English language - Wikipedia

English language - Wikipedia
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West Germanic language
Pronunciation
ING-glish
Native to
The
English-speaking world
, including the
United Kingdom
United States
Canada
Australia
Ireland
New Zealand
Commonwealth Caribbean
South Africa
and
others
Speakers
L1
380 million
(2021)
L2
1.077 billion
(2021)
Total
: 1.457 billion
Language family
Indo-European
Germanic
West Germanic
North Sea Germanic
Anglic
Early forms
Proto-English
Old English
Middle English
Early Modern English
Dialects
British English
North American
Caribbean
Australian
New Zealand
South African
Hiberno-English
full list
Writing system
Latin
English alphabet
Anglo-Saxon runes
(historical)
English Braille
Unified English Braille
Signed forms
Manually coded English
(multiple systems)
Official status
Official language in
57 countries
and
30 dependent territories
Organisations including the
UN
EU
Commonwealth
ICC
IMF
IOC
ISO
NATO
WTO
ASEAN
OAS
and
OECD
Language codes
ISO 639-1
en
ISO 639-2
eng
ISO 639-3
eng
Glottolog
stan1293
Linguasphere
52-ABA
Regions where English is the native language of the majority
Regions where English is an official or widely spoken language, but not a majority native language
This article contains
IPA
phonetic symbols.
Without proper
rendering support
, you may see
question marks, boxes, or other symbols
instead of
Unicode
characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see
Help:IPA
is a
West Germanic language
of the
Indo-European
language family. It emerged in
early medieval England
and has since become a global
lingua franca
The namesake of the language is the
Angles
, one of the
Germanic peoples
who
migrated to Britain
after the
end of Roman rule
. English is the
most spoken language
in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former
British Empire
(succeeded by the
Commonwealth of Nations
) and the
United States
. It is the most widely learned
second language
in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. However, English is only the
third-most spoken native language
, after
Mandarin Chinese
and
Spanish
English is either the official language, or one of the official languages, in
57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories
, making it the most geographically widespread language in the world. In the
United Kingdom
, the United States,
Australia
, and
New Zealand
, it is the dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law.
It is a
co-official language of the United Nations
, the
European Union
, and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become the
de facto
lingua franca of diplomacy,
science
, technology, international trade,
logistics
, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the
Internet
Ethnologue
estimated that there were over 1.4 billion speakers worldwide as of 2021
[update]
Old English
emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by the
Anglo-Saxons
. Early inscriptions were written with
runes
before a
Latin-based alphabet
was adopted for longer texts. Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from
Old Norse
, a
North Germanic language
10
11
An evolution of the Latin alphabet, the
English alphabet
, fully supplanted the runic alphabet by the
High Middle Ages
, coinciding with the emergence of
Middle English
in
England under Norman control
. Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from
French dialects
, which are the source of approximately
28 per cent of Modern English words
, and from
Latin
, which is
the source of an additional 28 per cent
12
While Latin and the
Romance languages
are thus the source for a majority of its lexicon taken as a whole,
English's grammar
and
phonology
remain Germanic, as does most of its basic everyday vocabulary. Finally, Middle English transformed, in part through the
Great Vowel Shift
, into
Modern English
, which exists on a
dialect continuum
with
Scots
; it is next-most closely related to
Low Saxon
and
Frisian
Classification
English is a member of the
Indo-European language family
, belonging to the
West Germanic
branch of
Germanic languages
13
Owing to their descent from a shared ancestor language known as
Proto-Germanic
, English and other Germanic languages – which include
Dutch
German
, and
Swedish
14
– have characteristic features in common, including a division of verbs into
strong
and
weak
classes, the use of
modal verbs
, and sound changes affecting
Proto-Indo-European
consonants known as
Grimm's
and
Verner's laws
15
Old English
was one of several
Ingvaeonic languages
, which emerged from a
dialect continuum
spoken by West Germanic peoples during the 5th century in
Frisia
, on the coast of the
North Sea
. Old English emerged among the Ingvaeonic speakers on the
British Isles
following their migration there, while the other Ingvaeonic languages (
Frisian
and
Old Low German
) developed in parallel on the continent.
16
Old English evolved into
Middle English
, which in turn evolved into Modern English.
17
Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into other
Anglic languages
, including
Scots
18
and the extinct
Fingallian
and
Yola dialects
of Ireland.
19
English was isolated from other Germanic languages on the continent and diverged considerably in
vocabulary
syntax
, and
phonology
as a result. It is not
mutually intelligible
with any continental Germanic language – though some, such as Dutch and Frisian, show strong affinities with it, especially in its earlier stages.
20
page needed
English and Frisian
were traditionally considered more closely related to one another
than they were to other West Germanic languages, but most modern scholarship does not recognise a particular affinity between them.
