Научно-практическая работа по теме: «Британские фестивали»

МУНИЦИПАЛЬНОЕ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ

«СРЕДНЯЯ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНАЯ ШКОЛА № 4»

Научно-практическая работа

по теме:

«Британские фестивали»

Работу выполнили:

учащиеся 9-а класса

Кудрявцева Яна

Башкова Полина

Научный руководитель:

учитель английского языка

Шаповалова Елена Борисовна

г. Мытищи

2011 г.

Сontents

Introduction.

British and American people speak the same language – right? Wrong. Although they both speak English, there is an increasing number of differences between the two varieties of the English language.

The British author George Bernard Show once said: “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.” He meant that, although they speak the same language, people from England and people from America sometimes have troubles understanding each other. Words in British English and American English sometimes differ in spelling, pronunciation, meaning or usage.

The aim of this work is to study the differences of the American and the British varieties of the English language, and the origin of these differences. This aim is concretized by the following tasks:

• to study the state of this problem in scientific literature;
• to give the differences of the two varieties of the English language.

So the object of the study is the English language and the subjects of this study are the differences of American and British English.

First Americans

Indians were the first Americans or "native Americans" as they prefer to call themselves. They populated North America long before the continent was settled by Europeans. More than 12 thousand years ago long before Columbus came to the New World they entered North America by crossing a narrow strip of land that once connected Alaska and Siberia. Today this place is called the Bering Strait.

Some of these people remained in North America, while others kept on moving farther south to Central and South America. The migrants entered a new world in which there were no people at all. But there were many animals to hunt, and there were forests, where nuts, roots and berries could be gathered.

When Columbus arrived there in the fifteenth century there were perhaps 10 million people in North America alone. They were the people that Columbus called "Indians" as he believed that he had reached the East Indies.

These people belonged to quite different cultures and spoke a variety of languages. There are at least 200 separate Indian languages in North America, each with its own grammar and vocabulary, and none is related in any way to English or any other European language.

New England

When people speak of the first British colonies in North America they often use the words New England, Pilgrims, Mayflower, Thanksgiving, the North, the South etc. Each of these words symbolizes a certain period of American history.

Beginning in the 1600s, the British began to settle the eastern part of North America, which is now known as New England. By the end of the seventeenth century English colonies had been planted practically everywhere along the American coast. By the time of the American Revolution (1776), the culture of the American colonists (their religion, language, government) was thoroughly British — with an American "twist". And the British culture was the foundation on which America was built. According to their ways all the British Colonies could be grouped into New England Colonies, Middle Colonies and Southern Colonies.

Pilgrims

They were members of the band of English Puritans, who in 1620 founded one of the most famous British settlements in America — Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts Bay. These settlers, led by William Bradford, had left their home in England and come to America in search of religious freedom. After a long, hard voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, their ship, the Mayflower, finally reached land. In November the Pilgrims sailed into Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts to start their new life. They arrived there when it was too late to plant crops and their first winter was full of hardship. Although many people died, the Pilgrim settlement survived the winter because of help from Indians who lived nearby. Two Indians, Samoset and Squanto, who appeared out of the blue and could speak English, taught them about corn and showed them where to fish. So in spring the Pilgrims planted seeds and all summer long they worked on their farms and prayed for good crops. When fall came, they had a very good harvest with plenty of food for the winter. In addition the men went hunting in the woods and shot wild turkey. In November, when the crops were harvested, the Pilgrims gave thanks to God at a feast to which they invited their friendly Indians to enjoy it with them.

By 1640, there were 35,000 English settlers in North America.

In memory of that happy occasion Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day every year. Families and friends get together for a big feast to eat tasty food and to give thanks for all good things. The meal usually includes roast turkey with stuffing and gravy, a sweet sauce made of cranberries, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.

American English.

The English language in America (AE) has been influenced by American Indian languages and by all the ethnic groups that have emigrated to the United States over the years.

The term “americanism” was first used by John Witherspoon, the president of Princelot University, in 1781. It designates a word or combination of words which taken into the English language in the United States, has not gained acceptance in England, or, if accepted, has retained its sense of foreignness: and a word or combination of words which becoming archaic in England, has continued in good usage in the United States.

