88-756: A carriageway ( British English ) or roadway ( North American English ) consists of a width of road on which a vehicle is not restricted by any physical barriers or separation to move laterally. A carriageway generally consists of a number of traffic lanes together with any associated shoulder , but may be a sole lane in width (for example, a highway offramp ). A single carriageway road (North American English: undivided highway) has one carriageway with 1, 2 or more lanes together with any associated footways (North American English: sidewalk) and road verges (North American English: tree belt, parkway, or other regional variants). A dual carriageway road (North American English: divided highway) has two roadways separated by
176-412: A central reservation (North American English: median). A local-express lane system (also called collector-express or collector-distributor) has more than two roadways, typically two sets of 'local lanes' or 'collector lanes' and also two sets of 'express lanes'. "Cars only" lanes may be physically separated from those open to mixed traffic including trucks and buses. The New Jersey Turnpike ( I-95 ) in
264-559: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in
352-525: A court order, closed down the venue scheduled to host the Festival's closing event since there was Palestinian Authority involvement, but the British Council stepped in and the evening was relocated to its grounds. The British Council supports the festival, also known as PalFest. A controversial issue arose in 2012 because PalFest's website states that they endorse the "2004 Palestinian call for
440-697: A former Literature Director of the British Council itself. In March 2007, the British Council announced its "intention to increase its investment in the Middle East , North Africa and Central and Southern Asia ". In June 2007, MPs were told of further closures in Tel Aviv and East Jerusalem (where there had been a British Council Library since 1946). The British Council libraries in Athens and Belgrade were also scheduled to close. Similarly in India,
528-508: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating
616-541: A humorous way by Lawrence Durrell in his collection of anecdotes about a diplomat's life on foreign postings for the Foreign Office – Antrobus Complete . In the six Olivia Manning novels that make up The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy, Guy Pringle is an employee of the British Council, and Council politics make up several of the plot points. The books portray Eastern Europe and the Middle East in
704-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of
792-470: A manuscript which she claims is a novel to an English publisher who she says is "her friend"! It is also featured in one of the scenes in Graham Greene 's The Third Man – the character Crabbin, played by Wilfrid Hyde-White in the film, worked for The British Council. In 1946, the writer George Orwell advised serious authors not to work for it as a day job arguing that "the effort [of writing]
880-659: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside
968-484: A range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas the adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within
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#17327935325881056-520: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In
1144-959: A rethink of its strategy in Latin America . In Italy , British Council closed its offices in Turin and Bologna and reduced the size of offices in Milan and Rome (with the closure of the library in the latter). Charles Arnold-Baker , author of the Companion to British History said of the British Council's shift in priorities: "This whole policy is misconstrued from top to bottom. We are going somewhere where we can't succeed and neglecting our friends in Europe who wish us well. The only people who are going to read our books in Beirut or Baghdad are converts already." The article also points out that
1232-532: A wider knowledge of the UK and the English language; encouraging cultural, scientific, technological and educational understanding and cooperation; changing people's lives through access to UK education, skills, qualifications, culture and society; and attracting people who matter to the future of the UK and engaging them with the UK's culture, educational opportunities and its diverse, modern, open society. In 2014–2015,
1320-650: A wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh language in Argentina ); encouraging cultural, scientific, technological and educational cooperation with the United Kingdom. The organisation has been called a soft power extension of UK foreign policy, as well as a tool for propaganda . The British Council is governed by a Royal Charter . It is also a public corporation and an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by
1408-459: Is Paul Thompson , and its CEO is Scott McDonald . The British Council's total income in 2014–2015 was £973 million principally made up of £154.9 million grant-in-aid received from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; £637 million income from fees and teaching and examinations services; and £164 million from contracts. The British Council works in more than 100 countries: promoting
1496-610: Is a wing of our Secret Intelligence Services, however minor. Officially it is no such thing but there are connections. Why should it be otherwise because all information is invaluable? After all, the British Council also deals with trade missions and inevitably that involves low-grade intelligence-gathering." In 2005, along with the Alliance française , the Dante Alighieri Society , the Goethe-Institut ,
1584-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in
1672-488: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting
1760-467: Is currently hosted in the UK by Sian Eleri since 2024 - previous hosts include Jamz Supernova, Goldierocks and Andrea Oliver – and many countries take the English language version of the show and create a new show from the tracks and features, translating the 'links' into the local language. The British Council has been running a teacher training programme in North Korea since 2001. In July 2014
