Talk:English language

Content moved from the phonology section

Regional variation in consonants

There are significant dialectal variations in the pronunciation of several consonants:

• The th sounds /θ/ and /ð/ are sometimes pronounced as /f/ and /v/ in Cockney, and as dental plosives (contrasting with the usual alveolar plosives) in some dialects of Irish English. In African American Vernacular English, /ð/ has is realized as [d] word initially, and as [v] syllable medially.
• In North American and Australian English, /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as an alveolar flap [ɾ] in many positions between vowels: thus words like latter and ladder /læɾər/ are pronounced in the same way. This sound change is called intervocalic alveolar flapping, and is a type of rhotacism. /t/ is often pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ] (t-glottalization, a form of debuccalization) after vowels in British English, as in butter /ˈbʌʔə/, and in other dialects before a nasal, as in button /ˈbʌʔən/.
• In most dialects, the rhotic consonant /r/ is pronounced as an alveolar, postalveolar, or retroflex approximant [ɹ ɹ̠ ɻ], and often causes vowel changes or is elided (see below), but in Scottish it may be a flap or trill [ɾ r].
• In some cases, the palatal approximant or semivowel /j/, especially in the diphthong /juː/, is elided or causes consonant changes (yod-dropping and yod-coalescence).
  • Through yod-dropping, historical /j/ in the diphthong /juː/ is lost. In both RP and GA, yod-dropping happens in words like chew /ˈtʃuː/, and frequently in suit /ˈsuːt/, historically /ˈtʃju ˈsjuːt/. In words like tune, dew, new /ˈtjuːn ˈdjuː ˈnjuː/, RP keeps /j/, but GA drops it, so that these words have the vowels of too, do, and noon /ˈtuː ˈduː ˈnuːn/ in GA. A few conservative dialects like Welsh English have less yod-dropping than RP and GA, so that chews and choose /ˈtʃɪuz ˈtʃuːz/ are distinguished, and Norfolk English has more, so that beauty /ˈbjuːti/ is pronounced like booty /ˈbuːti/.
  • Through yod-coalescence, alveolar stops and fricatives /t d s z/ are palatalized and change to postalveolar affricates or fricatives /tʃ dʒ ʃ ʒ/ before historical /j/. In GA and traditional RP, this only happens in unstressed syllables, as in education, nature, and measure /ˌɛd͡ʒʊˈkeɪʃən ˈneɪt͡ʃər ˈmɛʒər/. In other dialects, such as modern RP or Australian, it happens in stressed syllables: thus due and dew are pronounced like Jew /ˈdʒuː/. In colloquial speech, it happens in phrases like did you? /dɪdʒuː/."

Regional variation

The pronunciation of some vowels varies between dialects:

• In conservative RP and in GA, the vowel of back is a near-open [æ], but in modern RP and some North American dialects it is open [a]. The vowel of words like bath is /æ/ in GA, but /ɑː/ in RP (trap–bath split). In some dialects, /æ/ sometimes or always changes to a long vowel or diphthong, like [æː] or [eə] (bad–lad split and /æ/ tensing): thus man /mæn/ is pronounced with a diphthong like [meən] in many North American dialects.
• The RP vowel /ɒ/ corresponds to /ɑ/ (father–bother merger) or /ɔ/ (lot–cloth split) in GA. Thus box is RP /bɒks/ but GA /bɑks/, while cloth is RP /klɒθ/ but GA /klɔθ/. Some North American dialects merge /ɔ/ with /ɑ/, except before /r/ (cot–caught merger).
• In Scottish, Irish and Northern English, and in some dialects of North American English, the diphthongs /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ (/oʊ/) are pronounced as monophthongs (monophthongization). Thus, day and no are pronounced as /ˈdeɪ ˈnəʊ/ in RP, but as [ˈdeː ˈnoː] or [ˈde ˈno] in other dialects.
• In North American English, the diphthongs /aɪ aʊ/ sometimes undergo a vowel shift called Canadian raising. This sound change affects the first element of the diphthong, and raises it from open [a], similar to the vowel of bra, to near-open [ʌ], similar to the vowel of but. Thus ice and out [ˈʌɪs ˈʌʊt] are pronounced with different vowels from eyes and loud [ˈaɪz ˈlaʊd]. Raising of /aɪ/ sometimes occurs in GA, but raising of /aʊ/ mainly occurs in Canadian English.

GA and RP vary in their pronunciation of historical /r/ after a vowel at the end of a syllable (in the syllable coda). GA is a rhotic dialect, meaning that it pronounces /r/ at the end of a syllable, but RP is non-rhotic, meaning that it loses /r/ in that position. English dialects are classified as rhotic or non-rhotic depending on whether they elide /r/ like RP or keep it like GA.

