Talk:English language

Also, is that excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence accurate and verbatim, or has someone "tidied" it up for modern Americans? The reason I wonder is that the standard date format until very recently - in both countries - was one that called that date "the fourth of July" (which is why it remains in use over there as a standard phrase). The reason it matters, why wanting the original form counts in this text, is that it is serving as an example of the language of that time and place. If it isn't one, it's actually wrong for the purpose intended. PML.

Yes, it's verbatim (I just double-checked and it's exactly the same) and the date format is older than you think (the "July the Fourth" phrase does not originate from the Declaration itself), there are some nice images (including a few really large ones) here so you can see for yourself. Note that the cursive original has s letters that look like f to us. http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/declaration/declaration.html — Daniel Quinlan 01:12, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Im a poopsicle :D

English English to British English

I changed several instances of "English English" in the article to "British English. I'm not really sure if that change was made to claim that British English is the true form of English or to distinguish British English (which is generally considered to be inclusive of English elsewhere on that isle) from Scottish English. Either way, it seemed somewhat POV, especially considering that both directed to the same article, British English. — Daniel Quinlan 01:38, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Assessment of English language by Oxford

I found this assessment in the Oxford English Dictionary [1] (http://www.oed.com/public/guide/preface_4.htm) to be an interesting and reasonable assessment of the English language, I think we Wikipedia editors should strive to be similarly reasonable. That is easier said than done, of course, when it comes to individual word choices, but I do feel like Wikipedia has made some progress in at least understanding the current state of English and it's nice to see that where we seem to be going is not too different from the OED (quoted below). — Daniel Quinlan 01:38, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

From its base in Britain, the English language has expanded over the centuries to become a world language, in which individual varieties share a common core of words but develop their own individual characteristics. When the First Edition of the Dictionary was published, it documented the language of the British Isles in greater detail than the varieties of English which were established or emerging elsewhere. Since that time, a considerable amount of major lexicographical work has been conducted in other areas where English is used, and the current revision is able to benefit from this scholarship. Material from such texts as the Dictionary of American English and the Dictionary of Americanisms, the Dictionary of Canadianisms, the Dictionary of South African English, the Australian National Dictionary, the Dictionary of New Zealand English, and many others, supported by the Dictionary's own reading programme, has enabled the editors to enhance the coverage of varieties of English worldwide. The English of the British Isles now becomes one (or indeed several) of these varieties, whereas previously standard British English may have been regarded as the dominant form of English.

English example

I switched back the Old English example to Beowulf. No reason was given for the change and I don't think there's a better choice. I'm also looking for a scholarly public domain word-for-word (or nearly literal) translation that we can put alongside it -- it should be possible to find one. (Perhaps we can use one from a complete translation under fair use, but the only word-for-word translation I found on the web only included the introduction, so I think copying it wouldn't qualify for fair use — maybe we can get permission, though.) Daniel Quinlan 00:05, Sep 26, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, the translation seems unnecessary, superfluous, and out of scope as the Beowulf article already has a lengthier excerpt. My new opinion is that we should let people "suffer" to illustrate how different a language Old English was. Daniel Quinlan 07:05, Sep 26, 2003 (UTC)

Restructuring

I see 24.169.71.157 has restructured the article. Unfortunately there seems to be something in his/her software which has REALLY screwed up all the accented letters in the article and interlanguage links. I shall try to correct them as best I can... -- Arwel 22:16, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Done. Apart from the interlanguage links for Catalan (Anglès) and Spanish (Idioma inglés) and for ë,ï, and ö because I couldn't find the codes, I have used HTML style e.g. ntilde so we don't get this problem again. -- Arwel 22:44, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Second or third or fourth most popular?

I wonder about the following assertion in the article:

is the third most popular world language, as measured by the number of native speakers, which was around 402 million in 2002. It is also the most popular second and learning language in the world

English is generally considered to be the second-most-spoken language in the world. While some sources say that there are slightly more true first-language speakers of Spanish than English in the world, there are certainly more people in the world with a knowledge of English than Spanish, and more people use English on a daily basis around the world than Spanish. In other words, English is considered to be the world's second most-spoken language, after Chinese, and I think this article should reflect that fact. I also think the grammar of the last sentence I quote above should be cleaned up. The use of "second" makes me think it's the "second most popular" learning language rather than the most popular learning language, which it is. Moncrief 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

First, I think the "ranking" figure is incomplete and perhaps misleading — it should be titled "rank (native speakers)" and there should be additional ranks for other figures such as total number of speakers, etc.

Second, just rephrase to "most popular second language" or "most popular non-native language" or something like that. Daniel Quinlan 19:50, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)

From the article Spanish language:

Spanish or Castilian is an Iberian Romance language, and the third or fourth most spoken language in the world. It is spoken as a first language by about 352 million people, or by 417 million including non-native speakers (according to 1999 estimates)

From this article:

The English language is a West Germanic language that originated in England. It is the third most common first language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002.