1848-874: Is in Berlin . Formally it is to its sponsoring department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office , that the UK Parliamentary Table Office refers any parliamentary questions about the British Council. The effectiveness of British Council efforts to promote higher education in China was examined in the UK by the House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills in a report issued in August 2007. It expressed concern that in terms of joint educational programmes involving Chinese universities,
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#17327935325881936-740: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,
2024-520: Is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English
2112-463: Is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what
2200-530: Is too much to make if one has already squandered one's energies on semi-creative work such as teaching, broadcasting or composing propaganda for bodies such as the British Council". In her autobiography, Dame Stella Rimington , the first woman head of MI5 , mentions working for British Council in India before joining the British Intelligence Services. The British Council was referred to (and its man on-station, Goole ) – frequently in
2288-547: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and
2376-629: The Alliance française and the Goethe-Institut , unlike the British Council, are both expanding and replenishing libraries Europe-wide. France opened its new library in Tel Aviv in 2007, just a few months after the British Council closed there and shut down the British Council library in West Jerusalem . In Gaza , the Institut français supports the Gaza municipal library in partnership with
2464-534: The British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within
2552-658: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of
2640-553: The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office . Its headquarters are in Stratford , London. Its chair is Paul Thompson and its chief executive is Scott McDonald. The British Council is a charity governed by Royal Charter . It is also a public corporation and an executive nondepartmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office . Its headquarters are in Stratford, London. Its chair
2728-592: The Instituto Cervantes , and the Instituto Camões , the British Council shared in the Princess of Asturias Award for the outstanding achievements of Western Europe's national cultural agencies in communications and the humanities. At the time of this joint award, the full extent of The British Council's closure policies in Europe was not yet public knowledge. Royle also goes on to note that
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2816-853: The Persian Gulf area. Council offices were closed in Lesotho , Eswatini , Ecuador and provincial Länder in Germany in 2000–2001 – as well as Belarus – prompting Parliamentary criticism. Subsequent promises by British Council Chair Neil Kinnock to a conference in Edinburgh that the Belarus closure would hopefully prove to be just a "temporary" withdrawal proved illusory. The British Council office in Peru also closed in September 2006 as part of
2904-493: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over
2992-490: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),
3080-573: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout
3168-562: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This
3256-629: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,
3344-595: The British Council (due to a lack of regulations on its activities) along with the general consulate in St. Petersburg . The move was reported to be retaliation against the UK's actions toward Russia for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal . The British Council has been a primary partner of the Palestine Festival of Literature since the Festival's beginning in 2008. In 2009, the Israeli police, acting on
3432-619: The British Council Associate Parliamentary Group. Nigel Griffiths MP was Vice-Chair of this British Council lobby group until stepping down as an MP. In 2008, the British Council was called before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) following the earlier publication of a National Audit Office report. The subsequent PAC report confirmed that Nigel Griffiths MP – Vice Chair of The British Council Associate Parliamentary Group –
3520-643: The British Council Libraries at Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram were closed despite protests from library users as part of the Council's policy to "reduce its physical presence" in the country and to divert funds to mega projects in the fields of culture, education, science and research. British Council libraries and offices have also been closed in several other countries judged by the British Council to be of little strategic or commercial importance, as it refocused its activities on China and
3608-693: The British Council announced a global programme with the BBC , British Film Institute , the National Theatre , the Royal Shakespeare Company , the Shakespeare 400 consortium, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Shakespeare's Globe to celebrate Shakespeare's life and work on the 400th anniversary of this death. Selector Radio is a weekly two-hour radio show, produced by Folded Wing for
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3696-496: The British Council gave the example of India where their UK India Education and Research Initiative is being "championed" by British multinational oil companies such as BP and Shell , the pharmaceutical giant GSK and arms company BAE Systems . Criticism of British Council marketing efforts in this area has also come from Scotland where The Sunday Herald obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act showing that
3784-404: The British Council in more than 850 towns and cities in 2014–2015. The British Council jointly runs the global IELTS English-language standardised test with the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations and IDP Education Australia. Over 2.5 million IELTS tests were delivered in 2014–2015. In 2014, the British Council launched its first MOOC, Exploring English: Language and Culture, on
3872-500: The British Council relaunched the global website Education UK for international students interested in UK education. The site receives 2.2 million visitors per year and includes a search tool for UK courses and scholarships, advice and articles about living and studying in the UK. From 2014 to 2020, the British Council and Ecorys UK jointly administered almost €1 billion of the €14.7 billion Erasmus+ programme offering education, training, youth and sports opportunity for young people in
