Talk:British English

The dustbin

1. REDIRECT Template:Reply to

Template:Redirect category shell This is my term for the parenthesised bit in the standard opening between the title of the article and the description of what it is. Here it contains three supposed alternative ways of writing "British English". I cannot see that any of them belongs here: "BrE" is a fairly common, and self-evident abbreviation; "en-GB" is an ISO 639-1 code for "English (UK)," which might or might not be the same as "British English", and "BE" is someone else's code. Anyone writing a dictionary is entitled to make up their own abbreviation, if they have such a category. I pinged user Isochrone because you put the Lexico reference next to the dustbin; I can't see anything at this reference other than an explanation that "British English" means the noun (language) "English" qualified by the adjective "British", so I don't really understand this. The objection to the dustbin is that it clutters the lead sentence, causing people like Google to cite the lead paragraph with anything in parenthesis omitted, sometimes seriously distorting the text. I suggest that mention of codes and abbreviations could be made further down the article. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium thanks, I moved the Lexico reference because someone on this talk said it was mentioned in the OED and I moved it without checking (oops). OED is on the Wikipedia Library so I can check in a bit to use that as a source. I agree that it might not be best to put these in the lead, I like how American English has done it, where they used a footnote in the lead to offer the alternative abbreviations. – Isochrone (T) 09:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

You mean ODE? The OED isn't in TWL. Nardog (talk) 18:55, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Apologies, I also have access to the OED from another source. I can't check it now, but I'll get to it later. – Isochrone (T) 21:20, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Citation 7 "McArthur (2002), p. 45." is unclear. It probably means the book with the ISBN 0198662483, but since no title is specified I can't be sure. Joendter (talk) 22:01, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@Joendter the title is in the prose immediately preceding the citation-- it is that book. – Isochrone (talk) 15:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Shortcomings

The section "English regional" is noticeably imbalanced. At present a little attention is paid to RP, but the section focuses on London and a part of Northants and Leicestershire to the exclusion of everywhere else.

There is so much more work needed to be done to expand the section and better reflect the article's title. For example, recognition of other regions of England, not only those names popularly known (such as Scouse, Geordie, etc) but also to recognise the way that dialects and accents frequently change between places that are less than 40 miles apart. 2600:1700:EA01:1090:1CC8:B980:4211:B252 (talk) 00:22, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 November 2024

I request that you rewrite this article in American English.. 2600:1700:14BE:E00:F919:1BEC:C650:4BC5 (talk) 15:25, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

File:X mark.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the Template:Tlx template. Bowler the Carmine | talk 18:08, 5 November 2024 (UTC)