This copious volume deals with the development of English at various overseas locations (the “New World,” the Southern Hemisphere, and Asia) during the heyday of British colonialism between the early 17th and late 19th centuries. The 21 studies in the volume demonstrate the legacies of both standard and nonstandard varieties of English from this period. At the same time they show how 17th to 19th century linguistic forms remain influential in characterizing “transported” Englishes to the present day. Not that the volume attempts to straitjacket its contributors: As Hickey emphasizes in the Foreword (p. xix), there are as many scenarios as there are locations in the study of transported Englishes, with each variety arising from different degrees of exposure to different English dialects, and differential influences from indigenous languages and cultures. The main area to which this book belongs is therefore historical dialectology, though it is certainly of relevance to language contact and general sociolinguistics, as well as the specific sociolinguistics of migration.

Part 1, “Out of Britain,” comprises a general overview of the dialects transported (chap. 1, by Raymond Hickey) as well as specific chapters on the transportation of Scots and Scottish English (chap. 2, by Caroline Macafee) and Irish English (chap. 3, by Hickey). Irish English is a particularly interesting variety in the history of English. First, the fact that the majority of the Irish acquired English in an unguided manner as adults had consequences for the variety itself (Hickey, 92). This is what I term a “language shift variety.” Second, this relatively newly formed variety itself formed an important ingredient in the formation of Englishes elsewhere. English dialect input into the Caribbean is a well-studied phenomenon (e.g. Rickford 1986), and is the title and subject of chap. 12 (by Hickey). Furthermore, Michael Montgomery (322) stresses its importance in the history of North American English eloquently: “It is these two settlement streams, from a small province in the North of Ireland, and from a vast continent [Africa, RM] that have made the greatest difference today” [to regional U.S. English, RM]. Irish English also features, as might be expected, in the chapter on Australian English (“English input to Australia,” chap. 16, by Scott F. Kiesling). In chap. 3 Hickey provides a comprehensive treatment of the features of Irish English, their most likely sources (Irish vs. English dialects), the subsequent influence of Irish English in parts of the UK (Tyneside and Merseyside), and upon English in other parts of the world. The chapter discusses the relevance of his recently completed A sound atlas of Irish English (2004) to helping determine the provenance of certain features of transported Englishes. In this regard the absence of h-dropping, r-lessness and ain't as a contracted negative in Irish English are as important diagnostics for such studies as are the more visible features like youse (in the United States, Australia, and South Africa) and do + be habituals. The first three chapters provide the historical background to the rest of the book, and to the field of transported Englishes in general.

The longest section of the book (Part 2) contains nine studies of aspects of the dialect heritage of the New World, specifically the United States, the Caribbean, Newfoundland, and other parts of Canada. Merja Kyto (chap. 4) uses the records of the New England Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 onward to demonstrate concrete early dialect input into the founding colony. The data is relevant not only for North American scholarship but also for other colonies – for example, short front vowel raising in Southern Hemisphere varieties and the much-traveled Northern subject rule (for present tense subject–verb concord). The next chapter (5, by Laura Wright) deals with one such variable in the early English input to the American South and the Caribbean: -s vs. –th vs. zero for third person verb endings. She shows these to have overlapping functions in the writings of Londoners bound for Virginia and the Bahamas. Of the three variants, zero served a particularly wide range of functions (present sg. & pl. subjunctive, past sg. indicative, and – together with the other variants – present sg. & pl. indicative). Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes (chap. 6) discuss founder effects in remnant dialects in the United States, concluding that varieties like those of Hyde County and Ocracoke in South Carolina may have important affinities with each other but are also remarkably dynamic and robust in their own development. This, however, contrasts with the position of Newfoundland English as a relic variety (chap. 9, by Sandra Clarke) of a province founded as a British colony in 1583 and settled in the early 17th century. Clarke describes many features of the founding dialects of this variety. Among the ones I found particularly illuminating are the variability of initial /h/, occurring as an onset element rather than a segmental phoneme. Clarke also supports Trudgill's (1999) conclusion that T-glottaling is a late 19th century British English innovation, since it is of limited occurrence in Newfoundland Englishes. This is supported by Roger Lass's (chap. 9, p. 378) remarks for South African English, in which glottal stop realizations of medial /t/ do not occur. A potential counterexample, however, occurs in Tristan da Cunha, possibly the most remote inhabited island in the world, settled in the early 19th century (Daniel Schreier, chap 14). That the island has T-glottaling (Schreier, 394) might be harder to explain within Trudgill's time frame. However, it is possible that that feature was adopted late in the island's history. Schreier does not dwell on this issue, but I suggest as a possible late influence the visits of islanders to the motherland in the 20th century, notably the evacuation of the entire island population to England for three years starting in 1961, “the year of the volcano.” L-vocalization forms an interesting parallel to T-glottaling: It is not found in South African English (Lass, 378–79), it does occur sporadically in Tristan da Cunha (Schreier, 394), and it appears to be an independent development in some parts of Newfoundland (Clark, 251). But Clark argues that, contrary to Trudgill's hypothesis which is based on New Zealand English, L-velarization is not a late 19th century phenomenon, since it appears to have stabilized in Newfoundland relatively early, from West County dialects. Clarke (258) concludes that Newfoundland English has remained close to its roots over the course of several hundred years of separation, and offers the best insights into the structure of English spoken in southwest England and southeast Ireland in previous centuries. Edgar Schneider (chap. 10) argues that such certainty is not possible for the American South, where it is difficult to pin down individual sources and lines of historical transmission. Accordingly the British input must be treated as embryonic, since the dialect has increasingly been going its own way since the late 19th century. Schneider draws a distinction between “Traditional” and “New” Southern, based on developments in history and sociology. Montgomery (chap. 11) reports on a similar theme, this time on the American Midland dialect region. He tackles “Kurath's puzzle” – that the dialectologist was unable to find much Ulster influence in Midland U.S. English, even though he was convinced that it was there. In keeping with the thrust of most articles in the volume, Montgomery is able to call upon more recent detailed corpora to solve the problem. These include new dictionaries on both sides of the Atlantic (DARE and its archives in the United States, dictionaries of Ulster English, and manuscripts from literate and semiliterate emigrants of the colonial era). Montgomery argues that syntactic retentions rather than lexical and phonological ones will solve the puzzle. Seven decisive features common to Ulster, Lowland Scotland, and the U.S. Midlands are as follows: all combined with interrogatives (who-all); need + past participle (it needs washed); wait on for ‘wait for’; want + preposition (to want out ‘to want to go out’); till for temporal ‘to’ (quarter till eight); whenever for ‘when, at the time when’; and all the for ‘the only’ (all the son he has).