21
Though they exhibited similar sound changes not otherwise found around the North Sea at that time, the specific changes appeared in English and Frisian at different times – a pattern uncharacteristic for languages sharing a unique phylogenetic ancestor.
22
23
History
Main article:
History of English
Proto-Germanic to Old English
Manuscript (written in
uncial script
) of
Beowulf
, an epic poem composed in Old English between 975 and 1025.
The poem begins:
Hƿæt ƿē Gārde / na ingēar dagum þēod cyninga / þrym ge frunon ...
[Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes ...]
24
Old English
(also called
Anglo-Saxon
) was the earliest form of the English language, spoken from
c.
450
to
c.
1150
. Old English developed from a set of
West Germanic
dialects, sometimes identified as
Anglo-Frisian
or
North Sea Germanic
, that were originally spoken along the coasts of
Frisia
Lower Saxony
and southern
Jutland
by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the
Angles
Saxons
, and
Jutes
25
From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons
settled Britain
as
the Roman economy and administration collapsed
. By the 7th century, Old English
had become dominant in Britain
– replacing the
Common Brittonic
and
British Latin
previously spoken during the
Roman occupation
26
27
28
which ultimately left little influence on English.
England
and
(originally
Ænglaland
and
Ænglisc
) are both named after the Angles.
29
Old English was divided into two Anglian dialects (
Mercian
and
Northumbrian
) and two Saxon dialects (
Kentish
and
West Saxon
).
30
Through the influence exerted by the kingdom of
Wessex
, and the educational reforms instated by
King Alfred
during the 9th century, the West Saxon dialect became the
standard written variety
31
The epic poem
Beowulf
is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem,
Cædmon's Hymn
, is written in Northumbrian.
32
Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the
Scots language
developed from Northumbrian. During the earliest period of Old English, a few short inscriptions were made using a
runic alphabet
33
By the 7th century, a
Latin alphabet
had been adopted. Written with
half-uncial
letterforms
, it included the runic letters
wynn
and
thorn
, and the modified Latin letters
eth
, and
ash
33
34
Old English is markedly different from Modern English, such that 21st-century English speakers are entirely unable to understand Old English without special training. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German:
nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs
had many more
inflectional endings and forms
, and word order was
much freer
than in Modern English. Modern English has
case forms
in pronouns (
he
him
his
) and has a few verb inflections (
speak
speaks
speaking
spoke
spoken
), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more
person
and
number
endings.
35
36
37
Influence of Old Norse
Between the 8th and 11th centuries, the English spoken in some regions
underwent significant changes
due to contact with
Old Norse
, a
North Germanic
language. Several waves of Norsemen colonising the northern British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English speakers in constant contact with Old Norse. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in the
Danelaw
surrounding York; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and
Northern English
. The centre of Norse influence was
Lindsey
, located in the
Midlands
. After Lindsey was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity in 920, English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today is the third person pronoun group beginning with
th-
they
them
their
) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with
h-
hie, him, hera
).
38
Other
Norse loanwords
include
give
get
sky
skirt
egg
, and
cake
, typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of Old English, particularly northern ones.
39
Middle English
Further information:
Influence of French on English
Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting.
[Although, from the beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing.]
John Trevisa
c.
1385
40
The
Middle English
period is often defined as beginning with the
Norman Conquest
in 1066. During the centuries that followed, English was heavily influenced by the form of
Old French
spoken by the new Norman ruling class that had migrated to England (known as
Old Norman
). Over the following decades of contact, members of the middle and upper classes, whether native English or Norman, became increasingly bilingual. By 1150 at the latest, bilingual speakers represented a majority of the English
aristocracy
, and monolingual French speakers were nearly non-existent.
41
The French spoken by the Norman elite in England eventually developed into the
Anglo-Norman language
42
The division between Old to Middle English can also be placed during the composition of the
Ormulum
c.
late 12th century
), a work by the
Augustinian
canon
Orrm
which highlights blending of Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in the language for the first time.
43
44
As the lower classes, who represented the vast majority of the population, remained monolingual English speakers, a primary influence of Norman was as a lexical
superstratum
, introducing a wide range of
loanwords
related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains.
11
For instance, the French word
trône
appears for the first time, from which the English word
throne
is derived.
45
Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating
possession
. The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms,
46
and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible.
47
Middle English literature includes
Geoffrey Chaucer
's
Canterbury Tales
c.
1400
), and
Thomas Malory
's
Le Morte d'Arthur
(1485). In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer.
48
In
the first translation
of the entire Bible into English by
John Wycliffe
(1382), Matthew 8:20 reads:
"Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis."
49
Here the plural suffix
-n
on the verb
have
is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present.
Early Modern English
Main article:
Early Modern English
Illustration of the
Great Vowel Shift
that affected long vowels in
Early Modern English
. After the highest vowels /i: u:/ broke into
diphthongs
/ai au/, each of the lower vowels gradually shifted up one level to compensate.
