Talk:British English

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

British English is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination was archived. For older candidates, please check the archive.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 19, 2004	Refreshing brilliant prose	Not kept

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I have found a video about British accents (20 British Accents in 1 Video), but I do not know whether Wikipedia will accept it. תיל"ם (talk) 15:41, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Generally no. See WP:UGC Robynthehode (talk) 15:54, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And what about this one: A Tour of The Accents of England? תיל"ם (talk) 13:31, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The dustbin

@Isochrone: 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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

About Brits changing “British English” to “English”

I went through the revision history for my own entertainment and was surprised by the amount of British people changing “British English” to “English” justifying that it’s the default English and other dialects (like American English) branch from it.

Since we all know in reality American English is the true default dialect of English,^[sarcasm] should something be added to the top of this talk page discussing the current consensus (or at least I’m assuming there’s consensus, all of their edits immediately get reverted) to keep the term “British English” in the article? I’ve seen Q&A sections in talk pages before, I was thinking one of those could be added. 15:09, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Edit: I've gont through the revision history again, it seems like there's less edits making this change than I previously thought, I was fairly tired when I initially went through the revision history and probably clicked on the same revision a few times without realising. I still stand by what I said above though Theooolone ─ ( Talk ) 17:50, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Heads-up

This talk page is for discussing the British English article, not changes in the way that languages are denoted on Wikipedia. I think you can discuss this at the village pump or wherever this nerdy type of stuff are discussed.

37.251.220.212 (talk) 14:23, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]