British English

The term "English as it is used in Great Britain" (as opposed to "English as it is used elsewhere") is referred to as "British English" (abbreviated as "BrE") or "Anglo-English." In the United Kingdom, formal written English may be written in a number of different ways. For instance, the term wee is used nearly exclusively in portions of Scotland, North East England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Yorkshire on occasion, but the adjective small is used mostly everywhere else in the world. The phrase "British English" is used to refer to the English that is spoken and written in the United Kingdom. There is a significant degree of homogeneity in written English across the United Kingdom. However, the forms of spoken English vary substantially more than in the majority of other regions of the globe where English is spoken; as a result, it is more difficult to apply a unified definition of British English to the language's spoken form. Tom McArthur writes in the Oxford Guide to World English that "all the ambiguities and tensions in the term 'British' are shared by British English," and as a consequence, "British English may be employed and understood in two ways, more widely or more narrowly, within a spectrum of blurring and ambiguity."

The Anglo-Frisian dialects were introduced to Britain by Germanic immigrants who came from different sections of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. English is a West Germanic language and its origins may be traced back to these Anglo-Frisian dialects. Common Brittonic was the language used by the majority of the local people during this time period. Common Brittonic is an island form of continental Celtic and was impacted by the Roman occupation. This collection of languages—Welsh, Cornish, and Cumbric—continued to coexist with English far into the modern era; but, since they were geographically separated from the Germanic languages, their impact on English was noticeably reduced. However, the extent of its effect is still up for question, and in recent years, it has been suggested that its grammatical influence is responsible for the significant changes that can be seen in English in comparison to the other West Germanic languages.

In its early stages, Old English consisted of a wide variety of dialects, which mirrored the many cultural backgrounds of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that comprised England. Late West Saxon, which was originally one of these varieties, finally came to predominate. The first wave of influence on the original Old English language came from speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second wave of influence came from the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. Both of these waves of invasion had an impact on the development of the Anglo-Norman language.