The period of Early Modern English, lasting between 1500 and 1700, was characterised by the
Great Vowel Shift
(1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a
chain shift
, meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system.
Mid
and
open vowels
were
raised
, and
close vowels
were
broken
into
diphthongs
. For example, the word
bite
was originally pronounced as the word
beet
is today, and the second vowel in the word
about
was pronounced as the word
boot
is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages.
50
51
English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during the reign of
Henry V
. Around 1430, the
Court of Chancery
in
Westminster
began using English in its
official documents
, and a new standard form of Middle English, known as
Chancery Standard
, developed from the dialects of London and the
East Midlands
. In 1476,
William Caxton
introduced the
printing press
to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English.
52
Literature in early modern English includes the works of
William Shakespeare
and the 1611
King James Version
(KJV) of the Bible. Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the
consonant clusters
/kn
ɡn
sw/
in
knight
gnat
, and
sword
were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent the distinct characteristics of early modern English.
53
Matthew 8:20 in the KJV reads: "The Foxes have holes and the birds of the ayre have nests."
54
This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with
subject–verb–object word order
, and the use of
of
instead of the non-possessive genitive), and the introduction of loanwords from French (
ayre
) and word replacements (
bird
, originally meaning 'nestling', which had replaced Old English
fugol
).
54
Spread of Modern English
By the late 18th century, the
British Empire
had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication.
55
English was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Oceania, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple
indigenous languages
opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others.
56
57
58
In the 20th century the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the
BBC
59
and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster.
60
61
In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any other language in history.
62
As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755,
Samuel Johnson
published his
Dictionary of the English Language
, which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828,
Noah Webster
published the
American Dictionary of the English language
to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among the middle classes.
63
In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now found only in pronouns, such as
he
and
him
she
and
her
who
and
whom
), and
subject–verb–object word order
is mostly fixed.
63
Some changes, such as the use of
do
-support
, have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word
do
as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory.
64
Now,
do
-support with the verb
have
is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in
-ing
, appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as "had been being built" are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g.
dreamed
instead of
dreamt
), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g.
more polite
instead of
politer
). British English is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media.
65
66
67
Geographical distribution
See also:
List of countries and territories where English is an official language
List of countries by English-speaking population
, and
English-speaking world
Majority native language
Co-official and majority native language
Official but minority native language
Secondary language: spoken as a second language by more than 20 per cent of the population,
de facto
working language of government, language of instruction in education, etc.
EF English Proficiency Index
2019 in Europe:
68
Very high (63.07–70.27)
High (58.26–61.86)
Moderate (52.50–57.38)
Low (48.69–52.39)
Very low (40.87–48.19)
Not included in report
As of 2016
[update]
, 400 million people spoke English as their
first language
, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a second language.
69
English is the
largest language by number of speakers
, spoken by communities on every continent.
70
Estimates of
second language
and foreign-language speakers vary greatly depending on how proficiency is defined, from 470 million to more than 1 billion.
In 2003,
David Crystal
estimated that non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of three-to-one.
71
Three circles model
Braj Kachru
has categorised countries into the
Three Circles of English
model, according to how the language historically spread in each country, how it is acquired by the populace, and the range of uses it has there – with a country's classification able to change over time.
72
73
"Inner-circle" countries have large communities of native English speakers; these include the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English – and South Africa, where a significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million),
74
the United Kingdom (60 million),
75
76
77
Canada (19 million),
78
Australia (at least 17 million),
79
South Africa (4.8 million),
80
Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million).
81
In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and
local people who speak other languages
clarification needed
and new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces.
82
Inner-circle countries are the base from which English spreads to other regions of the world.
72
"Outer-circle" countries – such as the Philippines,
83
Jamaica,
84
India, Pakistan, Singapore,
85
Malaysia, and Nigeria
86
87
– have much smaller proportions of native English speakers, but use of English as a second language in education, government, or domestic business is significant, and its use for instruction in schools and official government operations is routine.
88
These countries have millions of native speakers on dialect continua, which range from
English-based creole languages
to standard varieties of English used in inner-circle countries. They have many more speakers who acquire English as they grow up through day-to-day use and exposure to English-language broadcasting, especially if they attend schools where English is the language of instruction. Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar, by the other languages spoken by those learners – with most including words rarely used by native speakers in inner-circle countries, as well as grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties.
82
"Expanding-circle" countries are where English is taught as a foreign language
89
– though the character of English as a first, second, or foreign language in a given country is often debatable, and may change over time.
88
For example, in countries like the Netherlands, an overwhelming majority of the population can speak English,
90
and it is often used in higher education and to communicate with foreigners.
91
Pluricentric English
English is a
pluricentric language
, which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language.
