Besides British English which is often regarded as a collective term for the forms of English spoken on the British Isles, two other variants of the English language existing on the territory of the UK, Scottish and Irish English can be singled out.

Scottish English is considered the variant of the English language spoken in Scotland. Scottish English has a long tradition as a separate written and spoken variety. Pronunciation, grammar and lexis differ sometimes substantially from other variants of English existing on the territory of the British Isles.

The uniqueness of Scottish English can be explained by its historical development. For almost three centuries, Scottish English has shaded into, and compromised with, both Scots on one side and the usage of England and Ireland on the other. Most people range from kinds of urban and rural Scots through mixed usage to kinds of Scottish Standard English. In addition, three sources of tension affected greatly the development of Scottish English: 1) the tension between Scotland and England; 2) the tension between Highlands and Lowlands; 3) the tension between Protestants and Catholics.

The identity of Scottish English reflects an institutionalized social structure, as it is most noticeable in the realms of law, local government, religion, and education, and raises problems of intelligibility that have no parallel elsewhere in Britain.

Among lexical peculiarities of Scottish English the following linguistic facts are of importance: 1) some semantic fields are structured differently in Scottish English and in British English. For example, the term minor in British English is used to denote a person below the age of 18 years, while Scottish law distinguishes between pupils (to age 12 for girls and 14 for boys) and minors (older children up to 18); 2) some words used in Scottish English have equivalents in British English, e.g. (ScE) extortion – (BrE) blackmail; 3) a great deal of the distinctiveness of Scottish English derives from the influence of other languages, especially Gaelic, Norweigean, and French. For example, Gaelic borrowings include: cairn – 'a pile of stones that marks the top of a mountain or some other special place', sporran – 'a small furry bag that hangs in front of a man's kilt as part of traditional Scottish dress'; 4) there are also many words which have the same form, but different meanings in Scottish English and British English. For example, the word gate in Scottish English means 'road'; 5) some Scottish words and expressions are used and understood across virtually the whole country, e.g. dinnae ('don't'), wee ('small'), kirk ('church'), lassie ('girl').

Irish English is considered the variant of the English language used in Ireland. It is also widely referred to as Hiberno-English or Anglo-Irish. Anglo-Irish is the oldest, long associated with people of mainly English origin. As a result the term is socially and historically ambiguous, and Irish people are often uncomfortable with it. It does not therefore work well as a cover term for all usage in Ireland. The term Hiberno-English avoids this difficulty, but runs the other way: it tends to exclude the Anglo-Irish and the descendants of Protestant settlers. And Irish English is transparent and is unlikely to be misinterpreted.

Therefore Irish English subsumes all the Englishes of the island, and other terms stand for subvarieties. The two main politico-linguistic divisions are Southern and Northern, within and across which further varieties are Anglo-Irish, Hiberno-English, Ulster Scots, and the usage of the two capitals, Dublin and Belfast.

The Irish English vocabulary is characterized by the following distinctive features: 1) the presence of words with the same form as in British English but different meanings in Irish English, e. g. backward – 'shy'; to doubt – 'to believe strongly'; bold – 'naughty'; 2) the use of most regionally marked words by older, often rural people, e.g. biddable – 'obedient'; feasant – 'affable'; 3) the presence of nouns taken from Irish which often relate either to food or the supernatural, e.g. banshee – 'fairy woman' from bean sidhe; 4) the presence of words typical only of Irish English (the so-called Irishisms), e.g. begorrah – 'by God'; 5) the layer of words shared with Scottish English, e.g. ova – 'at all'; greet – 'cry, weep'; brae – 'hill, steep slope'.

Besides distinctive features in lexis Irish English has grammatical, phonetical and spelling peculiarities of its own, e. g. the use of 'does be/ do be' construction in the following phrase: "They do be talking on their mobiles a lot". In Irish English the plural form of you is distinguished from the singular, normally by using the archaic English word ye to denote plurality, e.g.: "Did ye all go to see it?".

Local Dialects

There are five main groups of local dialects in Great Britain: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. The close links existing between some of the dialects make it possible to unite them into two major groups: 1) Southern dialects and 2) Northern and Midlands dialects.

One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. This dialect exists on two levels. As spoken by the educated lower middle classes it is a regional dialect marked by some deviations in pronunciation but few in vocabulary and syntax. As spoken by the uneducated, Cockney differs from Standard English not only in pronunciation but also in vocabulary, morphology and syntax.

Cockney is lively and witty and its vocabulary is imaginative and colourful. Its specific feature is the so-called rhyming slang, in which some words are substituted by other words rhyming with them. Boots, for instance, are called daisy roots, hat is tit for tat and wife – trouble and strife.

Some specifically Cockney words and phrases are: balmy, barmy, noun or adjective meaning 'mentally unbalanced', toff 'a person of the upper class', up the pole 'drunk'.

In recent decades a new dialect called Estuary English has been gaining prominence. Estuary English is the variety of the English language common in the South-East of England, especially along the river Thames and its estuary. It is a hybrid of Received Pronunciation (RP) and a number of South-Eastern dialects, particularly from the London and Essex areas. Among the most notable lexical features of the Estuary English dialect is the use of Cockney words and phrases as well as words from American and Australian English.

Estuary English is very popular among the young probably because it is said to obscure social origins – very often it is adopted as a neutral dialect. It increases "street cred" among the young from an RP background and young people with local dialects and accents adopt it because it sounds more "sophisticated". Estuary English speakers are to be found "grouped in the middle ground", but it can be heard in the House of Commons as well as being used by some of the members of the Lords. It can be heard on the BBC and it is well established among the businessmen in the City.

One of the representatives of the group of Northern and Midlands dialects is the Yorkshire dialect. As Yorkshire is on the linguistic border of Northern and North-Midland varieties of English, it shares some of their characteristics.

Yorkshire is the dialect spoken by the majority of people in the English county of York. As there is much variation within the dialect it is usually discussed in terms of the three Ridings that correspond to the historical administration areas of North, East and South Yorkshire. The prodigious variation in vocabulary arises from both the historical settlement patterns of the various European invaders and the later linguistic changes following the settlement, cf.: armpit (Standard English) – oxter (North Riding) – armpit (East Riding) – armhole (West Riding).

It was in Yorkshire that Anglo-Saxon speakers mixed with Scandinavian settlers in the market places, etc., during the period from the 8^th to the 11^th centuries, and engaged in a simplified speech to make themselves understood to each other, dropping gender, word endings, complex conjugations, etc. The result was the birth of a simplified Middle English that spread throughout England; a revolution speeded up after the Norman Conquest. These facts explain the remarkable resemblance that some Yorkshire words have in relation to their Scandinavian counterparts, a testimony to their historical origins, cf: child (Standard English) – bairn (Yorshire dialect) – barn (Modern Norwegian).

Some words in Yorkshire dialect at first sight seem to be Standard English but they have different meanings. For example, the word real is used in the Yorkshire dialect to describe something good or outstand­ing, it has nothing to do with genuineness as compared with the mean­ing of this word in Standard English. It is, however, not only purely words which contribute to the distinctiveness of the Yorkshire dialect but also the variety of idiomatic expressions, e.g. allus at t’ last push up – 'al­ways at the last moment'; nobbut a mention – 'just a small amount'.

Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. They are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio,

television and other means of the mass media.