Which article is right? --203.52.130.138 05:09, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some websites including wiki's Hindi article claims that Hindi is the second most common native language (English third).

The most recent data on List_of_languages_by_total_speakers is actually fourth :\ This is frankly a mess right now... the page for Arabic_language says that Arabic is also fourth, whereas at List_of_languages_by_total_speakers it is actually second now... Argyrios 02:07, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Most confusingly of all, the opening paragraph now calls it the second most widely spoken, but later says "second or third." Surely we should go with the safer position (the latter) if we can't come to a decision?

Potato

Potato -- is this really from Spanish? I thought that Spanish and other European languages used words from the old native term in Peru (I suppose that would be Quechua), e.g., papa.

Ultimately it's from Quechua (or Nahuatl, didn't potatoes come from the Aztecs?), but English got it from Spanish later. Adam Bishop 16:49, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

(I think that potatoes are Peruvian, which means Incan ?) I guess that I thought that the Spanish word is papa, from the Quechua (?), but the English word is potato, from elsewhere (?).

Online I find: "[ETYMOLOGY: 16th Century: from Spanish patata white potato, from Taino batata sweet potato]" Rmhermen 00:29, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Exclusive cultural emblem

What's an "exclusive cultural emblem"? Or rather, I suppose a flag is an "exclusive cultural emblem", but what does it mean to suggest (or deny) that the English language is the "exclusive cultural emblem" of native English speakers. Andy G 22:23, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Spanglish

Should Spanglish really be listed as an American dialect? It's not really English or Spanish, nor is it considered an official dialect by either. Even its own article refers to it as a "range of language contact phenomena". Certainly it is notable, but not as a dialect of English. Zarggg 00:24, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Rank contradiction

The Rank given in this page and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_speakers are totally contradicting -- Rrjanbiah 07:24, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

English is the 4th most spoken language of the World, not the 3rd. The 3rd is Spanish (Castillian).

2.1 billion speakers?! In my country, Portugal, English is eared on TV (what doesn't happen in the rest of the European Union) and is taught at school, but I’m sure that not even half of the population speaks English. But I’m also sure that almost half of the population can understand some English, but few speak it.

The world is not so anglicised has one might think.

Most spoken languages 1- Chinese 2- Hindi 3- Spanish 4- English 5- Bengali 6- Portuguese

Pedro

For a help in loanwords: Banana in Spanish is Plátano. In Portuguese Banana. Alcove in Spanish is Alcoba. In Portuguese Alcova.

The information in the chart that English is spoken in 105 countries (UK + US + 103 more) is sort of silly. (1) Because English is probably spoken by SOMEONE in every country in the world (as are other languages) but, more importantly, because (2) how were those countries determined? It's obviously not an official or de facto language in that many countries. So what's the determiner of whether or not it's "spoken" in each of those countries? Better, I think, would be just to list the countries in which English is a primary language by name. Moncrief, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with that. That's obvious, really. In fact, I'm using Wikipedia to practice my English that I've learned at high-school, I was forgetting it. It is not even the most popular. In Latin Europe, French is even more popular. I've always preferred English (it's a different language and not to weird as German), but it is not as important as one might think. German for us is the way to make money, if you speak it you might get a good job, cause German companies prefer them to others. In fact, English is today’s Lingua Franca, don’t dought that. But I would never consider English as my second language, not even Spanish I would (please don’t come to Portugal speaking Spanish, I speak it cause I’ve been a lot in Spain, and if you speak it in Portugal, people might get nervous with you and would say things that you wouldn’t like). Talking about Spain, the situation of English there is even worse, they only ear English with UK or US tourists and learn it at school (who prefer it! Like in here), and very few Spaniards speak it. Daily, I use just Portuguese for every situation. Well I’ve talked about my own experience; maybe, in other parts of the world, its different.

One can only consider the countries were there English is the native language for a long time (Spoken by generations) and where it is official (there who speak it). It is obvious that English is the native language of the US and many other former English colonies, even if not official. Pedro

The numbers come from the Ethnologue report for English (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ENG), which cites 105 countries as containing populations that speak English. They're all listed and described on that page. --Nohat 22:02, 2004 Mar 3 (UTC)

Actually, if you look carefully at that link, many of those places listed aren't really countries (Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, dependent British territories...). I still say that "105 countries" is quite arbitrary. Some of those countries listed have fewer than 10,000 speakers of English and other countries aren't listed where English teaching and second-language English use is actually a fairly big deal. Moncrief, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with the truth?

Could someone explain, what's wrong with:

 U.S. Congress annually adds new words.