92
93
94
95
Spoken English, including English used in broadcasting, generally follows national pronunciation standards that are established by custom rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through their
accents
96
but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international
standard written English
. The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by the consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation.
97
American listeners readily understand most British broadcasting, and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting. Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes, television programmes, and films from many parts of the
English-speaking world
98
Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and use both technical and non-technical registers.
99
The settlement history of the English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce
koiné
forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
100
The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers.
74
101
Australia has no official languages at the federal or state level.
102
In Canada, English and French share an
official status
at the federal level.
103
104
English has official or co-official status in six provinces and three territories, while three provinces have none and Quebec's only official language is French.
105
English is the official second language of Ireland, while Irish is the first.
106
While New Zealand is majority English-speaking, its two official languages are
Māori
107
and
New Zealand Sign Language
108
The United Kingdom does not have an official language. In Wales and Northern Ireland, English is co-official alongside
Welsh
109
and
Irish
110
respectively. Neither Scotland nor England have an official language.
In the United States, English was designated the official language of the country by
Executive Order 14224
in 2025.
111
English has additional official or co-official status at the state level in 32 states, and all 5 territories;
112
18 states and the District of Columbia have no official language.
English as a global language
Main article:
English as a lingua franca
See also:
Foreign-language influences in English
and
Study of global communication
Status of English in public education by region
113
Mandatory subject
Optional subject
No data
2014 English Proficiency Index
114
Very high (80–100 per cent)
High (60–80 per cent)
Moderate (40–60 per cent)
Low (20–40 per cent)
Very low (0.1–20 per cent)
No data
Modern English is sometimes described as the first global
lingua franca
60
115
or as the first
world language
116
117
English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy.
117
Parity with French as a language of diplomacy had been achieved by
Treaty of Versailles
negotiations in 1919.
118
By the time the
United Nations
was founded at the end of
World War II
, English had become pre-eminent;
119
it is one of six official languages of the United Nations.
120
and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations.
121
Many other worldwide international organisations, including the
International Olympic Committee
, specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations, such as the
European Free Trade Association
(EFTA),
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN),
61
and
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) use English as their sole working language, despite most members not being countries with a majority of native English speakers. While the EU allows member states to designate any of the national languages as an official language of the Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations.
122
English serves as the basis for the required
controlled natural languages
123
Seaspeak
and Airspeak, used as
international languages
of seafaring
124
and aviation.
125
English is the most frequently taught foreign language in the world.
60
61
Most people learning English do so for practical reasons, as opposed to ideological reasons.
126
In EU countries, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in 19 of the 25 member states where it is not an official language (that is, the countries other than Ireland and
Malta
). In a 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a member of the EU), 38 per cent of the EU respondents outside the countries where English is an official language said they could speak English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in conversation by 12 per cent of respondents.
127
The global influence of English has led to concerns about
language death
128
and to claims of
linguistic imperialism
129
and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however, the number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the world believe that English provides them with better employment opportunities and increased quality of life.
130
Working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine
131
and computing. Though it formerly had parity with French and German in scientific research, English now dominates the field.
132
Its importance in scientific publishing is such that over 80 per cent of scientific journal articles indexed by
Chemical Abstracts
in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 per cent of all articles in natural science publications by 1996, and 82 per cent of articles in humanities publications by 1995.
133
As decolonisation proceeded throughout the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language policies.
57
58
134
For example, English is one of the official languages of India. Many Indians have shifted from associating the language with colonialism to associating it with economic progress.
135
English is widely used in media and literature, with India being the third-largest publisher of English-language books in the world, after the US and UK.
136
However, less than 5 per cent of the population speak English fluently, with the country's native English speakers numbering in the low hundreds of thousands.
137
138
In 2004, David Crystal claimed India had the largest population of people able to speak or understand English in the world,
139
though most scholars estimate the US remains home to a larger English-speaking population.
140
Many English speakers in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries.
141
Regarding its future development, it is considered most likely that English will continue to function as a
koiné
language, with a standard form that unifies speakers around the world.
142
Phonology
This section contains
phonetic transcriptions
in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)
. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see
Help:IPA
English phonology
and
phonetics
differ from one dialect to another, usually without interfering with mutual communication. Phonological variation affects the inventory of
phonemes
(speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes.
143
This overview mainly describes
Received Pronunciation
(RP) and
General American
(GA), the
standard varieties
of the United Kingdom and the United States respectively.
144
145
146
Consonants
Most English dialects share the same 24
consonant phonemes (or 26, if marginal
/x/
and glottal stop
/ʔ/
are included). The consonant inventory shown below is valid for
California English
147
and for RP.
