| English (??nativename|??) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | ?? |
| Region: | ?? |
| Total speakers: | First language: about 380 million Second language: 150 to 1000 million |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic English |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | —?? |
| ISO 639-2 | —?? |
| ISO/DIS 639-3 | ??2 |
| SIL (2000) | obsolete?? |
| See also: Language - List of languages | |
English is a West Germanic language that originates from England and is also spoken as a native language in the other home countries of the United Kingdom, in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and numerous other countries. English is now the third most spoken native language worldwide (after Chinese and Hindi), with some 380 million speakers. It has Lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century to the present. Through the global influence of native English speakers in Cinema, airlines, Broadcasting, Science, and the Internet in recent decades, English is now the most widely learned Second language in the world. Many students worldwide are required to learn some English, and a working knowledge of English is required in many fields and occupations.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from languages brought to Britain during the first half of the first millennium AD by Germanic settlers from various parts of north-west Germany. The original Old English language was subsequently influenced by two successive waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of languages in the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who colonised parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries. The second wave was of the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke a variety of French. These two invasions caused English to become highly 'creolised'; creolisation arises from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Friesian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of European languages; this new layer entered English through use in the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a 'borrowing' language of considerable suppleness and huge vocabulary.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern, King of the British Isles, invited the "Angle kin" (Angles, led by Hengest and Horsa) to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the south-east. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes). The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the Heptarchy. Modern scholarship considers most of this story to be legendary and politically motivated.
These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants, whose languages survived largely in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. The dialects spoken by the invaders formed what would be called Old English, which resembled some coastal dialects in what are now the Netherlands and north-west Germany. Later, it was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the Vikings who settled mainly in the north-east (see Jorvik). The new and the earlier settlers spoke languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more distant, including the prefixes, suffixes and inflections of many of their words. The Germanic language of these Old English inhabitants of Britain would be partly creolised by the contact with Norse invaders. This resulted in a stripping away of much of the grammar of Old English, including gender and case, with the notable exception of the pronouns; thus, the language became simpler and plainer. The most famous work from the Old English period is the epic poem "Beowulf," by an unknown poet.
For the 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and the high nobility spoke only a variety of French. A large number of Norman words were assimilated into Old English, with some words doubling for Old English words (for instance ox/beef, sheep/mutton). The Norman influence reinforced the continual evolution of the language over the following centuries, resulting in what is now referred to as Middle English. Among the changes was a broadening in the use of a unique aspect of English grammar, the 'continuous' tenses, with the suffix '-ing'. During the 15th century, Middle English was transformed by the Great Vowel Shift, the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration, and the standardising effect of printing. Modern English can be traced back to around the time of William Shakespeare. The most well-known work from the Middle English period is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
After Scots, the next closest relatives are Frisian—spoken in the Netherlands and Germany—and Low Saxon, spoken primarily in northern Germany. Other less closely related living languages include Dutch, Afrikaans, German and the Scandinavian languages. Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (pronunciations are not always identical, of course), because English absorbed a tremendous amount of vocabulary from French, via the Norman language after the Norman conquest and directly from French in further centuries; as a result, a substantial share of English vocabulary is quite close to the French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional differences in meaning.
English is the primary language in Australia (Australian English), the Bahamas, Barbados (Caribbean English), Bermuda, Dominica, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica (Jamaican English), New Zealand (New Zealand English), Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom (British English), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the United States (American English). Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish are also indigenous languages in the United Kingdom.
English is also one of the primary languages of the Belize (with Spanish), Canada (Canadian English; with French), India (with Hindi and 21 other state languages), Ireland (with Irish), Malaysia & Singapore (with Malay, Mandarin and Tamil), the Philippines (along with Tagalog), Israel (along with Hebrew and Arabic), South Africa (along with 10 other languages, including Zulu and Afrikaans), Uganda, Rwanda (along with French and Kinyarwanda).
In Hong Kong, English is an Official language and is widely used in business activities. It is taught from Kindergarten level, and is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools and all universities. Substantial numbers of students acquire native-speaker level. It is so widely used and spoken that it is inadequate to say it is merely a second or Foreign language, though there are still many people in Hong Kong with poor or no command of English.
The majority of English native speakers (67 to 70 percent) live in the United States. Although the U.S. federal government has no official languages, it has been given official status by 27 of the 50 state governments, most of which have declared English their sole official language. Hawaii, Louisiana, and New Mexico have also designated Hawaiian, French, and Spanish as official languages in conjunction with English, respectively.
