There's a book for that! Multiple varieties of English version

October 26, 2014 6:14 AM

I need a book on the different varieties of English, their spellings, grammar and punctuation and some info on vocabulary differences, too. But I'm having trouble finding one.

I've got a really good book called "Learner English" which goes through all of the major world language groups and discusses how each language affects (bleeds through into) its speakers' production of English. Chapters follow a similar format, so you can easily find why a particular thing happens, if you've noticed it, or what to look out for when working with English texts produced by Arabic, Chinese, etc. native speakers. I have read it for work and out of interest.

I'm looking for a similar type of book but detailing different types of English (US, South African, Australian, Canadian, etc.) and their typologies and differences from UK English, all in the one resource. I have books about US/UK English and I have a book on editing Canadian English, I got excited and ordered David Crystal's "World English" a bit ago but that talks about their development and not enough about their features.

Surely there must be such a thing, appealing to both my professional and leisure reading interests. And yes, I know I'm antiquated, but I'm looking for a book, not a website or online resource, if at all possible. Sometimes I still like to have a book.

posted by LyzzyBee to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

The four volume Varieties of English, published by Wiley. It even come with CDs for hearing what they sound like.
posted by lollusc at 7:14 AM on October 26, 2014

Sorry, published by mouton.
posted by lollusc at 7:15 AM on October 26, 2014

The technical term (which you might already know, but I didn't see it cited yet) is "dialects". I suspect this is more stodgy than what you're looking for, but it might give you a direction to investigate.
posted by biersquirrel at 8:03 AM on October 26, 2014

Response by poster: Ah, I probably need to qualify my question: I'm not looking for a historical work but a modern comparison of what are, indeed, sometimes referred to as "standard dialects". Works on dialect that I've found tend to concentrate on regional dialects rather than country differences, which is interesting in itself but not quite what I'm looking for.

I'm an editor, transcriber and localiser by profession and I am really interested in the varieties I don't come across so often, like Australian and South African English. But I was assuming there would be something that covered all of them in one.

The Mouton Varieties of English looks interesting and I may well pick that one up (thanks lollusc).
posted by LyzzyBee at 8:12 AM on October 26, 2014

While this isn't a book, it may serve as a jumping off point to find what you are looking for. Written by Asya Pereltsvaig, a professor in Stanford's Department of Linguistics department, this post is about the particulars of english spoken by the inhabitants of St Helena Island from a series of posts about non-standard forms of English.

I don't see any sources listed but if you can get them or request them direct from the author, you may have some luck locating a book or paper from which this post gets its info
posted by shaqlvaney at 10:01 AM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

There are some books on World Englishes that are on my wishlist but which I haven't read yet. Most of them are probably less practical than you might like, though.

There's also EWAVE-Atlas, which I haven't explored yet but looks enticing, and Studying Varieties of English.

I have some big fat book on varieties of English which is so error-riddled that I'll happily dis-recommend it if I run across it while I'm unpacking. It's a shame, because it was published by a major publisher, but they really should have put different people in charge of the different sections.
posted by wintersweet at 10:06 AM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]