148
Consonant phonemes
Bilabial
Labiodental
Dental
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Nasal
Plosive
Affricate
tʃ
dʒ
Fricative
Approximant
Median
Lateral
For pairs of
obstruents
(stops, affricates, and fricatives) such as
/p
b/
/tʃ
dʒ/
, and
/s
z/
, the first is
fortis
(strong) and the second is lenis (weak). Fortis obstruents, such as
/p
tʃ
s/
are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as
/b
dʒ
z/
, and are always
voiceless
. Lenis consonants are partly
voiced
at the beginning and end of utterances, and fully voiced between vowels. Fortis stops such as
/p/
have additional articulatory or acoustic features in most dialects: they are
aspirated
[pʰ]
when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and often
unreleased
[p̚]
or pre-glottalised
[ʔp]
at the end of a syllable. In a single-syllable word, a vowel before a fortis stop is shortened: e.g.
nip
has a noticeably shorter vowel (phonetically, not phonemically) than
nib
[nɪˑb̥]
see below
).
149
Lenis stops:
bin
[b̥ɪˑn]
about
[əˈbaʊt]
nib
[nɪˑb̥]
Fortis stops:
pin
[pʰɪn]
spin
[spɪn]
happy
[ˈhæpi]
nip
[nɪp̚]
or
[nɪʔp]
In RP, the lateral approximant
/l/
has two main
allophones
(pronunciation variants): the clear or plain
[l]
, as in
light
, and the dark or
velarised
[ɫ]
, as in
full
150
GA has dark
in most cases.
151
Clear
: RP
light
[laɪt]
Dark
: RP and GA
full
[fʊɫ]
, GA
light
[ɫaɪt]
All
sonorants
(liquids
/l,
r/
and nasals
/m,
n,
ŋ/
) devoice when following a voiceless obstruent, and they are syllabic when following a consonant at the end of a word.
152
Voiceless sonorants:
clay
[kl̥eɪ̯]
snow
RP
[sn̥əʊ̯]
, GA
[sn̥oʊ̯]
Syllabic sonorants:
paddle
[ˈpad.l̩]
button
[ˈbʌt.n̩]
Vowels
Closing diphthongs
RP
GA
Word
eɪ
ay
əʊ
oʊ
oa
aɪ
cr
aʊ
ow
ɔɪ
oy
Centring diphthongs
RP
GA
Word
ɪə
ɪɹ
eer
eə
ɛɹ
air
ʊə
ʊɹ
oor
Monophthongs
RP
GA
Word
iː
ee
ck
ɑː
br
cl
th
ɔː
aw
uː
oo
oo
ɜː
ɜɹ
ir
comm
The pronunciation of vowels varies a great deal between dialects and is one of the most detectable aspects of a speaker's accent. The accompanying table below lists the vowel
phonemes
in RP and GA, with example words from
lexical sets
. The vowels are represented with symbols from the
International Phonetic Alphabet
; those given for RP are standard in British dictionaries and other publications.
153
In RP, vowel length is phonemic;
long vowels
are marked with a
triangular colon
⟩ in the table above, such as the vowel of
need
[niːd]
as opposed to
bid
[bɪd]
154
In GA, vowel length is non-distinctive.
155
In both RP and GA, vowels are phonetically
shortened before fortis consonants
in the same
syllable
, like
/t
tʃ
f/
, but not before lenis consonants like
/d
dʒ
v/
or in open syllables: thus, the vowels of
rich
[rɪtʃ]
neat
[nit]
, and
safe
[seɪ̯f]
are noticeably shorter than the vowels of
ridge
[rɪˑdʒ]
need
[niˑd]
, and
[seˑɪ̯v]
, and the vowel of
light
[laɪ̯t]
is shorter than that of
lie
[laˑɪ̯]
. Because lenis consonants are frequently voiceless at the end of a syllable, vowel length is an important cue as to whether the following consonant is lenis or fortis.
156
The vowel
/ə/
only occurs in unstressed syllables and is more open in quality in stem-final positions.
157
158
Some dialects do not contrast
/ɪ/
and
/ə/
in unstressed positions, such that
rabbit
and
abbot
rhyme and
Lenin
and
Lennon
are homophonous, a dialectal feature called the
weak vowel merger
159
GA
/ɜr/
and
/ər/
are realised as an
-coloured vowel
[ɚ]
, as in
further
[ˈfɚðɚ]
(phonemically
/ˈfɜrðər/
), which in RP is realised as
[ˈfəːðə]
(phonemically
/ˈfɜːðə/
).