In chap. 7 Shana Poplack and Sali Tagliamonte revisit their studies of verbal –s in the African American English diaspora, to shed light on the ongoing debate regarding its Creole origins vs. English dialect input. The reason for the dispute is that habitual functions are not traditionally associated with be in English dialects but are salient in Creole Englishes. Poplack and Tagliamonte integrate new corpus sources in their reanalysis, including a crucial one from Devon English dialect. In this clearly presented chapter they provide VARBRUL-based analyses to vindicate their own approach (dialect input) over the Creole origins favored by Singler. A rebuttal (written independently of this chapter) can be found in Singler 2004. Chambers's chap. 8 describes the decline of “Canadian dainty,” a sociolect comprising a “veneer of Briticisms” from the time of settlements until the mid-20th century. Using an age-graded sample, Chambers shows the rapid decline of the British rather than U.S. variant for features like yod-dropping (in st[ju]dent, n[ju]s etc.) in the 20th century. He concludes that sociolinguistics provides a barometer of social change that is more acute than more conventional measures.

The final chapter in the New World section is Hickey's detailed discussion of English dialect input into the Caribbean (chap. 12). Here he picks up on the groundwork carefully laid out in the first three chapters of the book. Not surprisingly, one of the crucial features discussed in the chapter is habitual be/does be, thought to have diffused from Ireland and southwest England into Caribbean and African American Englishes (Rickford 1986 being the most detailed and careful of previous studies). Using additional historical and contemporary corpora of Irish English, Hickey proposes that the lines of historical continuity are not as conclusive as previous writers have made out. While there are clear parallels between the varieties being compared, linking up details of form and meaning and relating them to historical movements of settlers still proves intractable.

Part 3 comprises six chapters on Southern Hemisphere varieties. Roger Lass (chap. 13) updates his previous description of South African English phonetics (Lass 1995) with additional sections on lexis and pertinent observations on continuities and discontinuities with British dialects, some of which have been cited above. Daniel Schreier (chap. 14) contributes a fascinating chapter on Tristan da Cunha, mentioned above. This small island with about 300 inhabitants is another wonderful laboratory for historical sociolinguistics, especially since the founders of the colony (male and female) are all known. All children born on Tristan da Cunha descend from Maria Glass (a “Creole” or “Coloured” woman from Cape Town) or one of five nonwhite (slave or former slave) women from St. Helena. Andrea Sudbury contributes chap. 15 on English in the Falklands. The chapter forms a counterpoint to the others in the book, insofar as it deals with a relatively unfocused variety, showing slow and minor processes of koineization, despite the islands' being settled since 1833. Clearly, issues of identity consequent upon continuing dependence on Britain play a role in the relatively diffuse linguistic set-up (see Schneider 2003).