In many other countries where English is not a major first language, it is an official language; these countries include Cameroon, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Ghana, Gambia, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
English is the most widely learned and used foreign language in the world, and, as such, many linguists believe it is no longer the exclusive cultural emblem of "native English speakers," but rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it grows in use. Others believe that there are limits to how far English can go in suiting everyone for communication purposes. It is the language most often studied as a foreign language in Europe (32.6 percent), followed by French, German, and Spanish. It is also the most studied in Japan, South Korea and in the Republic of China (Taiwan), where it is compulsory for most High school students. See English as an additional language.
Because English is so widely spoken, it has been referred to as a "global language." While English is not the official language in many countries, it is the language most often taught as a second language around the world. It is also, by international treaty, the official language for aircraft/airport communication. Its widespread acceptance as a first or second language is the main indication of its global status.
There are numerous arguments for and against English as a global language. On one hand, having a global language aids in communication and in pooling information (for example, in the scientific community). On the other hand, it excludes those who, for one reason or another, are not fluent. It can also marginalize populations whose first language is not the global language, and lead to a cultural hegemony of the populations speaking the global language as a first language. Most of these arguments hold for any candidate for a global language, though the last two counter-arguments don't hold for languages not belonging to any ethnic group (like Esperanto).
A secondary concern with respect to the spread of global languages (English, Spanish, etc.) is the resulting disappearance of minority languages, often along with the cultures and religions that are primarily transmitted in those languages. English has been implicated in a number of historical and ongoing so-called 'language deaths' and 'linguicides' around the world, many of which have also led to the loss of cultural heritage. In the Americas, Native American nations have been most strongly affected by this phenomenon.
The major varieties of English in most cases contain several sub-varieties, such as Cockney within British English, Newfoundland English within Canadian English, and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") within American English. English is considered a Pluricentric language, with no variety being clearly considered the only standard.
Some consider Scots as an English dialect. Pronunciation, grammar and lexis differ, sometimes substantially. The Scottish dialect retains many German aspects including guttural pronunciations.
Due to English's wide use as a second language, English speakers can have many different accents, which may identify the speaker's native dialect or language. For more distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English speakers. For more distinctive characteristics of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language.
Many countries around the world have blended English words and phrases into their everyday speech and refer to the result by a colloquial name that implies its bilingual origins, which parallels the English language's own addiction to loan words and borrowings. Named examples of these ad-hoc constructions, distinct from Pidgin and creole languages, include Engrish, Wasei-eigo, Franglais and Spanglish. (See List of dialects of the English language for a complete list.) Europanto combines many languages but has an English core.
Notes:
It is the vowels that differ most from region to region.
Where symbols appear in pairs, the first corresponds to the sounds used in North American English, the second corresponds to English spoken elsewhere.
| bilabial | labio-dental | dental | alveolar | post-alveolar | palatal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | ||||||||
| nasal | ||||||||
| flap | ||||||||
| fricative | ||||||||
| affricate | ||||||||
| approximant | ||||||||
| lateral approximant |
| labial-velar | |
|---|---|
| approximant |
In English, intonation patterns are on groups of words, which are called tone groups, tone units, intonation groups or sense groups. Tone groups are said on a single breath and as a consequence, are of limited length, more often being on average five words long or lasting roughly two seconds. The structure of tone groups can have a crucial impact on the meaning of what is said. For example:
The nuclear syllable carries the main point the speaker wishes to make. For example:
The nuclear syllable is spoken louder than all the others and has a characteristic change of pitch. The changes of pitch most commonly encountered in English are the rising pitch and the falling pitch, although the fall-rising pitch and/or the rise-falling pitch are sometimes used. For example:
English grammar is based on its Germanic roots, though some scholars during the 1700s and 1800s attempted to impose Latin grammar upon it, with little success. English is just slightly inflected, much less so than most Indo-European languages. It compensates for this by placing more grammatical information in auxiliary words and word order. Unlike most other Indo-European languages, modern nominal groups (nouns) in English do not carry gender, although an archaic form of gender is technically assigned as either masculine, feminine, neuter or common. Engendered nouns are only apparent in special cases, such as "I loved that ship as if she were my own." where the noun "ship" is referred to by its feminine pronoun.
An English-speaker is often able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: "come" or "arrive"; "sight" or "vision"; "freedom" or "liberty"-and sometimes also between a word inherited through French and a borrowing direct from Latin of the same root word: "oversee", "survey" or "supervise". The richness of the language is that such synonyms have slightly different meanings, enabling the language to be used in a very flexible way to express fine variations or shades of thought. List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents
In everyday speech the majority of words will normally be Germanic. If one wishes to make a forceful point in an argument in a very blunt way, Germanic words will usually be chosen. A majority of Latinate words (or at least a majority of content words) will normally be used in more formal speech and writing, such as a Courtroom or an Encyclopedia article.