160
Phonotactics
An English syllable includes a syllable nucleus consisting of a vowel sound. Syllable onset and coda (start and end) are optional. A syllable can start with up to three consonant sounds, as in
sprint
/sprɪnt/
, and end with up to five, as in (for some dialects)
angsts
/aŋksts/
. This gives an English syllable a structure of (CCC)V(CCCCC) – where C represents a consonant and V a vowel. The word
strengths
/strɛŋθs/
is thus close to the most complex syllable possible in English. The consonants that may appear together in onsets or codas are restricted, as is the order in which they may appear. Onsets can only have four types of consonant clusters: a stop and approximant, as in
play
; a voiceless fricative and approximant, as in
fly
or
sly
and a voiceless stop, as in
stay
; and
, a voiceless stop, and an approximant, as in
string
161
Clusters of nasal and stop are only allowed in codas. Clusters of obstruents always agree in voicing, and clusters of
sibilants
and of
plosives
with the same point of articulation are prohibited. Several consonants have limited distributions:
/h/
can only occur in syllable-initial position, and
/ŋ/
only in syllable-final position.
162
Stress, rhythm, and intonation
See also:
Stress and vowel reduction in English
Intonation (linguistics) § English
, and
English prosody
Stress
plays an important role in English. Certain
syllables
are stressed, while others are unstressed. Stress is a combination of duration, intensity, vowel quality, and sometimes changes in pitch. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer and louder than unstressed syllables, and vowels in unstressed syllables are frequently
reduced
while vowels in stressed syllables are not.
163
Stress in English is
phonemic
, gaining freedom and dynamicity once lost in Proto-Germanic through a majority of borrowings from non-Germanic languages. For instance, the word
contract
is stressed on the first syllable (
KON
-trakt
) when used as a noun, but on the last syllable (
kən-
TRAKT
) for most meanings (for example, "reduce in size") when used as a verb.
164
165
166
Here stress is connected to
vowel reduction
: in the noun "contract" the first syllable is stressed and has the unreduced vowel
/ɒ/
, but in the verb "contract" the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to
/ə/
. Stress is also used to distinguish between words and phrases, so that a compound word receives a single stress unit, but the corresponding phrase has two: e.g. "a burnout" (
ɜːr
aʊ
) versus "to burn out" (
ɜːr
aʊ
), and "a hotdog" (
) versus "a hot dog" (
).
167
In terms of
rhythm
, English is generally described as a
stress-timed
language, meaning that the amount of time between stressed syllables tends to be equal.
168
Stressed syllables are pronounced longer, but unstressed syllables (syllables between stresses) are shortened. Vowels in unstressed syllables are shortened as well, and vowel shortening causes changes in
vowel quality
vowel reduction
169
Regional variation
Phonological features in Standard English varieties
170
United
States
Canada
Ireland
Northern
Ireland
Scotland
England
Wales
South
Africa
Australia
New
Zealand
father
bother
merger
Yes
Yes
/ɒ/
is
unrounded
Yes
Yes
Yes
/ɜr/
is pronounced
[ɚ]
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
cot
caught
merger
Possibly
Yes
Possibly
Yes
Yes
fool
full
merger
Yes
Yes
/t,
d/
flapping
Yes
Yes
Possibly
Often
Rarely
Rarely
Rarely
Rarely
Yes
Often
trap
bath
split
Possibly
Possibly
Often
Yes
Yes
Often
Yes
non-rhoticity
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
close vowels for
/æ,
ɛ/
Yes
Yes
Yes
/l/
can always be pronounced
[ɫ]
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
/ɑː/
is
fronted
before
/r/
Possibly
Possibly
Yes
Yes
Dialects and low vowels
Lexical set
RP
GA
CanE
Sound change
THOUGHT
/ɔː/
/ɔ/
or
/ɑ/
/ɑ/
cot
caught
merger
CLOTH
/ɒ/
lot
cloth
split
LOT
/ɑ/
father
bother
merger
PALM
/ɑː/
BATH
/æ/
/æ/
trap
bath
split
TRAP
/æ/
Varieties of English vary the most in pronunciation of vowels. The best-known national varieties used as standards for education in non-English-speaking countries are British (BrE) and American (AmE). Countries such as
Canada
Australia
Ireland
New Zealand
and
South Africa
have their own standard varieties which are less often used as standards for education internationally.
170
English has undergone many
historical sound changes
, some of them affecting all varieties, and others affecting only a few. Most standard varieties are affected by the
Great Vowel Shift
, which changed the pronunciation of long vowels, but a few dialects have slightly different results. In North America, a number of chain shifts such as the
Northern Cities Vowel Shift
and
Canadian Shift
have produced very different vowel landscapes in some regional accents.
