English Generation Module 1 Student Guide

By Student: Erick Pacheco Bárcenas

•             The countries where English is spoken as a first language

ANSWER 1:

- United Kingdom, London

-Australia, Canberra

-Bahamas, Nassau

-Botswana, Gaborone

-Canada, Ottawa

-Cyprus, Nicosia

-Fiji, Suva

-India, New Delhi

-Kenya, Nairobi

-Kiribati, South Tarawa

-Malta, Valletta

-Nigeria, Abuja

-Pakistan, Islamabad

-Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby

-Republic of Ireland, Dublin

-South Africa, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Pretoria

-New Zealand, Wellington

-Singapore, Singapore

-Philippines, Manila

-Gambia, Banjul

Reference: https://www.ranker.com/list/countries-where-english-is-the-official-language/best-world-journeys

•                    The cultural differences between the countries

ANSWER 2:

. In England, you're flipping someone off when you do the peace sign backwards.

. Roundabouts take the place of stoplights in the United Kingdom.

Not to say they don't exist, but stoplights are comparatively rare thanks to those circular hunks of concrete. The roundabout was developed by Brits, and in the past, locals have camped out to save roundabouts from demolition because they love them so dearly.

The Griswolds, not so much.

•             The differences between the varieties of English

ANSWER 3:

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/what-are-the-differences-between-american-and-british-english

Accent
It’s difficult to make clear distinctions between US and UK accents when there is such a wide variety of accents within both the US and UK. A Texan and a New Yorker are both Americans, but have very different accents. The same goes for British accents in London, Manchester and Glasgow.

However, some very general distinctions can be made. Americans usually pronounce every “r” in a word, while the British tend to only pronounce the “r” when it’s the first letter of a word.

Prepositions
The differences below are only a general rule. American speech has influenced Britain via pop culture, and vice versa. Therefore, some prepositional differences are not as pronounced as they once were.

=== Past Simple vs Present Perfect ===

Americans tend to use the past simple when describing something that has recently occurred, while people in the UK are more likely to use the present perfect.

The past participle of get
In the UK, “gotten” as the past participle of “get” is considered archaic and was abandoned long ago in favor of “got.” However, in the US people still use “gotten” as the past participle.

=== Collective nouns: singular or plural? ===

In British English, a collective noun (like committee, government, team, etc.) can be either singular or plural, but more often tends toward plural, emphasizing the members of the group. Collective nouns in the US, by comparison, are always singular, emphasizing the group as one whole entity.

Regular or irregular verbs?
This is a subtle difference that can be easily overlooked in speech, but is much more apparent in written form. Many verbs that are irregular in the preterite in Britain ( leapt, dreamt, burnt, learnt ) have been made regular in America ( leaped, dreamed, burned, learned ).

As the most-spoken second language on the planet, English has to be flexible. After all, it’s not solely spoken in the countries we’ve detailed above. So whether you speak English like a Brit or like a ‘merkan, this should not be an obstacle when communicating with people on the opposite side of the pond, or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

•                    How English is changing

ANSWER 4:

Why does language change?
Language changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally it was called text messaging, because it allowed one person to send another text rather than voice messages by phone. As that became more common, people began using the shorter form text to refer to both the message and the process, as in I just got a text or I'll text Sylvia right now

https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing

•             The influence of American English on British English

ANSWER 5:

https://doctorat.ubbcluj.ro/sustinerea_publica/rezumate/2011/filologie/popescu_daniela_en.pdf

It may be that the difference in the rate of the shift is partly due to the circum-

stance that the British sample is from a single newspaper and the American sam-

ple from several, although if this were simply a matter of a house style, the shift

would clearly have been much more abrupt. The most likely reason for the more

rapid, but nevertheless gradual, adoption of the PdE expression in The Times is

the fact that American usage was already in the realm of 60–70-percent domi-

nance for the PdE expression when the shift got underway in the UK. While it is

difficult to determine precisely what prompted BrE usage to change, it is tempt-

ing to suggest that changing AmE usage had some sway, perhaps triggering the

beginning of a shift in BrE and even more likely causing the change, once

started, to be faster in the UK than it had been in the US, where there was no

model in which the PdE expression was dominant.

The shift in usage in the two varieties took place during the period that wit-

nessed both the peak of the British Empire and the eclipsing of Britain by the US

as the world’s largest economy. This influence of AmE on BrE usage – here lim-

ited to newspaper usage, but probably applicable to usage in general – is likely a

case of what could be called cross-varietal easement. While they were difficult

to discern in the past, numerous examples of such directional influence will no

doubt be uncovered regarding several parameters as reliable diachronic mega-

corpora continue to be mined for patterns in usage across varieties and time

''(PDF) American English influence on British English at the height of the British Empire: A case of cross-varietal easement''. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275995600_American_English_influence_on_British_English_at_the_height_of_the_British_Empire_A_case_of_cross-varietal_easement [accessed Sep 24 2018].