English is noted for the vast size of its active vocabulary and its fluidity. English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and imports new words which often come into common usage. In addition, Slang provides new meanings for old words. In fact this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage. See also Sociolinguistics.
The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation. Unlike other languages, there is no Academy to define officially accepted words. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science and technology; some enter wide usage, others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might be considered 'English' or not.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) includes over 500,000 headwords, following a rather inclusive policy:
The difficulty of defining the number of words is compounded by the emergence of new versions of English, such as Asian English.
One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words which are Germanic (mostly Old English), and those which are "Latinate" (Latin-derived, mostly from Norman French but some borrowed directly from Latin).
A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) which estimated the origin of English words as follows:
James D. Nicoll made the oft-quoted observation: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."
| IPA | Alphabetic representation | Dialect-specific |
|---|---|---|
| p | p | |
| b | b | |
| t | t, th (rarely) | th thing (African-American, Hiberno-English, New York) |
| d | d | th that (African-American, Hiberno-English, New York) |
| k | c (+ a, o, u, consonants), k, ck, ch, qu (rarely) conquer, kh (in foreign words) | |
| g | g, gh, gu (+ a, e, i), gue (final position) | |
| m | m | |
| n | n | |
| ŋ | n (before g or k), ng | |
| f | f, ph, gh (final, infrequent) laugh, rough | th thing (Cockney, Estuary English) |
| v | v | th with (Cockney, Estuary English) |
| θ | th | |
| ð | th | |
| s | s, c (+ e, i, y), sc (+ e, i, y) | |
| z | z, s (finally or occasionally medially), ss (rarely) possess, dessert, word-initial x xylophone | |
| sh, sch, ti portion, ci suspicion; si/ssi tension, mission; ch (esp. in words of French origin); rarely s sugar | s insure | |
| si division, zh (in foreign words), z azure, su pleasure, g (in words of French origin)(+e, i, y) | ||
| x | kh, ch, h (in foreign words) | occasionally ch loch (Scottish English, Welsh English) |
| h | h (initially, otherwise silent) | |
| ch, tch | occasionally tu future, culture; t (+ u) tune (Australian English) | |
| j, g (+ e, i, y), dg (+ e, i, consonant) badge, judg(e)ment | d (+ u) dune (Australian English) | |
| r | ||
| j | y (initially or surrounded by vowels) | |
| l | l | |
| w, wh | ||
| - | wh (Scottish English) |
Some examples: ångström, appliqué, attaché, blasé, bric-à-brac, café, cliché, crème, crêpe, façade, fiancé(e), flambé, naïve, né(e), papier-mâché, passé, piñata, protégé, raison d'être, résumé, risqué, über-, vis-à-vis, voilà. For a more complete list, see List of English words with diacritics.
Some words such as rôle and hôtel were first seen with accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accent is almost never used. The words were considered very French borrowings when first used in English, even accused by some of being foreign phrases used where English alternatives would suffice, but today their French origin is largely forgotten. The accent on "élite" has disappeared most of the time by today, but Time Magazine still uses it.
Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adiós, Coup d'état, Crème brûlée, Pièce de résistance, Raison d'être, über (übermensch), Vis-à-vis.
It is also possible to use a Diaeresis to indicate a syllable break, but again this is often left out or a hyphen used instead. Examples: coöperate (or co-operate), daïs, naïve, noël, reëlect (or re-elect). One publication that still uses a diaeresis to indicate a syllable break is the New Yorker magazine.
Written accents are also used occasionally in Poetry and scripts for dramatic performances to indicate that a certain normally unstressed syllable in a word should be stressed for dramatic effect, or to keep with the meter of the poetry. This use is frequently seen in archaic and pseudoarchaic writings with the -ed suffix, to indicate that the "e" should be fully pronounced, as with cursèd.
In certain older texts (typically in Commonwealth English), the use of ligatures is common in words such as archæology, œsophagus, and encyclopædia. Such words have Latin or Greek origin. Nowadays, the ligatures have been generally replaced in Commonwealth English by the separated letters "ae" and "oe" ("archaeology", "oesophagus") and in American English by "e" ("archeology", "esophagus"). However, the spellings "oeconomy" and "oecology" are now generally replaced by "economy" and "ecology" in Commonwealth English, making these spellings the same as in American English.