171
Some dialects have fewer or more consonant phonemes and
phones
than the standard varieties. Some conservative varieties like Scottish English have a
voiceless
sound in
whine
that contrasts with the voiced
[w]
in
wine
, but most other dialects pronounce both words with voiced
[w]
, a dialect feature called
wine
whine
merger
. The voiceless velar fricative sound
/x/
is found in Scottish English, which distinguishes
loch
/lɔx/
from
lock
/lɔk/
. Accents like
Cockney
with "
-dropping
" lack the glottal fricative
/h/
, and dialects with
th
-stopping
and
th
-fronting
like
African-American Vernacular
and
Estuary English
do not have the dental fricatives
/θ,
ð/
, but replace them with dental or alveolar stops
/t,
d/
or labiodental fricatives
/f,
v/
172
173
Other changes affecting the phonology of local varieties are processes such as
yod
-dropping
yod
-coalescence
, and reduction of consonant clusters.
174
page needed
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.
175
There is complex dialectal variation in words with the
open front
and
open back vowels
/æ
ɑː
ɔː/
. These four vowels are only distinguished in RP, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In GA, these vowels merge to three
/æ
ɔ/
176
and in Canadian English, they merge to two
/æ
ɑ/
177
Grammar
Typical for an Indo-European language,
English grammar
follows
accusative
morphosyntactic alignment
. Unlike other Indo-European languages, English has largely abandoned the inflectional
case system
in favour of
analytic
constructions. Only the
personal pronouns
retain morphological case more strongly than any other
word class
. English distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, determiners (including articles), prepositions, and conjunctions. Some analyses add pronouns as a class separate from nouns, and subdivide conjunctions into
subordinators
and
coordinators
, and add the class of interjections.
178
English also has a rich set of
auxiliary verbs
, such as
have
and
do
, expressing the categories of mood and aspect. Questions are marked by
do
-support
wh
-movement
(fronting of question words beginning with
wh
-) and word order
inversion
with some verbs.
179
Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in English, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected
strong
stems inflected through
ablaut
(i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs
speak
spoke
and
foot
feet
) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as
love
loved
hand
hands
).
180
Vestiges of the case and gender system are found in the pronoun system (
he
him
who
whom
); similarly, traces of more complex verb conjugation are seen in the inflection of the
copula
verb
to be
180
The seven word classes are exemplified in this sample sentence:
181
Det.
Noun
Prep.
Det.
Noun
Conj.
Det.
Adj.
Noun
Verb
Advb.
Conj.
Det.
Noun
Verb
The
chairman
of
the
committee
and
the
loquacious
politician
clashed
violently
when
the
meeting
started
Nouns and noun phrases
English nouns
are only inflected for number and possession. New nouns can be formed through derivation or compounding. They are semantically divided into
proper nouns
(names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically into
count nouns
and
mass nouns
182
Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the plural
suffix
, but a few nouns have irregular plural forms. Mass nouns can only be pluralised through the use of a count noun classifier, e.g. "one loaf of bread", "two loaves of bread".
183
Regular plural formation:
Singular:
cat
dog
Plural:
cats
dogs
Irregular plural formation:
Singular:
man
woman
foot
fish
ox
knife
mouse
Plural:
men
women
feet
fish
oxen
knives
mice
Possession can be expressed either by the possessive
enclitic
(also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the preposition
of
. Historically the -
possessive has been used for
animate nouns
, whereas the
of
possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -
also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -
is separated from a singular noun with an apostrophe. If the noun is plural formed with -
the apostrophe follows the -
179
Possessive constructions:
With -
: "The woman's husband's child"
With
of
: "The child of the husband of the woman"
Nouns can form
noun phrases
(NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives.
184
Noun phrases can be short, such as
the man
, composed only of a determiner and a noun. They can also include modifiers such as adjectives (e.g.
red
tall
all
) and specifiers such as determiners (e.g.
the
that
). But they can also tie together several nouns into a single long NP, using conjunctions such as
and
, or prepositions such as
with
, e.g. "the tall man with the long red trousers and his skinny wife with the spectacles" (this NP uses conjunctions, prepositions, specifiers, and modifiers). Regardless of length, an NP functions as a syntactic unit.
179
For example, the possessive enclitic can, in cases which do not lead to ambiguity, follow the entire noun phrase, as in "The President of India's wife", where the enclitic follows
India
and not
President
The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms of
definiteness
, where
the
marks a definite noun and
or
an
an indefinite one. A definite noun is assumed by the speaker to be already known by the interlocutor, whereas an indefinite noun is not specified as being previously known. Quantifiers, which include
one
many
some
and
all
, are used to specify the noun in terms of quantity or number. The noun must agree with the number of the determiner, e.g.
one man
(sg.) but
all men
(pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.
185
Adjectives
English adjectives
are words such as
good
big
interesting
, and
Canadian
that most typically modify nouns,
denoting
characteristics of their
referents
(e.g. "a
red
car"). As modifiers, they come before the nouns they modify and after determiners.
186
English adjectives also function as predicative complements (e.g. "the child is
happy
").
187
In Modern English, adjectives are not inflected so as to
agree
in form with the noun they modify, as in most other Indo-European languages. For example, in the phrases "the slender boy", and "many slender girls", the adjective
slender
does not change form to agree with either the number or gender of the noun.
