This chapter describes the earliest and most deeply rooted processes of colonization which have shaped the English language, in what used to be known as the “Old World” and the “New World.” British English itself is shown to be a product of Germanic tribes colonizing the British Isles and of incorporating structural and lexical influences from a wide array of languages – Celtic first, Latin repeatedly in different contexts, Scandinavian in a very intense union, French in a markedly diglossic situation after the Norman Conquest, and many other languages thereafter. American English and its main varieties – regional, social, and ethnic ones – are shown to stem from settlement streams, migration and mixing, nationalistic tendencies, and ethnic integration and accommodation. The language situation of the English-speaking Caribbean, finally, has resulted from patchwork-like settlement patterns and political conflicts, the blend of European and African components in plantation settings, slavery and creolization, and post-Emancipation and post-Independence transformations towards regional pride and modernity. The sociohistorical survey of these three major world regions are supplemented by extensive case studies and discussions of regional language settings and language samples from these regions, often with recordings, namely from England's North, the American South, and Jamaica.

This chapter carries out a critical survey of early modern attitudes to English accents and dialects in order to show how effectively Shakespeare and his contemporaries activated their connotations in performance and how marked voices lent local resonance and social specificity to their characters and to the fictive world of their plays. Despite their lower prestige, English accents and dialects other than the emerging standard known as the ‘King’s English’, or ‘usual speech’, had wider and more varied dramaturgical functions than merely serving as comic caricature of specific social types. In fact, closer attention to a selection of plays – some of which are discussed at greater length in mini case-studies embedded in the central section of this chapter – produces radically new readings of well-known characters and plays, including Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor or Edgar in King Lear. This chapter also reconsiders how early modern anti-theatricalists were particularly concerned about the actor’s voice and its ability to reproduce high- and low-rank accents and phonetic registers.