In GA, the combination of a vowel and the letter ⟨r⟩ is pronounced as an r-coloured vowel in nurse and butter [ˈnɝs ˈbʌtɚ], and as a vowel and an approximant in car and four [ˈkɑɹ ˈfɔɹ].

In RP, the combination of a vowel and ⟨r⟩ at the end of a syllable is pronounced in various different ways. When stressed, it was once pronounced as a centering diphthong ending in [ə], a sound change known as breaking or diphthongization, but nowadays is usually pronounced as a long vowel (compensatory lengthening). Thus nurse, car, four [ˈnɜːs ˈkɑː ˈfɔː] have long vowels, and car and four have the same vowels as bath and paw [ˈbɑːθ ˈpɔː]. An unstressed ⟨er⟩ is pronounced as a schwa, so that butter ends in the same vowel as comma: [ˈbʌtə ˈkɒmə].

Many vowel shifts only affect vowels before historical /r/, and in most cases they reduce the number of vowels that are distinguished before /r/:

• Several historically distinct vowels are reduced to /ɜ/ before /r/. In Scottish English, fern, fir, and fur [fɛrn fɪr fʌr] are pronounced differently and have the same vowels as bed, bid, and but, but in GA and RP they are all pronounced with the vowel of bird: /ˈfɝn ˈfɝ/, /ˈfɜːn ˈfɜː/ (fern–fir–fur merger). Similarly, the vowels of hurry and furry /ˈhʌri ˈfɜri/, cure and fir /ˈkjuːr ˈfɜr/ were historically distinct and are still distinct in RP, but are often merged in GA (hurry–furry and cure–fir mergers).
• Some sets of tense and lax or long and short vowels merge before /r/. Historically, nearer and mirror /ˈniːrər ˈmɪrər/; Mary, marry, and merry /ˈmɛɪɹi ˈmæri ˈmɛri/; hoarse and horse /ˈhoːrs ˈhɔrs/ were pronounced differently and had the same vowels as need and bid; bay, back, and bed; road and paw, but in some dialects their vowels have merged and are pronounced in the same way (mirror–nearer, Mary–marry–merry, and horse–hoarse mergers).
• In traditional GA and RP, poor /pʊr/ or /pʊə/ is pronounced differently from pour /pɔr/ or /pɔə/ and has the same vowel as good, but for many speakers in North America and southern England, poor is pronounced with the same vowel as pour (poor–pour merger).

Number of Native English users

The number of 1st-language english speakers really needs to be updated now, and from time to time. the numbers have of course grown since 2006, it is well above 400 million. . by the last count I can find online, is around 520,000,000 people. I am not sure how to update that particular part of the page, the box at the top right of page, will someone please do it? Here is a link to show a much more recent count- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the-worlds-languages-in-7-maps-and-charts/ Meat Eating Orchid (talk) 09:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

alright bro so how about you update it instead of asking other people to do it man — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeaceLoverStephenTrue1111 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Yo brah, so how 'bout ya read what 'e rote more carephly? FillsHerTease (talk) 08:27, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 May 2021

Saint Lucia should be blue in the first photo 69.80.22.185 (talk) 18:55, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

 Already done If you are referring to File:English language distribution.svg then from what I can see, it looks to be blue. (Although it is hard to tell which circle represents which specific area in the Caribbean). If this does need changing however it is an image which would need to be reuploaded at c:File:English language distribution.svg. Terasail^[✉] 21:25, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 July 2021 - To add the Scots language to the most closely related languages of English.

Change "English is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon" to "English is most closely related to Scots, Frisian, and Low Saxon" Blinharry (talk) 16:10, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:18, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Reliable sources:

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/sco https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/what-is-scots/

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. It's relation to Scots is covered in the article, but I don't believe it belongs in the lead, especially as Scots developed from old and middle english. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:38, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

User edit-warring to remove singular they and derivatives from pronoun table

User:Local hero has been repeatedly removing singular they/them/their/theirs/themself/themselves from the pronoun table (example), claiming that they need to go because they aren't sourced in the table (despite the fact that the same is true for all the other pronouns in the table, and that this is a textbook example of the "General common knowledge" exception in WP:When to cite#When a source or citation may not be needed). Could someone please help me deal with them? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 20:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

These were added to the box by you. I reverted your edit because no sources were provided, nor was any explanation. This is certainly not general common knowledge as someone who was educated in an English-speaking country. Writing something like "they is" would certainly have been marked wrong in my English classes. So, again I request sources, or a consensus here if we proceed differently than the stable version of the article. --Local hero ^talk 21:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

No sourcing is needed for the fact that the usage exists, per Common Knowledge (Houston is normally warmer than Minneapolis in January...). However, plural forms to signify singulars is a marked usage -- has acquired more intensive marking lately -- and requires elaboration of that fact, of the reasons for the usage and its recent politicized upsurge, of the anomaly of singular referent (semantically 's/he'), but plural 3rd-person verb. Sources for the basics of the motivations for the usage are needed. -- Common sense, folks. Basic Applied Common Sense. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:44, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

"English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years."

