With words possessingseveral structural variants it may happen that some are more frequent in onecountry and the others in another. Thus, amid and toward, forexample, are more often used in the States and amidst and towardsin <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>.    

A well-known humourist G. Mikes goes as far as to say: «It wasdecid­ed almost two hundred years ago that English should be the languagespoken in the <st1:country-region w:st=»on"><st1:place w:st=«on»>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out." Inhis book «How to Scrape Skies» he gives numerous examples toillustrate this proposition: «You must be extreme­ly careful concerningthe names of certain articles. If you ask for sus­penders in a man's shop, youreceive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair oftrousers and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look. Ithas to be mentioned that although a lift is called an elevator in the <st1:country-region w:st=»on"><st1:place w:st=«on»>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>,when hitch-hiking, you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift.

There is some confusion about the word flat. A flat in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>America</st1:place></st1:country-region> iscalled an apartment; what they call a flat is a puncture in your tyre (or as they spell it, tire). Consequently the notice: flats fixeddoes not indi­cate an estate agent where they are going to fix you up with aflat, but a garage where they are equipped to mend a puncture." Disputingthe common statement that there is no such thing as the American nation, hesays: «They do indeed exist. They have produced the American constitution, the American way oflife, the comic strips in their newspapers: .they have their national game,baseball —which is cricket played with a strong American accent — and they havea national language, entirely their own.»

<span Times New Roman",«serif»">This is of course anexaggeration, but a very significant one. It con­firms the fact that there is adifference between the two variants to be reckoned with. Although notsufficiently great to warrant American Eng­lish the status of an independentlanguage, it is considerable enough to make a mixture of variants soundunnatural, so that students of English should be warned against this danger.

<span Times New Roman",«serif»">Local Dialects in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>

The English language inthe <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>is characterized by relative uniformity throughout the country. One can travelthree thousand miles without encountering any but the slightest dialectdifferences. Nevertheless, regional variations in speech undoubtedly exist andthey have been observed and recorded by a number of investigators. Thefollowing three major belts of dialects have so far been identified, each withits own characteristic features: Northern, Midland and South­ern, Midland beingin turn divided into <st1:place w:st=«on»>North Midland</st1:place> and <st1:place w:st=«on»>South Mid­land</st1:place>.

The differences inpronunciation between American dialects are most apparent, but they seldominterfere with understanding. Distinctions in grammar are scarce. Thedifferences in vocabulary are rather numer­ous, but they are easy to pick up.

Cf., e.g., <st1:place w:st=«on»>Eastern New England</st1:place>sour-milk cheese, Inland NorthernDutch cheese, <st1:City w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>New York City</st1:place></st1:City>potcheese for Standard American/cottagecheese (творог).

The American linguist F.Emerson maintains that American Eng­lish had not had time to break up intowidely diverse dialects and he believes that in the course of time the Americandialects might finally become nearly as distinct as the dialects in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. He iscertainly great­ly mistaken. In modern times dialect divergence cannotincrease. On the contrary, in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>, as elsewhere, thenational language is tending to wipe out the dialect distinctions and to becomestill more uniform.

<span Times New Roman",«serif»">Comparisonof the dialect differences in the <st1:place w:st=«on»>British Isles</st1:place>and in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>reveals that not only are they less numerous and far less marked in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>, but thatthe very nature of the local distinctions is different. What is usually knownas American dialects is closer in nature to region­al variants of the literarylanguage. The problem of discriminating between literary and dialect speechpatterns in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>is much more complicated than in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Many American linguistspoint out that American English differs from British English in having no one locality whose speech patterns havecome to be recognized as the model for the rest of the country.

<span Comic Sans MS";mso-bidi-font-family:«Times New Roman»; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;font-weight:normal">CANADIAN, AUSTRALIAN AND INDIANVARIANTS

It should of course benoted that the American English is not the only existing variant. There areseveral other variants where difference from the British standard isnormalized. Besides the Irish and Scottish vari­ants that have been mentionedin the preceding paragraph, there are Aus­tralian English, Canadian English, IndianEnglish. Each of these has de­veloped a literature of its own, and ischaracterized by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. CanadianEnglish is influenced both by British and American Eng­lish but it also hassome specific features of its own. Specifically Cana­dian words are called Canadianisms. They are not very frequent outside <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>, except shack'a hut' and to fathom out 'to explain'.