The first class is the largest and has the longest history. The earliest settlers in Virginia and New England, confronted by plants and animals that were unfamiliar for them, either borrowed the Indian names or invented names of their own. Examples are afforded by raccoon (енот), chinkapin (каштан карликовый), opossum (опоссум, сумчатая крыса), squash (кабачок, тыква), woodchuck (сурок североамериканский) among Indian words and by bullfrog (лягушка-бык), catbird (дрозд американский) and liveoak (дуб виргинский) among inventions. Many other words came in as pioneers gained familiarity with the Indian life. Such words as hominy (дробленая кукуруза, мамалыга), moccasin (мокасин), pone (кукурузная лепешка)and succotash (сакоташ, блюдо из зеленой кукурузы, бобов и соленой свинины) remain everyday Americanisms.

The archaism, of course, showed themselves slowly. They had to go out of use in England before their survival in America was noticeable. But by the beginning of the 18th century there was already a considerable body of them and all through that century they increased. The English language in Great Britain (BE), was changing rapidly, but in America it was holding to its old forms. There was very little fresh emigration to the colonies, and their own people seldom visited England. Thus by the end of the century “I guess" was already an Americanism,  though it had been in almost universal use in England in Shakespeare's day.

American English borrowed words from the non-English settlers, and developed many new words of its own. The native coinages were large in number, and full of boldness and novelty. To this period belong, for example, backwoods (глушь, необжитое место, захолустье), hoecake (кукурузная лепешка), half-breed (метис, полукровка), hired-girl (амер. работница на ферме), spelling bee (амер. конкурс на лучшее правописание), moss-back (амер. разг. южанин, скрывающийся от службы в армии вo время гражданской войны в Америке), stamping-ground (место водопоя, пастбище; амер. разг. часто посещаемое место). These words were all made of the common materials of English, but there was something in them that was redolent of a pioneer people and a new world. A number of important words, in daily use, began to show different meanings in England and America. Some familiar examples are store, rock, lumber and corn. What Englishmen call a shop was called a store by Americans as early as 1770, and long before that time corn, in American, had come to signify, not grains in general, but only maize. The use of rock to designate any stone, however small, goes back still further, and so does the use of lumber for timber. Many of these differences were produced by changes in English usage. Thus cracker, in England, once meant precisely what it now means in the United States. When the English abandoned it for biscuit the Americans stuck to cracker, and used biscuit to designate something else. Also, shoe came to be substituted in America for the English boot.

The American dialect of English was firmly established by the time the Republic was well started, and in the half-century following it departed more and more from standard English. The settlement of the West, by taking large numbers of young men beyond the pale of urbane society, made for grotesque looseness in speech. Neologisms of the most extravagant sorts arose by the  thousand, and many of them worked their way back to the East and with them a vast number of characteristic American words, e.g., breadstuffs, mileage, balance (in the sense of remainder) and elevator (a place for storing grain).

During the two decades before the Civil War everyday American became almost unintelligible to an Englishman; every English visitor marked and denounced its vagaries. It was bold and lawless in its vocabulary, careless of grammatical niceties, and further disfigured by a drawling manner of speech. The congressional debates of the time were full of its phrases; soon they were to show themselves in the national literature.

After the Civil War there was an increase of national self-consciousness, and efforts were made to police the language. Profession al grammarians got help from certain of the literati. The саmpaign went to great lengths. But the spirit of the language, and of the American people no less, was against reforms, and they were reduced to vanity by the unconquerable speech habits of the folk. Under the very noses of the purists a new and vigorous American slang came into being, and simultaneously the common speech began to run amok

In the face of a new situation the American shows a far greater linguistic resourcefulness and daring than the Englishman. The visiting Englishman finds them very difficult. They puzzle him even more than do American peculiarities of pronunciation. Of late the increase of travel and other inter-communication between England and America has tended to halt the differentiation of the two dialects. It was more marked, perhaps, before the World War than since. Today, urbanization, quick transport, and television have tended to level out some dialectal differences in the United States.

