Задание

Read the text about British English.

Рис. 1. British English

Today English is the most important international language. It's the native language of millions of people all over the world. There are almost 500 million native English speakers and more than half a billion people speak it as a foreign language. It's the third most-spoken language after Spanish and Chinese.

There are lots of people learning English nowadays. It is the language of business, science and diplomacy. Political leaders, actors, entrepreneurs speak English. Scholars and scientists publish the articles about their discoveries in English. The majority of all the information stored in the computers in the world is also in English.

Standard British English is a variety of English language often described as 'typically British'. It is used in professional communication and is spoken in England. It has been taught at schools since the XVIII century. However, there are a lot of accents and dialects in the UK and often you can guess a place where the person is from. Received Pronunciation (RP) is the most recognizable British accent. Educated people mostly speak with RP accent. It is quite neutral and doesn't give clues about a person's origin.

While English is the official language in the country, there are also Gaelic and Welsh that are spoken in Scotland and Wales respectively. Now it's obligatory to learn Welsh at school, there are a lot of TV programmes, newspapers and magazines in Welsh. Unfortunately, only about 1 percent of Scots speak Gaelic.

A dialect is a variety of English that differs from the standard English. There are a lot of dialects in the UK, and probably the most famous one is cockney. It's a London dialect.

It originated as the dialect of the London working classes.

English is definitely the global language and no educated person can make do without it.

Writetrue or false.

1. According to the text, there are lots of people are learning Spanish today.

Answer:.

2. Standard British English is used in professional communication and is spoken only in Ireland.

Answer:.

3. A dialect is a variety of English that isn't very different from the standard English.

Answer:.