I don't find anything wrong with this sentence. People who deleted this sentence might be non-neutral and US-chauvinist.--Rrjanbiah 13:36, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've never heard of this, and neither has the person who deleted it, and it seems very fishy to me. If you could provide some evidence it is true, then we can talk about putting it back. --Nohat 15:12, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

I lived in the USA most of my life, and I've never heard of this, either. Are there any citations (e.g. media reports, something in the public domain Congressional Record)? If not, I say we take this out. Kwertii 19:12, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The U.S. Congress does not create new words and legislate them into use. Even the OED, which you can could on for spelling, meaning and pronunciation, does not prescribe the use of new words, they simply describe new words that have entered the language organically. Which is not to say that Congress is not a master of euphemism (perhaps that's what rrjanbiah is getting at?), and therefore does, perhaps, create commonly used new words and phrases, but the same could certainly said of business and pop culture. But there is not, nor has there ever been, any official body charged with regulating, maintaining or updating the English language, only the common speakers who use it every day. jengod 19:20, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

Ok. No problem. I was thinking, it should be true. And for me deleting of it sounds more chauvinistic. --Rrjanbiah 06:45, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Obviously everyone here is forgetting "freedom fries". 8)

Engma enigma

"Engma (/ŋ/) is a non-phonemic allophone of /n/ in some British accents, appearing only before /g/". What? I've lived in Britain for 10 years, and never heard anyone from any region say "hang" with a g pronounced - or with an n. I think this is a misremembering or faulty editing of the (I believe correct) claim that /ŋ/ can be analyzed phonemically as n+g throughout, if your theory of phonetics is sufficiently broad to allow morpheme boundaries as a valid input to phonological rules. This should be edited, unless someone can come up with a specific dialect where /ŋ/ appears only before g. - مصطفى

I've heard hang with a /g/ - I think it occurs in some Lancastrian accents. it also occurs in hanging in the same accent. ha/ŋ//g/i/ŋ//g/. Secretlondon 19:22, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! In that case, I'll change it to say "northern English". مصطفى

It is pronounced only by few regional accents, examples escape me at the moment. That said, the majority of Britons pronounce it 'correctly' -jonbob

English has lingua franca status, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the United States of America and to a lesser extent that of the United Kingdom. Hm... the phrase "lesser extent" seems to ignore the influence the extent British empire had on the use of the language internationally. It's arguable that if the British Empire had collapsed after the American revolution that French or Spanish might now be the lingua franca of the world. Mintguy (T) 09:59, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm not arguing the importance of US but I think the main reason for English becoming lingua franca is mostly due to its not too difficult grammar which makes it extremely easy to learn... If China had a similar influence on world politics and culture, would more people speaking Chinese? I don't think so. Alensha 15:37, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Simple grammar, sure, but horrible, horrible spelling, which comes from being the lingua franca and also being willing (to anthropomorphize a language) to accept words from any other language without changing the spelling much. A lingua franca is an economic phenomenon, whether centered on the west coast of Africa (Swahili) or the world economy (English). Past world choices for this role: Latin, then French, now English. If the Chinese had a similar influence on world politics and culture, which could certainly happen, then, yes, many people in business would speak Chinese. People from this country already learn Chinese to do business in China. Ortolan88 16:51, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As a native English speaker I agree that English spelling can be a bloody nightmare to say the least, but - and this is quite important - one does not need to spell to learn a language. English syntax and grammar seem logical enough to make it a fairly easy language to learn from scratch. In my experience, German is similar in this respect but with more predictable spelling.

English grammar is not particularly simple, I don't know why you think so. Your comparison with Chinese is particularly bad, since many speakers of Chinese seem to think it has a far simpler grammar (of course, it has a complex syntax). In general, I think describing a language as "simple" is a red herring; no modern human languages can be simpler than others and still be able to convey the necessary range of shades of meaning. Orthography, on the other hand, is a whole different matter. -Lethe | Talk 21:38, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Loan Words

I think the loan words in here are dubious in origin. Did someone used a dictionary? I believe not. Here’s some, because of my nationality and knowledge of Iberian History/Culture/Language.

Banana in Spanish is Plátano! And Spain almost didn’t settle much in Africa. It most possible came via Portuguese. I’m almost 100% sure on this one. Bananas were presented to Europeans via Portuguese, much like many other things.

Mulatto is a Portuguese term and the said “created race by the Portuguese”, who knows Portuguese History and History of the Discoveries knows what I’m saying. Though in North America many Portuguese discoveries are “made” to be Spanish. (Strange, I say). So, If Mulatto came to English via Spanish. The word is Portuguese, if it would be Spanish it would be differently written and Spoken. Please, see a dictionary to strengthen your view.Pedro 19:41, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, the Oxford English Dictionary explicitly specifies "Portuguese or Spanish" as the source of the word "banana", and my Spanish dictionary gives "banana" as the Spanish word for "banana" in Peru and the River Plate area and "banano" in Central America and Colombia, so it is quite possible that the English word "banana" was borrowed from Spanish.

