ABSTRACT
British English is a language of dialects. Wherever one goes in England or elsewhere in Britain, there are very obvious differences between the ways in which people speak in different places. The rich variety of dialects in England can in large measure be attributed to the simple fact that English has been spoken in the country for upwards of fifteen hundred years. Language, like culture, is always changing, and to understand the dialect situation in this country one must look at the number of years that the language has existed and what has taken place with regard to the language during those years. The Survey of English Dialects, from the findings of which the maps have produced, was the earliest of what may be thought of as the modern dialect enquiries. The language is changing all the time, hoping that readers wish to test this for themselves, using the maps as a starting point for their own investigations.
