Dialects of British and Southern Hemisphere English

This chapter focuses on dialects of British English, beginning with the classic dialectological studies that had a wide geographical scope before considering more recent work, which has tended to concentrate on smaller sets of localities. The first major dialectological survey of Britain, which focused on phonological variation, was Alexander Ellis's The Existing Phonology of English Dialects (EPED). The best‐known dialect survey in England is the Survey of English Dialects (SED). Results from the SED were published in multiple volumes. There some volumes of Basic Material, which are lists of informant responses sorted by locality, and several other volumes have provided maps of SED data. The chapter illustrates some of the important phonological characteristics of Australian English (AusE), New Zealand English (NZE), and South African English (SAE). It also discusses AusE, NZE, and SAE by commenting on the main differences between the southern hemisphere Englishes, before noting some of the few regional differences within each variety.