Banano is NOT a Banana! Well, It is very similar :) Bananos are the bigger ones and they have a difference that I don’t know. Banana is an African word, not American, don't confuse things. Friend, even if Banana in Peru is Banana, that doesn’t change nothing... Maybe they have a Brazilian influence (?). The word is clearly African, not Amerindian. The Spanish discoveries and conquests started +-75 years after the Portuguese!Pedro 21:18, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My Colombian friend says that in Colombia at least plátano is the general word for bananas and plantains, but banano is the word specifically for "banana". He also says that banana is also used as a synonym for banano but that it is relatively uncommon. The point of all this is not to claim that the Spanish were first to discover bananas, but simply to demonstrate that the word "banana", whether in the form banano or banana, is current in at least some dialects of Spanish, indicating that it may have been more widespread in the past. No one is disputing that bananas origin is in Africa. It is clear that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to borrow the Wolof word banãna. What is in question is how the word got borrowed into English. The Merriam-Webster dictionary explains that the Spanish word banana was definitely borrowed from Portuguese, but according to the experts at the Oxford English Dictionary, it is unclear whether the English word "banana" was borrowed from Portuguese or Spanish. Nohat 23:53, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

For "mulatto", the OED says:

[Partly < Spanish mulato, noun ‘person of mixed race’ (1588) and adjective ‘of mixed race’ (< mulo mule (see MULE n.1) + -ato (see below), and partly < Portuguese mulato, adjective and noun (a1515 with reference to a ‘person of mixed race’, 1526 in sense ‘young mule’, 18th cent. in sense ‘dark colour’; < mulo (see MULE n.1) + -ato: see below). Cf. Middle French mullatre (1544), French mulâtre (1614; with assimilation of suffix to -âtre: cf. -ASTER1), Italian mulatto (mid 16th cent.), and also German Mulatte (18th cent.; 16th cent. as Molate, 17th cent. as Mullato, Mulate).

Nohat 01:38, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)

humm? Mula (port. word for Mule) = Horse + donkey. Mulato = like a Mula (in form of...), because: White + Black. Possible? Pedro 21:18, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Whatever the case is, the OED in unequivocal in explaining that the word was partly borrowed from Spanish and partly borrowed from Portuguese. Nohat 23:53, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

Since you seemed to be interested in English words that have been borrowed from Portuguese, I did a quick search through the OED for such words and added the commonly-used ones to this page. Nohat 02:23, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)

not really. I saw that, and I didn't Agree. I visit this page because I use it as a "wiki source" for Portuguese language.Pedro 21:18, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How many words are there in the English language?

This source (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JohnnyLing.shtml) is talking about million. I also found this (http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:GV_nthE3lyMJ:daphne.palomar.edu/jquintero/docs/Doing%2520a%2520Number%2520on%2520English.doc+english+%22number+of+words%22&hl=en&start=7&ie=UTF-8) which states that the Oxford English Dictionary states to contain 615,000 words (not including supplements)...
AskOxford (http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/oed/facts/) talks about 300,000 headwords. Guaka 12:28, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have removed the contradiction between this page and List of languages by total speakers by changing the number of first speakers to 354 m (6,302 m * 5.61%). Additionally, I have changed the second language speakers to more sensible data, using information from http://www.the-bag-lady.co.uk/wct/wf/index.asp?cont=worldlanguages Marcoscramer 15:05, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

What is the source of "the-bag-lady.co.uk"? It rather blows its credibility with me when I browse that list of countries and languages on the page you reference, and see that in Belgium they apparently speak Dutch, French, and Flemish... (Flemish is a form of Dutch, the actual official languages are Dutch (Flemish), French, and German), or that the languages of Greenland are "Danish and Eskimo" Eskimo??! The language is "Greenlandic"! -- Arwel 21:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Accents

About Accents: It is rather sad and annoying that the accents get dropped. It may not be the sole reason but it would seem likely that it contributes to things like pronouncing coupé coop etc. It might be viewed as a natural formation of a related word in a language, but it is irritating and probably even contributes to anti-americanism. --blades 23:33, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

Well, it's actually the British who mangle French words far worse than Americans do. Look at how they pronounce the words garage, ballet, valet, cafe, Devereaux, for example. But in all seriousness, when words get borrowed their pronunciation gets altered to conform to the borrowing language's phonology. In fact English is exceptional in the degree that English speakers make an effort to make the borrowed word sound like the original. Most other language (Japanese, for example) mangle up borrowed words so much that they hardly resemble their source. When the Japanese borrowed the word "street", for example, it became "sutorito" and "baseball" became "besobaru". Coupé be pronounced "coop" is slavishly conformant to the original in comparison. Nohat 02:33, 2004 May 11 (UTC)

I don't think Japanese is that great of an example of that, because my understanding is that their phonology doesn't allow words like "street" and "baseball", and "sutorito" is as close as they can come with their (C)V syllable structure. -Branddobbe 06:52, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

I admit I may well be misinformed myself. I don't speak, even less know, many languages. Nevertheless there doesn't seem much that can be done. In scope of Wikipedia, there is the question of where and whose accents are kept or added on words. --blades 11:45, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

We'd avoid this problem if, when we borrowed words from other languages, we'd spell them like they were natural English words . . . -Branddobbe 01:14, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Like when Welsh borrowed garage from British English, and now spell it garej? -- Arwel 11:20, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

The accents are missing (not from café though), but the majority of Britons seem to pronounce them in such a way that your average Frenchman would not cringe to an extraordinary amount.

