Geographical variation in standard and non-standard English

In Scotland, a standard variety of English (Scottish Standard English) exists alongside a minority language, Scots. Both Scots and English have similar roots (as Germanic languages), which distinguishes them from Gaelic (a Celtic language). Scots shows some significant differences from Standard English in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar. Some examples of grammatical differences (taken from the SCOTS corpus, www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk) are presented below:

Scots	English
I’m silly, amn’t I?	I’m silly, aren’t I?
You’ll can enjoy your holiday now	You’ll be able to enjoy your holiday now
Fit wey was that?	Why was that?
How do you nae put that ain in your pocket?	Why don’t you put that one in your pocket?
I nae ken how to put the cord in	I don’t know how to put the cord in

Like the differences between Standard and non-standard varieties of English, the differences between Scots and English tend to cluster around particular aspects of grammar, such as negation, question formation, and the use of auxiliary verbs.

The spread of English around the world, and contact between speakers of English and other typologically distinct languages, has resulted in the development of a wide variety of 'new Englishes'. Some of these new Englishes have developed standard and vernacular varieties of their own. For instance, in Indian English, there are some significant differences between standard and non-standard wh-question formation and embedded question formation. The standard form is identical to standard British English:

What has she read? He was wondering what she has read

However, vernacular Indian English uses different structures: What she has read? He was wondering what has she read

Contact with other languages may also mean that structural characteristics and lexical items of one language may be transferred into the English spoken in a given area. For instance, it has been suggested that the high degree of contact between English and Chinese in Singapore may be one reason for the prevalence of null-subject sentences in Singapore English, even in fairly formal circumstances. The following example (from Deterding 2007: 58) comes from an interview with a Chinese trainee teacher; the asterisks mark places where UK SE would require an overt subject:

so in the end ... * didn't didn't try out the rides, so initially * want to to take the ferris wheel ... but then ... the queue is very long and too expensive, so * didn't, didn't take any ... * spent about two hours there looking at the things

Indeed, a fascinating aspect of English in such contact situations concerns the emergence of standard forms which don't correspond to the standard forms of other Englishes: what constitutes the standard is often negotiated at a fairly local level, so there is a range of standard Englishes across the world.