Referring to the English language

Question

I found myself thinking about how to refer to the English language in Japanese.

I realise of course that English originated here in England, and then by colonisation was brought into America, but would that distinction be made in Japanese as in English?

Put simply, should I refer to イギリス語 or アメリカ語, even if the first is the name for the English language?

Answer 1

I think these are the basic terms:

• American English is アメリカ英語.

• British English is イギリス英語.

They're both types of 英語, just like American English and British English are both types of English.

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That doesn't mean no one ever puts it differently. You might find 米語 and 英語 used as short forms to refer to American and British English, for example. Here are some frequency results from the Google Japanese Web N-gram corpus, showing how often people use various terms:

　英語　　　　　31945067
　米語　　　　　46649
　英国語　　　　814
　米国語　　　　540
　アメリカ英語　57446
　イギリス英語　75223
　アメリカ語　　3217
　イギリス語　　2185

Unless 英語 is being specifically contrasted with 米語 (to mean BrE and AmE), I think it's usually taken to mean English in general, not just British English. And talking about English in general is more common than singling out a particular dialect group, so 英語 is by far the most common term.

Answer 2

We put both British and American English into the same generic term, 英語.

In other words, when we Japanese say 英語, we don't distinguish American English from British English, nor from Singaporean English (a.k.a. Singlish) or from Indian English.

When we have a need to specify any of them, we say "アメリカン・イングリシュ、ブリティッシュ・イングリッシュ、and シンガポール・イングリシュ."

We used to say 米語 and 英国流英語 to distinguish American English from British English. But it sounds too crude, and today's trend, especially among younger generations, seems to be in favor of using "アメリカン・イングリシュ、ブリティッシュ・イングリッシュ、シンガポール・イングリシュ" as it is.

It's like people call アメリカン・コーヒ― 、ヨーロピアン・コーヒー、イタリアン・コーヒー、ターキッシュ・コーヒー today instead of calling them 米国流コーヒー、欧州流コーヒー,イタリヤ式コーヒー and 土耳古風コーヒー. The same thing applies to substitution for 片言英語 with ブロークン・イングリッシュ.