Most easily BE accepted the word groups indicating: 1) notions not having any strict definition in BE /e.g. commuter -житель пригородного района, который работает в городе, trailer - прицеп, know-how - производственный опыт, технологии, baby-sit- присматривать за ребенком за плату/; 2) cultural borrowings / e.g. milk shake - молочный коктейль, sundae -мороженое с фруктовым сиропом); 3) names of American realia (rodeo - соревнования ковбоев, sheriff- шериф, Secretary of State - государственный секретарь, министр иностранных дел,congressman - член конгресса /в особенности член палаты представителей/, administration - управление, правительство, министерство); 4) emotionally coloured equivalents of stylistically neutral words in BE (graft = corruption /, gimmick  = trick /, brainwashing  = indoctrination /).

The dialect regions of the United States are most clearly marked along the Atlantic littoral, where the earlier settlements were made. Three dialects can be defined: Northern, Midland, and Southern.  Each has its subdialects. The speech of the Atlantic Seaboard shows far greater differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary than that of any area in the North Central States, the Upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, or the Pacific Coast. In some areas of South Carolina and Georgia the American Negroes who had been imported to work the rice and cotton plantations developed a contact language called Gullah, or Geechee, that made use of :many structural and lexical features of their native languages. The chief differences between British Received Pronunciation and a variety of American English, such as Inland Northern (the speech form of western New England and its derivatives, often popularly referred to as General American), are in the pronunciation of certain individual vowels and diphthongs. It is next to impossible to dwell here upon divergencies of both variants in phonetics - sounds, stress, accent, intonation. Examples are numerous, here are only two, to illustrate the fact: clerk is pronounced in BE as kle:k, and in AE as kla:rk; advertisement in BE is ed've:tisment, and in AE - edver'taizment.

AE could more easily than BE form nouns ending with -ette (-et) with the diminunative meaning (luncheonette/ dinette/ dinerette -небольшое кафе), or to show gender (such as conductorette). Similarly, AE more extensively uses he suffix - wise in the meaning of "with regard to' or 'in terms of (instructionwise, taxwise, pricewise, weatherwise). Also popular among americanisms is the prefix super- (superhighway, superfilm, superweapon), and also the verb suffix -ize. Equally registered tendency of AE is to use the morphological forms of the type got: gotten. Worth of mentioning is the usage of expressive compound words (trigger-happy - агрессивно-настроенный, mastermind- гений, gangland- преступный мир), as well as forming verbs from nouns (to politic - вести политическую кампанию, to deed - передавать по акту), or forming nouns with the help of verbs followed by adverbs {walk-up - дом без лифта shut-out - победа с сухим счетом). Such examples are numerous they are widely used in BE and other variants of English, which reflects their meeting the needs of communication.

Numerous are examples when the ranges of meanings of the same word in both variants differ (e.g., AE gun, means not only 'cannon' and 'rifle', as is the case with BE gun, but also 'pistol" and 'revolver'; the meaning of pie in BE is narrower than that of AE pie, as it implies the meaning 'meat pie', if not preceded by some specification as in 'apple pie').

There are numerous cases of different phrases with verb-adverb combinations (AE look out the window: BE look out of the window; AE to fill out a blank: BE to fill in a form; AE to be filled up (about a hotel): BE to be full up; AE wash up: BE wash your hands), as well as of divergencies in phrase structures (e.g., AE go get it: BE go and get it).

Some practical tips.

Here there are of course incomplete lists of divergences of the two varieties of the English language.

1.  Graphic divergences

2.

3.

4.

55555 5 5

6.

7.

1.  Lexical divergencies

A little bit of comprehension practice.

The following two texts describe the routine actions in American English (Text

 1-A) and British English (Text 1-B). Compare them and study the divergencies.

Text 1-A  (USA):

I got up at seven-thirty. I put on my bath robe, went into the bathroom and turned on the bath-tub faucets. After my bath I ate breakfast with my parents on the deck. Our apartment's on the fifteenth floor, so the view's terrific. At eight o'clock my mom and I took the elevator to the parking lot underneath our apartment block. First we stopped for gas, then she drove me to school. The freeway was really busy — automobiles everywhere. When I got to school it was raining. Luckily I'd brought my galoshes and an umbrella, so I didn't get wet.

School was OK, except that we had a math test before recess. I think I flunked it. Anyway, after school I took a bus downtown to meet my sister, Susan. She became a grade school teacher after she left college last year. We ate out at a Chinese restaurant. Personally I don't like rice, so I ordered French-fries instead. Susan disapproved. After dessert and coffee we paid the check and left. It had stopped raining, but the sidewalks were still wet. Susan gave me a ride home, then I did a history assignment for the next day, watched a movie on TV and went to bed around 11.30. I was pooped!

Text 1-B (Great Britain):

I got up at half past seven. I put on my dressing gown, went into the bathroom and turned on the bath taps. After my bath I had breakfast with my parents on the terrace. Our flat's on the fifteenth floor, so the view's terrific. At eight o'clock my mum and I took the lift to the carpark under our block of flats. First we stopped for petrol, then she drove me to school. The motorway was really busy — cars everywhere. When I got to school it was raining. Luckily I'd brought my Wellington boots and an umbrella, so I didn't get wet.

School was OK, except that we had a maths exam before break. I think I failed it. Anyway, after school I took a bus to the city centre to meet my sister, Susan. She became a primary school teacher after she left university last year. We went out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant. Personally I don't like rice, so I ordered chips instead. Susan disapproved. After sweet and coffee we paid the bill and left. It had stopped raining but the pavements were still wet. Susan gave me a lift home, then I did some history homework for the next day, watched a film on the TV and went to bed at about half past eleven. I was really tired!

LITERATURE:

1.  О. А. Письменная «Окна в англоязычный мир» (“Windows on the English-Speaking  World”), изд. ООО «ИП Логос», Москва, 2005 г.
2.  Г. И. Бардина «Открываем Америку» (“Discovering America”), изд. «Айрис Пресс», Москва, 2006 г.
3. Т.Н. Игнатова «Английский язык для общения» (“English for Communication”), изд. дом «РТ-Пресс», издат. «Высшая школа», Москва 1997г.
4.  М.С. Евдокимов, Г.М. Шлеев «Краткий справочник американо-британских соответствий» (“Concise Reference Book of American-British Equivalents”), изд. «Флинта», Москва, 2000 г.
5.   Е.Ю. Емельянова и др. “Hi, American English”, Москва, 1994 г.

УНИЦИПАЛЬНОЕ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ

СРЕДНЯЯ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНАЯ ШКОЛА № 4

ТЕЗИСЫ

к научно-практической работе по теме:

«Британский и Американский варианты английского языка»

                                             Выполнили:

                                                        ученики 7-б класса

                                                  Шость Максим

                                                         Жданов Владислав

                                                                  Научный руководитель:

                                                                       учитель английского языка

                                                      Шаповалова Е.Б.

г. Мытищи

2008 г.

Contents:

1. Introduction.

British and American people speak the same language – right? Wrong. Although they both speak English, there is an increasing number of differences between the two varieties of the English language.

The aim of this work is to study the differences of the American and the British varieties of the English language, and the origin of these differences. This aim is concretized by the following tasks:

• to study the state of this problem in scientific literature;
• to give the differences of the two varieties of the English language.

So the object of the study is the English language and the subjects of this study are the differences of American and British English.

1. Some facts from the history of America.

Indians were the first Americans or "native Americans" as they prefer to call themselves. They populated North America long before the continent was settled by Europeans. These people belonged to quite different cultures and spoke a variety of languages. There are at least 200 separate Indian languages in North America, each with its own grammar and vocabulary, and none is related in any way to English or any other European language.

1. British colonies in America. Pilgrims.

Beginning in the 1600s, the British began to settle the eastern part of North America, which is now known as New England. By the end of the seventeenth century English colonies had been planted practically everywhere along the American coast.

Pilgrims were members of the band of English Puritans, who in 1620 founded one of the most famous British settlements in America — Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts Bay. These settlers, led by William Bradford, had left their home in England and come to America in search of religious freedom. After a long, hard voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, their ship, the Mayflower, finally reached land. In November the Pilgrims sailed into Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts to start their new life.

1. American English.

The English language in America (AE) has been influenced by American Indian languages and by all the ethnic groups that have emigrated to the United States over the years.

The term “americanism” was first used in 1781. It designates a word or combination of words which taken into the English language in the United States, has not gained acceptance in England, or, if accepted, has retained its sense of foreignness: and a word or combination of words which becoming archaic in England, has continued in good usage in the United States.

1.    Some practical tips.

Here there are lists of divergences of the two varieties of the English language.

1.   A little bit of comprehension practice.

The following two texts describe the routine actions in American English (Text 1-A) and British English (Text 1-B). Compare them and study the divergencies.