Scott F. Kiesling contributes chap. 16 on dialect input into Australia, in which he looks to modern sociolinguistics to explain the adoption of some features over others. He appeals to the covert prestige of Cockney in the founding period and principles of new dialect formation studied by Kerswill and Williams in present-day Milton Keynes (UK) This chapter is less grounded in historical dialectology than others in the book. In contrast, Elizabeth Gordon and Peter Trudgill (chap. 17) are able draw upon the ONZE (Origins of New Zealand English) corpus made up of recordings of people born in the territory in the 19th century. They show that the corpus captures koineization on the wing – a stage of variation before leveling and focusing took place to produce what is now New Zealand English. That koineization was in progress can be seen from the mixed dialects of some speakers (showing e.g. Scots and non-Scots features). Since the corpus does not show centralization of the KIT vowel, this must be assumed to be a later feature rather than one based on the dialect input. This is a puzzling find, since centralization of KIT occurs in South African English as well, though not in the exact details seen in New Zealand (e.g. the word kit itself, like all words having /I/ in the environment of velars and glottal consonants, does not centralize in most South African sociolects). In the last chapter in this section (18) Suzanne Romaine describes English input to the pidgins and Creoles of the Pacific, with a main focus on lexicon. As such, this chapter stands out as different in focus from the others in the book; however, it too is characterized by an informative social history of the terrain in the era of shipping and colonization. Furthermore, the lexical items discussed (e.g. capsize, cargo) are of wider significance in contact studies than to just the Pacific islands.

Part 4 (the last), “English in Asia,” comprises three chapters by Hickey. The first deals with similarities between English in Asia and Africa. Why Africa should be treated in this way and not afforded a chapter in its own right might seem puzzling. Likewise, one wonders why Hickey writes on South Asia (chap. 20) and Southeast Asian Englishes (chap. 21), rather than some other scholar engaged in primary research on these varieties. The answer, it seems to me, is tucked away in the last sentence of the forward (xx): “For various reasons, chiefly the current commitments of other scholars, a number of chapters have had to be written by the editor who hopes his contributions go some way towards doing justice to the subject mater being treated.” As an editor myself, I sympathize with Hickey's problem, particularly in garnering contributions from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. My anticipation that the chapters contributed seemingly by default by the editor would show some signs of haste and desperation was, happily, not met. I am impressed by the historical and descriptive depth of the last three chapters, in which Hickey adroitly synthesizes previous material on Asian Englishes. He also supplies in-depth historical background and useful information on the “background” languages of specific territories, since they continue to exert a “living substrate” influence on the New Englishes. Hickey's labors do not end here. A further 127 pages contain three appendices – a checklist of nonstandard features described in the book, a timeline for varieties of English, and maps of Anglophone locations and movements – and a glossary of terms used in the book, plus the expected references and indexes.

My criticisms of the book are few. There is a sense in which the last four chapters (on Pacific pidgins and L2 Englishes), though very informative and well-written, do differ from the main focus of the rest of the book (“transported dialect features and their histories”). Had these been excluded, a book of less intimidating proportions might have ensued (perhaps 549 pages rather than 713). But, as I've suggested, these chapters are not out of place, either; so perhaps Hickey should be congratulated in sneaking a book of this magnitude past his publishing editor. Minor points of detail: Malay is not an agglutinating language (565); and the term “resumptive pronoun” (569) is better differentiated from “copy pronoun.” Resumptive pronouns occur inside relative clauses, copy pronouns inside main clauses. Thus, in a sentence like The man who you were saying bad things about him, he's my cousin, a preferable analysis would be label him as resumptive pronoun, and he as copy or (appositional) pronoun.

To whom do I recommend this book? As a reference volume on the recent history of English, it deserves to be in every university and college library catering for linguistics, sociolinguistics, the history of English, and English worldwide. The hardback price makes it less affordable by individuals, and the size makes it unlikely that an individual would read this from cover to cover. This reviewer did, but it took four Atlantic flights and six European train journeys. In the process I savored every chapter, and I have been stimulated to continue pursuing research on the legacies of colonial English in South Africa along similar lines. Mesthrie & West 1995 seems to have been missed by the editor and other writers on topics of relevance in the book.

Although many of the themes and topics in this book have been treated autonomously in journals by the same authors, within the covers of one volume and with the evident labor of the editor, this becomes a remarkably cohesive and readable collection. Many recurrent themes make this a holistic book rather than an aggregation of case studies: Thus the Northern subject rule, 2nd person plural pronoun variants, and the habitual be verb form make recurrent appearances, as do H-dropping, L-vocalization, and T-glottaling. There is as much emphasis on issues pertaining to sources, methodology, and analysis (Kyto, Tagliamonte, Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, etc.) as on presentation of findings. The ideas of Trudgill on leveling and on dating recent changes in British English via colonial developments feature to a significant extent, as does Schneider's characterization of focusing and identity construction in the colonies. The contributors, publisher, and – above all – editor-cum-major contributor are to be congratulated on a work of the highest quality.