And already I forgot what I was here about in the first place :) I failed to find explanation on preferred English punctuation. I am aware that it is rather random and lacking, but it would be nice if there was some page about conventions and rationale. Especially on a style that is preferred on Wikipedia pages. --blades 23:37, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

This appears to be in Wikipedia:Manual of Style. I'll leave the request for an actual Wikipedia entry. --blades 01:07, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Number of foreign language speakers

Looking at the numbers mentioned in articles on other languages, the numbers of foreign language speakers seems very little compared to English (es:65m, fr:51m), which seems to suggest that we are counting with different measures compared to the 1,500 in this article. One can only speak of 1,500 m speakers, if one counts everyone who can just say greetings, but nothing else. But if we count like that, we would have to change all the articles on other languages as well. Instead, I propose to adjust this article. Thus I have changes the information in the table from "350 to 1,500 m" to "350 to 1,500 m". Marcoscramer 21:24, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Minor: Forms of English in Asia

I hope to have a brief discussion with someone knowledgeable about the subject. However, from my experience, there is no such thing as a distinctly 'Pakistani English.' Indian English had many years in development and none of the languages spoken in Pakistan are particular to Pakistan, being that are speakers of Urdu, Hindi, Sindhi, and Punjabi in India in equal if not greater volume. I would appreciate if, in the next week, someone could offer me an example of how typically and supposed 'Pakistani' English in any single way differs from Indian English. I should add that there really is no such thing as a distinctly Pakistani English since the partition is but 50 years old and people of the Indian subcontinent have been speaking what is today known as Indian English (inclusive of accents, particularly Indian words) for many years and there is no difference between the acknowledged Indian English and the new 'Pakistani English.' Unfortunately, I fear its inclusion stems from national separatism rather than bona fide linguistics. Post-debate I should hope to either remove it or be convinced of its necessity.--LordSuryaofShropshire 05:32, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

Taglish is not a form of English, as Taglish refers to Tagalog mixed with English words. The variant of English spoken in the Philippines can be properly called Philippine English. I have removed the link for 'Taglish' and substituted 'Philippine English'. --Ronaldo Guevara 04:09, Aug 05, 2004 (UTC)

Native Language

I just wanted to know what the definition here of native language is. If it means that the language is not learned in school, but in fact people grow up speaking the language and inherit it naturally from family and within the community, then countries like India can safely be said to count English as one of their natural languages. --LordSuryaofShropshire 23:21, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Based on the lack of response to my two posts, I am going ahead with two changes. I am removing Pakistani English as a listed variant since it makes little sense (otherwise we should include Tibetan English, Bangladeshi English, Sri Lankan English, and have a general English for each country in the Indian subcontinent) given the fact that the English spoken in the Indian subcontinent has always been collectively known as Indian English. Secondly, I am placing India as one of the countries in which English is found as a mother tongue. The reason I do this is because there are large, extremely noticeable communities all over the country in which children grow up knowing English better than any other language. This is especially true in large conurbations such as Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore and in places like Goa. --LordSuryaofShropshire 19:45, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

I have thoroughly updated the Indian English page, so it should be adequate to answer all questions about subcontinental brands of English. Should it be lacking, feel free to add. --LordSuryaofShropshire 04:43, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Okay...

I understand why the edit was made to my change of making the worldwide pronunciation the footnote, but I have to put the other change (of adding the /a/ phoneme) back in; that distinction is recognized in most US and British dictionaries I've seen.

/x/ in loanwords from German

"The voiceless velar fricative (/x/) is used (..) by some speakers for loanwords from German (..) like reich (raix) (..)"

Is that really true? I ask, because in German, "reich" is not pronounced /raix/, but /raiC/. The /x/ is only used after a, o and u, whereas the /C/ is used in all other cases. --Neg 14:22, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is no distinction in any dialect of English of any of the fricatives back of palatoalveolar (sh). That is, [C], [x], and [X] are all borrowed into English as the same sound, whether as /x/, or as something else (usually /h/ or /k/, depending on whether the sound occurs in the syllable onset or coda—/h/ in onsets, /k/ in codas— hence chanukah is pronounced with initial /h/ and mach is pronounced with final /k/). The only English speakers who differentiate between different varieties of back fricatives are those who have in-depth knowledge of a language or languages that make such a distinction. "Reich" might be pronounced with [C] in German, but it's pronounced with [x] or [k] in English. See also Talk:List of words of disputed pronunciation#reich and the consonant sound of .22she.22. Nohat 03:44, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moving this page to English (language)

