BSE

BSE or Brussels Standard English, is, as its name suggests, European Standard English, which became the official English standard of the European Union once the BSED1 or the first edition of the Brussels Standard English Dictionary was published in Brussels in the year 2100. Before 2100, the English used officially by the European Union was British English. From that time onwards, European English was considered a different standard from English, which was generally more conservative and mixed British and American features, as well as characteristics specific to the languages of Europe. Standard European English or BSE will be the language used by European Union between 2100 and 2300. Technically, European English distinguishes three varieties that function as a macrosystem of speechs:


 * General European English (GE): This is a koine dialect that mixes British and American characteristics without distinction, both phonetically, as well as in semantics, syntax, and so on, usually with many influences from European languages, especially Romance languages. Before 2100 the standard language was British English, but in reality for interlingual communication Europeans used this continuum of dialectally neutralised features called General European.
 * Standard European English (SE or BSE): In 2100 General European English was standardised for the first time in the BSED1, the first edition od Brussels Standard English Dictionary, to facilitate communication and teaching within the European Union once Europeans refused to have a British standard which was often difficult to understand for most Europeans and had generated a situation of diglossia. BSED1 turned out to be much more conservative in pronunciation than British English and normalised the influence of American English. Over time different editions of the BSED were published, until the year 2300 when Euro became the official standard. This page will only describe the features of the BSED or Brussels Standard English Dictionary, in its most diverse British and American English editions. The first edition is the most conservative and will therefore not be taken into account.
 * Vernacular European English (VE): After the standardisation of European English, both British and Americans were dissatisfied, so European English began to function as the standard language of the European Union, becoming increasingly Europeanised and moving away from its constituent English dialects. Many families, mainly French and German, tried to teach Standard European English to their children as a first language, resulting in a partially creolised English that would be considered vernacular. This vernacular proved to be much easier for Europeans to learn and spread in a matter of 50 years, by the year 2300 it would become the new official standard and would be called Euro /ɨʁə/, as a shortening of European, in contrast to the Euro currency, which is pronounced /ɨʁo/.

Background
Standard European English is a future dialect of English spoken between the year 2100 and the year 2300. It developed by pidginisation under the influence of the languages of the European Union, especially French and German, and Romance languages in general, and by koineisation between Received Pronunciation and General American. This dialect was naturally simplified by being used as a second language (L2) by speakers of different European languages when it became the official language of the European Union. In 2100, Standard European English is officially the lingua franca of the European Union.

History and classification
Its origins go back at first to Oxford British English with the Received Pronunciation which was considered the European standard of English, while it was greatly influenced by American General English due to the great cultural influence of the United States in Europe, learnt by many Europeans through films, series, music, slogans, etc.

As it was learnt as a second language, Europeans of different nationalities introduced a multitude of errors, mixing British and American English, misinterpreting English spelling, misanalysing syntax, having pronunciation difficulties, etc. Over time, the difficulties Europeans had in learning correct English gave rise to a strange pidginised Koine. Grammar became much more analytical and isolating than modern English, with a predefined word order, vocabulary was reduced, morphemes were re-analysed, many meanings disappeared, pronunciation changed by the elimination of phonotactics, and allophones, clitics and contractions were restored as free and full forms, etc.

By the year 2100, general European English had become sufficiently distinct from British and American English to generate its own regulatory academies, the Brussels Academy of English published its first edition of a dictionary and grammatical guide distinct from the other English dialects. The first edition was called the Brussels Standard English Dictionary, or BSED1.

In the year 2300, native speakers of English wanted to change the name of European Standard English, due to disagreements with other English regulatory academies who considered that European English was not true English and that it tarnished the purity of native English.

Since then, officially from the last edition of the BSED, European English started to be considered as a different standard language and started to evolve on its own, this new language will be called Euro, although it is quite intelligible with modern English.

Dialects
There are some local differences, due to the large number of languages in the European Union and how the characteristics of those languages influenced European English, but overall, it is a unified language with few differences.

Phonology
The phonology used by the BSED Standard European English remained stable throughout all editions of the BSED. This section describes the phonology, the notation used, and the sound changes from Modern English to BSE. See consonants, vowels, and diphthongs, for more details on the sound changes of individual phonemes and notation used for transcribing BSE.

Consonants
Some consonant phonemes that were marginal were reinterpreted as allophones and merged as follows:


 * ŋ > ng
 * ʍ > hw
 * x > h
 * ʔ > "disappears"
 * ɬ > l
 * Syllabic consonants were restored in schwa plus consonant clusters.
 * The phoneme /ɹ/ in implosive position is restored, so BSE is a rhotic dialect.

Vowels
The vowels that can be seen in parentheses are used in BSE in some borrowings from European languages, mainly French and German.

Stress and syllable separation

 * One of the main changes in European English pronunciation was the loss of the distinctive accent. Primary and secondary stress is completely eliminated as a distinguishing feature. Stressed syllables can be placed anywhere, so many vowels that had been reduced became full vowels again. The weak forms are eliminated except in a few exceptions and are now pronounced as strong forms. European English is a free-accented dialect, the stress can be placed anywhere, although most are paroxytone, having the stress on the penultimate syllable, except in monosyllables.
 * Syllable separation was restructured and made more conservative, conforming to the boundaries of lexemes and morphemes.

Writing system
The writing system was inherited from British English spelling in its entirety and was retained until 2300. By inherited standards it does not accept diacritical marks, and in general, pronunciation is not predictable directly from the script. As in modern English, there are 26 letters in BSE:

Many words were spelled differently, as they were interpreted as compounds, so technically BSE uses its own spelling.

Grammatical categories: Introduction
To understand the evolution of the BSE dialect, it is essential to know how its vocabulary has been formed, as BSE has adopted many words from different European languages, especially Ancient Greek and Latin, as well as German and French. Its grammar is divided into closed and open classes. Closed classes do not usually accept borrowings, whereas open classes do.

Originally, the BSE was a controlled word list based on the 5,000 most frequent words that every speaker should know, i.e. a CEFR C1. This word list was analysed in the form of lexemes and morphemes and, in order to standardise the BSE, a selection of terms was made for closed classes, and only terms whose etymological origin could be traced back to Proto-Germanic [xgm], Latin [lat] or Ancient Greek [grc] were allowed, so that they would be predictable for Europeans.

Closed classes

 * Pronouns
 * Determiners
 * Articles
 * Quantifiers
 * Demonstratives
 * Possessives
 * Prepositions
 * Conjunctions
 * Numbers
 * Particles
 * Closed verbs
 * Auxiliary verbs
 * Phrasal verbs

Open classes

 * Verbs
 * Nouns
 * Adjectives
 * Adverbs
 * Interjections

Prepositions and particles
In the early stages of the BSE, English prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions were reanalysed and separated from verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs, as adpositions. Subsequently, they have become a system of free prepositions and dependent particles. Particles represent a very important part of the BSE, generally descended from English particles. The list of prepositions published in BSED1 was subsequently rejected and a new list was created, simplifying the prepositions inherited from English and adding some new ones of Latin or ancient Greek origin.