3960-640: The British Council signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for cultural and educational exchange. The British Council's Young Creative Entrepreneurs Awards identify and support talented people from across the creative industries, such as the International Young Publisher of the Year , International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year , International Young Music Entrepreneur of
4048-535: The British Council spent: £489 million developing a wider knowledge of the English language; £238 million encouraging educational cooperation and promoting the advancement of education; £155 million building capacity for social change; £80 million encouraging cultural, scientific and technological cooperation; and £10 million on governance, tax and trading expenses. The British Council offers face-to-face teaching in more than 80 teaching centres in more than 50 countries. Three million candidates took UK examinations with
4136-528: The British Council's Marketing Co-ordinator in the US had been referring to the University of Stirling as "The University of Sterling" (sic) and also documenting "tensions" between Scottish Executive civil servants and British Council in India and China over overseas promotion of universities in Scotland where education is a devolved responsibility. The Sunday Herald reported that these turf wars were undermining
4224-459: The British Council's internal rules for overnight stays in London. In 2007, the Russian government accused the British Council of an illegal operation by breaking Russian tax laws and ordered the organisation to close two of its offices. Many believed that the council had become the victim of a diplomatic row between the UK and Russia. In 2018, Russia expelled 23 British diplomats and closed down
4312-562: The British Council. Originally launched in 2001, the show is now broadcast in more than 30 countries around the world, connecting a global audience to a wide range of music the United Kingdom has to offer, covering a variety of genres from grime , indie , soul , dance and more. The show features interviews, guest DJ mixes and exclusive live sessions from some of the UK's most exciting artists. It avoids many mainstream acts, in favour of emerging talent and underground styles. It has an estimated listenership of over four million people. The show
4400-582: The Chief of Police in Rangoon to the British Ambassador stating their belief that there had been British involvement in the assassination of Aung San and his Cabinet for which one of his political opponents was hanged and that "the go-between" had been a British Council official named in the programme. In August 2011, a journalist from The Irish Times discovered a certificate dated 2007 issued by
4488-836: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication
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#17327935325884576-439: The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Annual Report, the Foreign Affairs Committee spends an hour each year examining witnesses from the British Council but even this level of scrutiny is undermined by a Commons ruling exempting MPs from the requirement to declare overseas trips paid for by The British Council. Two members of the Public Accounts Committee ( Nigel Griffiths MP and Ian Davidson MP ) were office-bearers in
4664-434: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;
4752-621: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English
4840-582: The Scottish Executive's key Fresh Talent policy. Some of the activities of the British Council were examined in 2007/2008 by the National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO's report, The British Council: Achieving Impact , concluded: "that the British Council's performance is strong and valued by its customers and stakeholders". It also concluded, however, that its English classes are elitist and have unfair advantages over commercial providers, as well as questioning thousands of unanswered phone calls and e-mails to British Council offices. As part of its examination of
4928-599: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to
5016-463: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since
5104-485: The UK lagged Australia , the US , Hong Kong, Canada and France . In its evidence to this committee, the British Council argued that "UK degrees are highly valued by international students for their global recognition. International students adopt an essentially utilitarian view of higher education which is likely to increasingly involve consideration of value for money, including opting for programmes at least partly delivered offshore". As their preferred marketing "model",
5192-508: The UK social learning platform FutureLearn . This was accessed by over 230,000 people. "Peacekeeping English" is a collaboration between the British Council, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Ministry of Defence to improve the English-language skills of military personnel through the Peacekeeping English Project (PEP). PEP is helping train approximately 50,000 military and police service personnel in 28 countries, amongst them Libya , Ethiopia and Georgia . In 2013,
5280-533: The UK. It was expected that nearly 250,000 people will have undertaken activities abroad with the programme. Over 16,000 schools have taken part in an international school partnership or benefited from teacher training through the British Council Connecting Classrooms programmes. The RENKEI network, established in 2012, brings together universities from Japan and the UK. RENKEI stands for "Research and Education Network for Knowledge Economy Initiatives" in English and means "collaboration" in Japanese. As of May 2024,
5368-458: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with
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#17327935325885456-426: The United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as