Was a bad idea. Don't do it again. If you want to suggest changing the disambiguation policy for language pages, do it on the appropriate policy discussion page, but don't just start moving pages around. Thanks. Nohat 03:44, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

English vowel chart

Has anyone else noticed that the English vowel chart is missing a vowel? The missing vowel is the Open back rounded vowel (ɒ), which should be shown in the lower right-hand corner of the diagram. Could someone fix this? -- AxSkov 08:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Geographic distribution

Some nitpicks on this section, it really makes it look like most English speakers are American which they are not. The USA has 300,000 people (300,000,000?) or so of which about 10,000 (10,000,000?) or so (HIGHLY conservative) don't have English as their native language. Surely South Africa makes up more then part of that 3.7% also?

It is an official language, but not native, in ..... : What does this mean? It is not native anywhere it is spoken really though I suppose if you count native as anglo saxon then there are a lot of countries listed above where it isn't 'native' but isn't recognised as such (i.e. Pakistan is under not native however India is under one of the primary languages).

Ireland: English is the language more or less everyone in Ireland speaks except a few people out in the middle of nowhere, go check the Wikipedia page for Gaelic, only 40,000 people are native speakers of it. Are the Irish counted under British on the graph?

Number of Words in English

This section doesn't actually deliver what it promises, namely the number of words in English. Instead, it points to a site, the "Global Language Monitor", which gives a number with no discussion of how it was calculated, what it means, etc. (although the section says it gives "the methodology to arrive at this estimation"). It also mentions the name of the author unnecessarily, so I suspect it is just a self-promotion link. I recommend that we remove this section until we can actually put some useful content in it.

I have replaced this section with a discussion of why the "number of words in English" is not well defined. The old content was just link spamming as far as I can tell. --Macrakis 06:21, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Spam" is generally untargeted. The link was to a specific page about the number of words in English. That's not to say it was necessarily good; but it wasn't spam. I don't know if the author's name carries any weight but if it does it is a good reason to keep it in.

As for the new section it doesn't quite fit right with the rest of the article - the tone is conversational - full of rhetorical questions etc. Whether you believe it is sensible to talk about the number of words in English is, in a sense, irrelevant. If other people have tried to come up with a specific number then we should quote them. Pcb21| Pete 08:20, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, it may not be linkspamming... but take a look at the page, and you'll see that, as I said before, the number it gives is not justified in any way, it gives no references to solid sources, it is flippant in tone, etc. I have no reason to believe that the author is any sort of expert on the subject. By the way, I did leave that comment here in Talk for a while to see if others had comments on the subject.

As for the writing style, I'll be happy to make it less vivid, though I can't get to that right away. I'd also be happy to see good, well-contextualized numbers cited in the article—but I hadn't found any. --Macrakis 12:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A little more on the subject, since the same BS content was put back into the page. Link-spamming is often targetted: the author of a page on X wants to have links from reputable sources (like Wikipedia) to increase his Pagerank in the search engines. The actual language that was put into the article said nothing substantive. Read it closely. It doesn't actually say what data were collected, how they were analyzed, or what they mean. Useless. --Macrakis 07:00, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pie Chart

I would like the removal of the pie chart. It is at least 10 years out of date and is based upon statistically flawed data. The data is supposedly taken from http://www.alt-usage-english.org/Distribution_English_speakers.shtml. But it is flawed - For example for the UK the original data lists -

English 56,830,000
Scots-Gaelic 80,000
Welsh 560,000
Other 950,000

and takes no account of the fact that the vast marjority of the Welsh, Scots-Gaelic and "Other" speakers are in fact bilingual. Jooler 12:10, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

furthermore the page specifically states "According to this information, the number of mother-tongue English speakers ..... 69% of these live in the United States". where does 70.7% come from?!? Jooler 12:32, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The chart has been updated. Dumbledore 16:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Engrish

how about adding Engrish, the article about English spoken by Japanese people, to the table and the article? It is not a dialect of course, but a kind of variant. I think there are all those different variants, different pronounciations, different usages of words, etc., of English, so why not add Engrish? Just want to hear some opinion, instead of just adding it. Ben (talk) 09:05, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Number of native speakers exaggerated

Someone changed the number of native speakers from 402 to 514 million, based on an "estimate" by the World Almanac (http://www.worldalmanac.com/index-n.htm), which I consider a unappropriate reference for linguistic data. The previous figure (402 million) was already quite large (compared to most estimates, which are about 350 million), but 514 (!) million is simply ridiculous. I don't know how the World Almanac obtained that estimate, but I regard it as completely exaggerated. From a linguistic viewpoint, it's nonsense. Where are all those native speakers supposed to come from? According to List_of_languages_by_total_speakers, the median of five different estimates is 335.5 million native speakers. The deviation of the World Almanac estimate is enormous.

