Page 85 - 4805

many dialects which have their own distinctive features .
Lancashire, Dorsetshire, Norfolk dialects). So dialects are regional
forms of English. Standard English is defined by Random House
Dictionary as the English language as it is written and spoken by
literate people in both formal and informal usage and that is
universally current while incorporating regional differences.

2. Formal style
Formal style is restricted to formal situations. In general,
formal words fall into two groups: words associated with
professional communication and a less exclusive group of so-
called learned words.
Learned words are mainly associated with the printed page.
It is in this vocabulary stratum that poetry and fiction find their
main resources. The term learned is not precise and does not
adequately describe the exact characteristic of these words. A
somewht out-of-date term for the same category of words is
bookish. To this group belongs so-called officialese. These are the
words of the official, bureaucratic language: assist (for help),
endeavour (for to try) proceed (for go), approximately (for about),
sufficient (for enough), attired (dressed)(for inquire (for ask).
Probably the most interesting subdivision of learned words is
represented by the words found in descriptive passages of fiction.
These words, which may be called literary, also have a particular
flavour of their own, usually described as refined. They are mostly
polysyllabic words drawn from the Romance languages and,
though fully adapted to the English phonetic system, some of them
continue to sound singularly foreign. They also seem to retain an
aloofness associated with the lofty contexts in which they have
been used for centuries. Their very sound seems to create complex
and solemn associations, eg. solitude, fascination, fastidiousness,
facetiousness,; delusion, meditation, felicity, elusive, illusionary.
There is one further subdivision of learned words: modes of
poetic diction. These stand close to the previous group many

84