Read the summary and the most important questions on The story of English | 9780140154054 | Robert McCrum; William Cran; Robert MacNeil

• 1 Chapter 1 An English-speaking world

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• English has a few rivals but no equals. Explain.

  Only English is so widespread as the language of commerce & trading, international commubication and science & learning

  Many speak English as a first language

  Many speak it as a second language 

  Most speaking it as a foreign language

  it is a unifying lang in many former colonies

  Spanish & Arabic though international are not global

  Russian has the political & economic basis for a world language, but rather than spreading its influence it has been touched by English – Russlish

  Germany & Japan also have the economic vigour of a world language but they too have swayed to English

• Which two 19th-century developments had a huge influence on the usage of English?  

  Industrial revolution & a rising middle class – emergence of RP

  English (RP) is spread over the world – british colonies

• How did people view regional accents before, and after the 1870s?  

  Regional dialects were scorned

• What role did public schools play in the dominance of RP and its spreading?  

  RP became the language of the educated. Those who went to public schools soon lost their regional varieties to avoid being looked down on

• And how did the BBC promote RP? What percentage of British people actually spoke RP when the BBC started broadcasting and whast kind of people were they?

  The bbc established the ACSE to decide on matters of usage and pronunciation. Members of the ACSE spoke primarily RP. Only 3% of the population spoke RP—the educated and those in positions of power.

• What is marked RP and why is it often mocked?

  The RP of the elite—in the 1960’s and 70’s the middle class gained respect –admired for their work ethic- and their unmarked  or modified RP became the standard. Marked RP was considered elitist & hence ridiculed. (RP was also both looked up to and ridiculed in e.g. India)

• Translate ‘Toid and toity-toid’.  

  Thirty-third

• Why would Scouse and Cockney be among the ‘least-desireable accents’ ?

  Cosnidered lower class and uneducated

• In what ways have perceptions of RP usage and its desireability changing in the past decades? 

  education act – RP becomes the desired accent – rising middle class = umarked RP (accent levelling ) versus elite marked RP—rising middle class gains respect – unmarked RP becomes the desired accent.

• What is an acronym, mention two that are used in this chapter and two more that are more recent.

   are formed using the initial components in a phrase or name. These components may be individual letters (as in CEO) or parts of words (as in Benelux or Delmarva).SNAFU; TGIF;