Introduction
The theme that I have chosen for this course project is “Estuary English”. The English language varies in a number of ways, depending on the people who use it and on how, in what circumstances and why it is used. That is why the situation that people study the English language and then come to one of the United Kingdom’s regions and do not understand the region’s particular language is very popular. Unfortunately, very many of my acquaintances have experienced this unpleasant and shocking situation. Because of the fact that I am going to visit London and the South-East of England, the theme “Estuary English” seemed to me the most interesting and important.
The English language is one of the few ones that are spoken in a great number of countries. The British are well-known for being extremely sensitive about how they and others speak the English language. One thing that is important to very many English people is where they are from. For many of us, whatever happens to us in later life, and however much we move house or travel, the place where we grew up and spent our childhood and adolescence retains a special significance. Of course, this is not true of all of us. More often than in previous generations, families may move around the country, and there are increasing numbers of people who have had a nomadic childhood and are not really “from” anywhere. But for a majority of English people, pride and interest in the area where they grew up is still a reality. Nearly all of us have regional features in the way we speak English, and are happy that this should be so, although, of course, there are upper-class people who have regionless accents, as well as people who for some reason wish to conceal their regional origins. The vast majority of the population, however, speaks in a manner which identifies them as coming from a particular place. They speak like the people they grew up with, and in a way that is different from people who grew up somewhere else. Of course, people may change the way in which they speak during their lifetimes, especially if they move around the country, but most of us carry at least some trace of our accent and dialect origins with us all of our lives. …
