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| - British English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere in the Anglophone world.[1] British English encompasses the varieties of English used within the UK, including those in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and to some extent, those spoken in the former British Empire. Some may also use the term more widely, to include other forms such as Hiberno-English (spoken in Ireland).[2]
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| abstract
| - British English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere in the Anglophone world.[1] British English encompasses the varieties of English used within the UK, including those in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and to some extent, those spoken in the former British Empire. Some may also use the term more widely, to include other forms such as Hiberno-English (spoken in Ireland).[2] Most Britons – the majority of whom speak English as either a first or a second language – consider that they just speak "English", rather than "British English". The term "British English" is used only by non-British people when necessary to distinguish it from other forms of English. British people, especially the English, would normally distinguish by naming the country (e.g. "Canadian") or region (e.g. "American") of the version of English. There are slight regional variations in formal written English in the United Kingdom (for example, although the words wee and little are interchangeable in some contexts, one is more likely to see wee written by a Scottish or Northern Irish person than by someone from Southern England or Wales). Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described as "British English". The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and a uniform concept of "British English" is therefore more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English (p. 45), the phrase British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word British, and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity".
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