The vocabulary of allthe variants is characterized by a high percent­age of borrowings from thelanguage of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonizerscame. Many of them denote some spe­cific realia ofthe new country: local animals, plants or weather condi­tions, new socialrelations, new trades and conditions of labour. Thelocal words for new not ions penetrate into the English language and later onmay become international, if they are of sufficient interest and importance forpeople speaking other languages. The term international w огd s is used to denote words borrowed from one language into sev­eralothers simultaneously or at short intervals one after another. Internationalwords coming through the English of India are for in­stance: bungalow n,jute n, khaki adj, mango n, nabobn, pyjamas, sahib, sari.

Similar examples, thoughperhaps fewer in number, such as boome­rang, dingo, kangaroo are alladopted into the English language through its Australian variant. They denotethe new phenomena found by Eng­lish immigrants on the new continent. A highpercentage of words bor­rowed from the native inhabitants of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region> willbe noticed in the so­norous Australian place names.

Otherwise an ample usewas made of English lexical material. An intense development of cattle breedingin new conditions necessitated the creation of an adequate terminology. It isnatural therefore that nouns like stock, bullock or land find anew life on Australian soil: stockman 'herdsman', stockyard,stock-keeper 'the owner of the cattle'; bullock v means 'to workhard', bullocky dray is a dray drivenby bullocks; an inlander is a stock-keeperdriving his stock from one pasture to another, overland v is 'to drivecattle over long distances'; to punch a cow 'to conduct a team of oxen';a puncher 'the man who conducts a team of oxen'; tucker-bag 'thebag with provision'.

The differencesdescribed in the present chapter do not undermine our understanding of theEnglish vocabulary as a balanced system. It has been noticed by a number oflinguists that the British attitude to this phenomenon is somewhat peculiar.When anyone other than an Englishman uses English, the natives of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>,often half-consciously, perhaps, feel that they have a special right tocriticize his usage because it is «their» language. It is, however,unreasonable with respect to people in the VfiitedStates, Canada, <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>and some other areas for whom English is their mother-tongue. Those who thinkthat the Ameri­cans must look to the British for a standard are wrong and, viceversa, it is not for the American to pretend that English in <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Great Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>is inferior to the English he speaks. At present there is no single«correct» English and the American, Canadian and Australian Englishhave devel­oped standards of their own.

<span Times New Roman",«serif»; font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none"><span Times New Roman",«serif»; font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;text-underline:none">

Conclusion

I. English is the nationallanguage of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>England</st1:place></st1:country-region>proper, the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>,<st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>and some provinces of <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>.It was also at different times imposed on the inhabitants of the former andpresent British colonies and. protectorates as well as other Britain- andUS-dominated territories, where the population has always stuck to its ownmother tongue.

<span Times New Roman",«serif»">II. British English, AmericanEnglish and Australian English are variants of the same language, because theyserve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural pecularities,especially morphology, syntax and word-formation, as well as their word-stockand phonetic system are essentially the same. American and Australian standardsare slight modifications of the norms accepted in the <st1:place w:st=«on»>British Isles</st1:place>. The status of Canadian English 'has not yet beenestablished.        

III. The main lexicaldifferences between the variants are caused by the lack of equivalent lexicalunits in one of them, divergences in the semantic structures of polysemantic words and peculiarities of usage of some wordson different territories.

IV. The British localdialects can be traced back to Old English dia­lects. Numerous and distinct,they are characterized by phonemic and structural peculiarities. The localdialects are being gradually replaced by regional variants of the literarylanguage, i. e. by a literary standard with a proportionof local dialect features.                              

V. The so-called localdialects in the <st1:place w:st=«on»>British Isles</st1:place> and in the <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> are usedonly by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication.In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, lessconspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.        

VI. Local variations inthe <st1:country-region w:st=«on»><st1:place w:st=«on»>USA</st1:place></st1:country-region>are relatively small. What is called by tradition American dialects is closerin nature to regional variants of the national literary language.