What are the main differences between spoken English and written English?
Are they the same? In general I believe that spoken and written English are very different, surprisingly so considering that English is one language. Of course, this does not always apply, and there are many instances where spoken and written English are the same, where the one takes over from the other and where functions and purposes are swapped. Some differences seem obvious, such as different accents in speaking. A person may speak with a strong regional accent but when writing this is no way detectable unless his or her grammar is very much in keeping with the regional dialect. You may have a writer who will deliberately imitate a dialect or regional accent in order to portray a particular type of person. Frances Hodgson Burnett did this in her famous children’s story, The Secret Garden, where the little boy, Dickon, coming from a Yorkshire farmworkers background, says things like (- talking to a robin – ) …”…Tha’ knew how to build tha’ nest before tha’ came out o’ th’egg. …