According to a British Council Study from 2000 (data from 1997): Native speakers in the four largest core English speaking countries: US 226,710 UK 56,990 Canada 19,700 Australia 15,316 Rest: 18,581 Total: 337,297

Where are the remaining 514-337 = 177 million native speakers from? Dumbledore 17:08, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the World Almanac estimate includes second language speakers. That would make sense. Dumbledore 17:37, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

ng

Ingma doesn't count as a separate phoneme. /n/ just turns into /[ingma]/ before /g/ or /k/. 'k' is always pronounced when it follows 'n'. 'g' can either be pronounced or unpronounced depending on the word but there are no /[ingma]g/ vs /[ingma]/ minimal pairs. That explains why it is only allowed in syllable codas. I don't care about the growth of wikipedia enough to change the article, though.

Unfortunately there are near minimal pairs, such as finger and singer, that are not so easily glossed over with "'g' can either be pronounced or unpronounced depending on the word". Something has to specify underlyingly that there is a distinction there, and applying Occam's razor, the simplest theoretical model to do that is to posit underlying eng. Nohat 00:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Also, there are no minimal pairs between /eng/ and /h/, but no one would argue that one of them is not a separate phoneme. It's definitely better to posit phonemes that actually occur in the surface form than to posit phonemes that never appear in the surface form. Nohat 01:21, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

There are plenty of minimal pairs differentiating "n" and "engma", like sin/sing, win/wing. Phonemes are about sound, not spelling. There is no /g/ sound in these words, <ng> is just the bigraph to spell engma. Only in case of "engma" + "g" sound, the spelling is <ng> as well. −Woodstone 07:53, 2005 May 4 (UTC)

Well, I think the anon was trying to make a phonological argument that it is unnecessary to posit /eng/ as a separate phoneme, that it is underlyingly a sequence of /n/ and /g/, and the /g/ gets deleted in most cases. It's not a totally unreasonable theory—there are phenomena in English that might point to such a configuration, such as the phonotactic restrictions on /eng/ and the absence of minimal pairs for /eng/ and the sequence /eng/ + /g/–however, there are some theoretic problems with the theory that mean that it ultimately doesn't hold up. But it's not so simple to dismiss. Nohat 17:46, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

It's an academic discussion, since we seem to agree on the outcome. Of course I do not contest that historically it could have grown that way. However I fail to see how a "silent g" can be expressed in a phonetic notation; silent what, how would you express it's not a silent "b" or anything else; it just does not make sense. −Woodstone 20:59, 2005 May 4 (UTC)

This is not really the forum to get into a complicated discussion of generative phonology, but I can try to explain the gist. The idea is that for every morpheme in the lexicon there is an underlying form that can be represented abstractly as a series of phonemes, which do not represent actual sounds, but abstract categories of sounds. The surface representation is how a word is actually produced, and the phonology of the language provides a set of rules for how the underlying form is transformed into the surface representation. Typically IPA symbols are used for the underlying form even though they don't correspond to actual sounds but instead to abstract categories of sounds. As for positing "silent" phonemes, there are various phonological rules that involve deleting phonemes under certain conditions. As an undisputed such example, we have the word secretary, which in its underlying form has a vowel between the /t/ and the /r/ towards the end of the word. In many dialects of British English, the phonology deletes that vowel and the word is pronounced something like "secretry". But we know that there must be a vowel in the underlying form because the same morpheme appears in secretarial (which is formed from the original morpheme secretary + the derivational morpheme +al), and in that word, there is a vowel between the /t/ and the /r/. In secretary it gets deleted because of the sequence of unstressed vowels, but in secretarial it gets pronounced because there is a stress shift. The theory with /n/ + /g/ -> /eng/ works in a similar way, although it is much harder to prove because there are no cases that occur at morpheme boundaries so the surface forms are invariant. But the idea that there can be phonemes in underlying forms that get deleted has a strong theoretic basis (although it must be conceded that there are competing phonological theories that work differently). There aren't many examples in English, but other languages have very complicated phonological rules that require positing phonemes in underlying forms that get deleted under certain circumstances. Nohat 22:06, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Most such cases (and your secretary example) are highly questionable theoretically. Generally the situation is that there has been historical change, often divergence between cognate words, and the phonologist makes the claim that this history is repeated mentally each time a speaker says the word, through "rules" (in generative phonology) or "constraints" (in optimality theory). Psychological studies indicate that this is unlikely. Instead, people know lots and lots of words, even multiple pronunciations they've heard of the same word, and there is a certain amount of cognitive connection between the phonetic elements of these words (both below and above the phonological level), but little active, on-going phonological derivation. kwami 07:41, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

repetitive formulation in intro

The expression It is the most widely learned language among those learning any second language seems unneccesarily repetitive: learned language learning language. Is there no way of expressing this more succinctly in English? One would have hoped that the article about English would be a model of use of English. I am one of those who learnt it as the second language, so my suggestion was reverted within seconds. (Is there something wrong with my use of "the second language" here?) In Swedish it could be expressed as "Det är det vanligaste andraspråket" (roughly "It is the most common second-language.")--Etxrge 07:27, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

It is the most widely learned second language. Mark ¹ 07:28, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Role in oppression in India

The following has probably and rightfully been removed from the intro. After some editing it might find use in India or related article.

