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 2700. 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 of 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 hard diglossia. BSED1 turned out to be much more conservative in pronunciation than British English and normalised the influence of American English and other european languages. Over time different editions of the BSED were published, until the year 2700 when Euro became the official standard. This page will only describe the features of the BSED or Brussels Standard English Dictionary like a classic language which will continue to be taught in the future 2700.
 * 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 creolised English that would be considered vernacular. This vernacular proved to be much easier for Europeans to learn and spread in short time and it would become the new official standard by 2700 and would be called Euro, as a shortening of European.

Background
Standard European English is a future standardised con-dialect of English spoken between the year 2100 and the year 2700. It developed by pidginisation under the influence of the languages of the European Union, especially French and Romance languages in general, and partially German, 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. Basically it can be considered a relex of a simplified French grammar.

History and classification
Its origins go back at first to Oxford British English with Received Pronunciation which was considered the European standard of English, while it was heavily 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.

Being learnt as a second language, Europeans of different nationalities introduced a multitude of errors, mixing British and American English, misunderstanding English spelling, misanalysing syntax, having difficulties with pronunciation, etc. Over time, difficulties of Europeans 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.

Native speakers of English wanted to change the name to European Standard English because of disagreements with other English regulatory academies who felt that European English was not true English and that it tarnished the purity of native English.

Since then, officially from the first edition of the BSED in 2100, European English started to be considered as a different standard language and started to evolve on its own, this new language was already informally known worldwide as Euro from 2100 onwards, but officially it continued to be called European Standard English, although it was still quite intelligible with modern 21st century 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. This page only describe the standard language.

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.

œ > ɐ

ø > ə

y > ɨ

Stress and syllable separation

 * The stress depends on each word but there is a growing tendency to place the accent in a fixed way on the penultimate syllable. In real speech, 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
Every word cannot be read exactly as it is spelled, there are certain intrinsic rules, but these rules are not taught, written words must be memorized regardless of their phonetics. The writing system was inherited in its entirety from British English orthography, and it was retained until 2700.. 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 and the apostrophe. The hyphen also is used in writing to separate words that are compounds, so it has no phonetic value, rather it has an etymological value. Many words are spelled differently, as they are interpreted as compounds, so technically BSE uses its own spelling:

Elision
Elision is the deletion of letters in writing and their replacement by an apostrophe; this deletion of letters also affects pronunciation. In general, formal and educated BSE tries to avoid them, but in colloquial language and informal writing they are very common. They are often used for pronouns

Grammatical categories: Introduction
To understand the development 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. The parts of speech in BSE are:

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

Grammar: History
European English, before its standardisation, was a set of pidgins which mixed features of European languages, British dialect and American dialect, creating a koine which was called General European. Grammatically this Koine was considered grammarless, as it was a strongly analytical and isolating language. When European English was standardised, it was endowed with a more fusional and synthetic grammar than 21st century English, adopting mainly the grammatical basis of French with typical Romance features and some German influences.

Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns change form to reflect the role they play in their clause. Due to BSE is devoloped from formal 21st century British English, only the forms of "you" in the second person was used for both singular and plural, there is not distinction between T-V. In the mid-22th century, the pronominal forms of "she" and "he" began to be replaced by forms of "it".

Nominative (Subject)
The forms used for subjects are called subject pronouns, subjective pronouns or nominative pronouns. They are as follows:

Accusative (Direct Object)
The accusative pronouns are not used if the object refers to the same entity as the subject, in which case reflexives are used.

Dative (Indirect Object)
Indirect object pronouns or dative pronouns usually replace indirect objects with the preposition "to". When an indirect object pronoun is used, it replaces the whole prepositional phrase.

Reflexive (Subject-Object)
Reflexive pronouns are used in place of direct and indirect object pronouns that refer to the same entity or entities as the subject. They are normally interpreted as genitives attached to the "self" and "selves" particles.

Disjunctive (Strong Pronouns)
Disjunctive pronouns are the strong forms of personal pronouns, the forms that are used in isolation, as emphatic subjects or as objects of prepositions. Disjunctive pronouns are an innovation that appeared once the subject and object pronouns became inseparable from the verb.

Article Determiners
The article is not inflected according to the gender and number of its referent.

Possessive Determiners
Possessive determiners, also called possessive or genitive pronouns refer to an object by identifying its possessor. They indicate the person, gender and number of the possessor. They are often misused, being used to indicate the gender and number of the referent due to the influence of Romance languages. They have dependent and independent forms, although in spoken language they are not differentiated. The old independent forms that appear in brackets must always end with the article "the".

Prepositions

 * about
 * above
 * according to
 * across
 * after
 * against
 * along
 * amid
 * around
 * as
 * at
 * before
 * behind
 * below
 * beneath
 * beside
 * besides
 * between
 * beyond
 * but
 * by
 * despite
 * down
 * during
 * except
 * following
 * for
 * among
 * in
 * including
 * inside
 * into
 * like
 * near
 * next to
 * of
 * off
 * on
 * onto
 * opposite
 * out
 * outside
 * over
 * past
 * per
 * plus
 * regardless of
 * round
 * since
 * than
 * through
 * alongside
 * from
 * throughout
 * till
 * to
 * towards
 * under
 * unlike
 * until
 * up
 * upon
 * versus
 * via
 * with
 * within
 * without

Conjunctions

 * after
 * albeit
 * although
 * and
 * as
 * because
 * before
 * but
 * except
 * if
 * nor
 * now
 * once
 * or
 * plus
 * since
 * so
 * than
 * that
 * though
 * till
 * unless
 * until
 * when
 * whenever
 * where
 * whereas
 * yet
 * wherever
 * whether
 * while
 * whilst

Syntax: Word order
The components of a declarative clause are usually arranged in the following order, although not all components are always present: