"Common English"

[Aaron Drews]

On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Lynne Murphy wrote:

}
}My question is:  is the term "common English" common?  I can't find a
}definition of it in the front matter of the dictionary, and since the
}first place where I saw "CE" was not as nice and explanatory as the
}"fan" entry, I spent a lot of time finding examples of CE in order to
}deduce that "common" didn't mean "colloquial" or "Commonwealth".

I work with both 'BE' and 'AE', and I've never come across a term along
the lines of 'common'.  The Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary (15th ed)
lists "US" and "UK" for specifics (forgetting that "UK" covers at least
three major varieties) and nothing for common pronuncation (shared, rather
than un-royal).  I've seen in another dictionary (Chambers?) $ and #
(rather, fancy L), but again nothing for shared definitions.

Does anybody know what Encarta uses?  It's supposed to be a 'world
English' dictionary.

As for 'CE', my first thought was 'Canadian English'.

Cheers,
Aaron


 =======================================================================
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
+44 (0)131 650-3485                      Departments of English Language
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron                          and Linguistics

"MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
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