English is also deeply implicated in structures of oppression and exclusion in India. It is the language by which a vast majority of Indians are kept from having a say in their own affairs. It is the language in which all research in all branches of Social Sciences and Humanities that have to do with India is conceived and carried out. Most academicians in these fields not only cannot conjugate any verb in any Indian vernacular any other way than in second person imperative (Gangaa Din, paani laao), they take pride in the fact that their minds are not contaminated with Indian vernaculars. Series of tomes on Indian History are conceived and written in English, published as Subaltern Studies, without anybody asking how many subalterns in India can speak read or write English. As an African writer noted, English is not an innocent language. Otto Jespersen said it is the most masculine of all languages, and its muscular masculinity is evident in its bloody hands.

More than half a century after the so-called independence, a clipped accent opens doors of privilege in India--Etxrge 18:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

English in Ukrainian

Can someone please add an interlanguage link to the corresponding article in the Ukrainian Wikipedia, if it exists? Thanks. - dcljr 20:34, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

...I think it's this one maybe??? - dcljr 20:42, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Okay, someone did it who at least knows Cyrillic. Thanks. - dcljr 21:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Why is /tS/ as a pronunciation of tu in future, culture marked as "dialect specific"? Isn't it pronounced like that in Standard English too?

Why is /tS/ as a pronunciation of tu in future, culture marked as "dialect specific"? Isn't it pronounced like that in Standard English too? --81.211.159.40 15:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

/x/

In that table of sounds and the letters that represent them, /x/ should probably be moved to dialect-specific. American English doesn't use this sound and as far as I know the only dialect that does include this phoneme is Scottish English.

Iotated vowel

I wikilinked the word iotated in the Vowels section to the article on iotation. I hadn't come across the word before. It seems to be a useful word to describe the insertion of the palatal approximant. However the current article on iotation focuses strongly on Slavic languages and describes iotation as 'suffixing' /j/ to a consonant rather than 'prefixing' /j/ to a vowel. Would anyone like to comment on this, specifically whether iotation is too narrow a term to be used to describe English vowels or whether perhaps the current wikipedia article on iotation needs to be broadened in its definition? Oska 06:54, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Indian English Speakers

Ok, Ive been doing a little bit of looking into just how many english speakers there are in india and it seems a little confusing thanks to their census which only has two language options whereas many indians can speak three. apparently in the 1981 census 0.5% of indians put english as their first language so thats 5 million english speakers in india.

Found this nice source on the number of second language Indian speakers - "According to linguist David Crystal, India's population passed a billion a couple of years ago, and if you couple this with the fact that a 1997 'India Today' survey suggested that about a third of the population has the ability to carry on a conversation in English you end up with around 350 million English language speakers in India - more than the combined populations of Britain and the United States."

Whilst im at it the number of first language english speakers the article says is 340 million. as one poster says "According to a British Council Study from 2000 (data from 1997): Native speakers in the four largest core English speaking countries: US 226,710 UK 56,990 Canada 19,700 Australia 15,316 Rest: 18,581 Total: 337,297" this rest is incorrect, zimbabwe alone has 12.5 million first language english speakers, there's at least 5 million more first language speakers in south africa which i dont have accurate figures for, 2.5 million odd for ireland and jamaica each. those four countries then are totalling over 20 million, theres 4 million more in new zealand. also forgotten is the number of expats, there's over 2 million british and american expats living in europe. for example in france only 6000 out of the over 100,000 americans living there even bothered to fill in the census. what about kenya? ghana? botswana? 337 million is definitely an underestimate and its probably between 350 and 375.

Since there are only 12.5 million people in Zimbabwe, I think you misplaced a decimal point. 1% European (assuming they're all English speaking) would make 125,000 English speakers. kwami 03:55, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

From the CIA World Factbook [2] (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/zi.html)

Population: 12,746,990
Languages: English (official), Shona, Sindebele (the language of the Ndebele, sometimes called Ndebele), numerous but minor tribal dialects
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write English, total population: 90.7%, male: 94.2%, female: 87.2% (2003 est.)

Multiplying the population times the literacy rate yields 11.56 million people who can read and write English in Zimbabwe. I don't know the country at all, but those statistics suggest that with such as high percentage of English literacy in Zimbabwe that even most of those people who can't read or write English can probably speak and understand English. BlankVerse ∅ 12:03, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but that's not what you said: you said "12.5 million first language english speakers", which I took to mean 'native English speakers'. English is almost exclusively a second (or third) language among the Shona and Ndebele. kwami 21:09, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

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