5544-472: The United States, uses this design from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to its northern terminus at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee . High-occupancy vehicle lanes may also be physically separated from the remainder of the general traffic lanes as a distinct roadway. Some cities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , have many bus-only roadways to alleviate congestion related to public transit buses, despite its very challenging topography which severely limits
5632-402: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in
5720-496: The Year and British Council West Africa Arts Programme ~ Creative Entrepreneurs 2018 awards. In 2010, Conservative MP Mark Lancaster , the then Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury , the then Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin , and other MPs were involved in rows over expenses incurred on undisclosed taxpayer-funded British Council trips. The British Council's then chief executive, Martin Davidson, also faced press criticism for expenses claimed in an apparent breach of
5808-454: The academic and cultural boycott of Israel". Susanna Nicklin, the council's director of literature, said in response: "The British Council is a non-political organisation, and we believe that international cultural exchange makes a powerful contribution to a more peaceful, tolerant and prosperous world. Therefore, the British Council does not support cultural or academic boycotts." The British Council closed its operations in Syria in 2012 due to
5896-426: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with
5984-514: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing
6072-422: The extent to which arterial roadways can be added or augmented. British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England , or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout
6160-460: The facade of Buckingham Palace. In 2015, the British Council launched fiveFilms4freedom , a free, online, 10-day LGBT film festival with the British Film Institute , supported by the UN Free & Equal campaign. It was the first global online LGBT film festival. The festival runs a 24-hour campaign to ask people to watch a movie and show that love is a human right. In 2016, films were viewed by over 1.5m people in 179 countries. In October 2015,
6248-404: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or
6336-523: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by
6424-518: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of
6512-586: The local authority and a municipal twinning link between Gaza City and the French port of Dunkirk . In Oslo , British Council informs Norwegian callers that "our office is not open to the public and we do not have an enquiry service". Goethe Institute also has a more visible presence in Glasgow than the British Council. There is now, in contrast, only one British Council office left in Germany – and that
6600-457: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is
6688-563: The members are the universities of Durham , Edinburgh , Leeds , Liverpool , Newcastle and Southampton from the UK and Keio , Kyushu , Ritsumeikan and Tohoku universities from Japan. ACCELERATE was a leadership programme for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the creative arts , run jointly by the British Council and the Australia Council in partnership with Australian state arts agencies, between 2009 and 2016. During that time, 35 people participated in
6776-435: The novel The Russia House by John Le Carré (former consular official David Cornwell) opens with a reference to The British Council. The organisation's "first-ever audio fair for the teaching of the English language and the spread of British culture" is "grinding to its excruciating end" and one of its officials is packing away his stuff when he is approached by an attractive Russian woman to undertake clandestine delivery of
6864-496: The ongoing conflict in the country. The closure was a result of the deteriorating security situation and the inability to ensure the safety of its staff and visitors. In April 2012, the British Council faced a storm of protests over the exclusion of dissident Chinese writers from the London Book Fair 2012 . Critics included English PEN and journalist Nick Cohen writing for The Observer , as well as Alastair Niven ,
6952-471: The opening years of World War Two . The role of the British Council in Myanmar in 1947 came under scrutiny with the release of classified documents to a BBC investigation by journalist Feargal Keane into the role of dissident British colonial officials in the assassination of the then Burmese independence leader Aung San (father of Aung San Suu Kyi ). The BBC programme quoted from a 1948 document sent by
7040-549: The programme, with many alumni going on to excel in their fields. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II hosted the official launch of the UK-India Year of Culture on 27 February 2017 at Buckingham Palace , with Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley representing Prime Minister Narendra Modi . The British Council worked with the Palace and British-Indian start-up Studio Carrom to project a peacock , India 's national bird, onto
7128-603: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All
7216-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with
7304-568: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows
7392-526: Was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English
7480-473: Was expelled. In April 2008, the British Council was told to ensure all portable media was encrypted after losing staff data and wrongly saying the disc was encrypted. Following the accusations made against the British Council in Russia (see above) Trevor Royle, the diplomatic editor of The Sunday Herald quoted a "British diplomatic source" saying: "There is a widespread assumption that The British Council
7568-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like
7656-604: Was part of the small number of PAC members who approved this report on the British Council despite not having been recorded as being present during the evidence session – in June 2008 – where the British Council's chief executive was cross-examined. Mr Griffiths had earlier travelled to Russia and spoke favourably of British Council activities there in January 1998 around the time that their man in St Petersburg (Stephen Kinnock)
7744-588: Was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it
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