The unfortunate limitless "more than" aside, what is "English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years" intended to mean? A reader can guess, but shouldn't have to. Why select 1400? And a literalist can legitimately claim that yes, as an Indo-European language, English has most definitely developed over the course of far more than 1,400 years. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 23:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Why stop reading with that sentence? "The earliest forms of English, a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century..." pretty much explains it. Historians disagree on exactly when Old English as we know it began to develop, hence the vague "more than 1,400 years". Before that period, it wasn't Old English, even to a literalist such as myself. BilCat (talk) 00:27, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Editors owe it to readers to be as clear and accurate as possible. You actually make the point well. Makes much more sense to delete the lead sentence, which is nonsensical as it stands, and just begin with actual information, i.e. the second sentence. True that the text is still left with a possible snare for the ingenuous in "earliest forms of English" without further elaboration, but an alert reader can easily grasp that the lects in question are West Germanic. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 06:59, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I disagree that it is nonsensical. You haven't made that case yet. This isn't Simple English Wikipedia, and we don't spoon-feed our readers. This paragraph summarizes the History section, including the first line. The further elaboration is in the History section, not the lead. BilCat (talk) 07:15, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh my. First, re "we don't spoon-feed our readers". Well, actually we must and we do. That's the gig. For the text to be successful, it has to be comprehensible to a general readership, a huge spread of the bell curve -- for the matter at hand very much including those with no experience whatsoever in historical linguistics, language evolution, etc. Producing clear and accurate text for a topic such as language is challenging in ways that producing text for, e.g. quantum theory, is not: our Aunt Molly brings no baggage to her brave attempt to make sense of quantum theory (other than "It's hard to understand."), but she and everyone use language constantly and come to the topic with all sorts of untenable preconceived notions that at the very least should not be encouraged (e.g. "Latin died"). As for "You haven't made that case yet", the case is made by the text itself. An undergraduate term paper beginning "English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years" would be off to an unfortunate start, not only for the red flag of unqualified "more than" stretching into infinity. A friendly "Would you like to reconsider that first sentence before I grade this?" would be a kind way for an instructor to offer a normally conscientious student the opportunity to rescue him/herself. If the student had been attentive during the term, s/he would likely identify the "problem(s)" immediately, and be glad to execute appropriate repairs on the spot. (I suppose I expected similar here. If so, It appears I was wrong.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:17, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

What is your proposed improvement? _signed, Willondon (talk) 21:44, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

As stated above: remove the first sentence of the paragraph. A slightly more ambitious repair would be re-writing the first sentence to state clearly whatever it was originally intended to mean, assuming that the resulting text is factual, and clear enough not to leave room for misunderstanding. Might not be easy to do that and also keep it succinct, though. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, I could remove the first sentence of the paragraph for you, if you'd like. Anything more ambitious, I would leave to you. _signed, Willondon (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Therein the rub. Anyone hoping to repair the first sentence must first decipher what it was intended to mean. So far no attempts to do that have come forth. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

It seems the only unsucessful attempts to decipher its meaning to have come forth are yours. _signed, Willondon (talk) 16:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Actually, that's unknown. No one has yet ventured to offer an explanation of its intended meaning. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:59, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about the attempts to have come forth. Of the two that have come forth, yours is the only one that was apparently unsuccessful. Of the attempts that haven't come forth, I assume most were successful and thus went unremarked. Or perhaps some were unsuccessful, and the reader was too embarrassed to comment. _signed, Willondon (talk) 21:17, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

"I thought we were talking about the attempts to have come forth." No attempts have come forth. Perhaps it's time to channel Graham Chapman as The Colonel -- "I’ve noticed a tendency for this programme to get rather silly" -- and leave unsuspecting readers free to interpret "English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years" as they please. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:50, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

We can be more specific, but again, I don't see the need to, hypothetical prescriptive-grammar college professors not withstanding. However, I will abide by consensus. BilCat (talk) 22:22, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing to do with grammar, prescriptive or descriptive. Accuracy and clarity are the issues. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

From what you've been saying, I think you mean precision, not accuracy. _signed, Willondon (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Accuracy in the first instance; precision can be worked in if it's available. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure this required 1068 words of debate. The simplest solution is to remove that first line because the second line of the paragraph explains the same point precisely. Or accurately at least. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Well done. I've added one little tweak for clarity. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:36, 16 March 2022 (UTC)