Standard English

“We have seen that standard English is basically an ideal, a mode of expression that we seek when we wish to communicate beyond our immediate community with members of the wider community of the nation as a whole. As an ideal, it cannot be perfectly realized, and we must expect that members of different ‘wider communities’ (Britain, America, Nigeria, for example) may produce different realizations. In fact, however, the remarkable thing is the very high degree of unanimity, the small amount of divergence. Any of us can read a newspaper printed in Leeds or San Francisco or Dehli without difficulty and often even without realizing that there are differences at all.”