188
Some adjectives are inflected for
degree of comparison
, with the positive degree unmarked, the suffix -
er
marking the comparative, and -
est
marking the superlative: "a small boy", "the boy is smaller than the girl", "that boy is the smallest". Some adjectives have irregular
suppletive
comparative and superlative forms, such as
good
better
, and
best
. Other adjectives have comparatives formed by
periphrastic constructions
, with the adverb
more
marking the comparative, and
most
marking the superlative:
happier
or
more happy
the happiest
or
most happy
189
There is some variation among speakers regarding which adjectives use inflected or periphrastic comparison, and some studies have shown a tendency for the periphrastic forms to become more common at the expense of the inflected form.
190
Determiners
English determiners
are words such as
the
each
many
some
, and
which
, occurring most typically in noun phrases before the head nouns and any modifiers and marking the noun phrase as
definite
or indefinite.
191
They often agree with the noun in
number
. They do not typically inflect for degree of comparison.
Pronouns, case, and person
English pronouns
conserve many traits of case and gender inflection. The personal pronouns retain a difference between subjective and objective case in most persons (
me
he
him
she
her
we
us
they
them
) as well as an animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishing
it
from the three sets of animate third person singular pronouns) and an optional gender distinction in the animate third person singular (distinguishing between feminine
she
her
epicene
they
them
, and masculine
he
him
192
193
The
subjective case
corresponds to the Old English
nominative case
, and the
objective case
is used in the sense both of the previous
accusative case
(for a patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and of the Old English dative case (for a recipient or
indirect object
of a transitive verb).
194
195
The subjective is used when the pronoun is the subject of a finite clause, otherwise the objective is used.
196
While grammarians such as
Henry Sweet
197
and
Otto Jespersen
198
noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Latin-based system, some contemporary grammars, including
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
, retain traditional
nominative
and
accusative
labels for the cases.
199
Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as in
my chair
), while the independent form can stand alone as if it were a noun (e.g. "the chair is mine").
200
Grammatical person in English no longer distinguishes between formal and informal pronouns of address, with the second person singular familiar pronoun
thou
that previously existed in the language having fallen almost entirely out of use by the 18th century.
201
Both the second and third persons share pronouns between the plural and singular:
Plural and singular are always identical (
you
your
yours
) in the second person (except in the reflexive form:
yourself
yourselves
) in most dialects. Some dialects have introduced innovative second person plural pronouns, such as
y'all
(found in
Southern American English
and
African-American Vernacular English
),
youse
(found in
Australian English
), or
ye
(in
Hiberno-English
).
In the third person, the
they
them
series of pronouns (
they
them
their
theirs
themselves
) are used in both plural and singular, and are the only pronouns available for the plural. In the singular, the
they
them
series (sometimes with the addition of the singular-specific reflexive form
themself
) serve as a
gender-neutral
set of pronouns. These pronouns are becoming more accepted, especially as part of
LGBTQ culture
192
202
203
English personal pronouns
Person
Subjective case
Objective case
Dependent possessive
Independent possessive
Reflexive
1st, singular
me
my
mine
myself
2nd, singular
you
you
your
yours
yourself
3rd, singular
he/she/it/
they
him/her/it/them
his/her/its/their
his/hers/its/theirs
himself/herself/itself/themself/themselves
1st, plural
we
us
our
ours
ourselves
2nd, plural
you
you
your
yours
yourselves
3rd, plural
they
them
their
theirs
themselves
Pronouns are used to refer to entities
deictically
or
anaphorically
. A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it relative to the speech situation – for example, the pronoun
identifies the speaker, and the pronoun
you
, the addressee. Anaphoric pronouns such as
that
refer back to an entity already mentioned or assumed by the speaker to be known by the audience, for example in the sentence "I already told you that". The reflexive pronouns are used when the oblique argument is identical to the subject of a phrase (e.g. "he sent it to himself" or "she braced herself for impact").
204
Prepositions
Prepositional phrases (PP) are phrases composed of a preposition and one or more nouns, e.g. "with the dog", "for my friend", "to school", "in England".
205
English prepositions
have a wide range of uses – including describing movement, place, and other relations between entities, as well as functions that are syntactic in nature, like introducing complement clauses and oblique arguments of verbs.
205
For example, in the phrase "I gave it to him", the preposition
to
marks the indirect object of the verb
to give
. Traditionally words were only considered prepositions if they governed the case of the noun they preceded, for example causing the pronouns to use the objective rather than subjective form, "with her", "to me", "for us". But some contemporary grammars no longer consider government of case to be the defining feature of the class of prepositions, rather defining prepositions as words that can function as the heads of prepositional phrases.
206
Verbs and verb phrases
English verbs
are inflected for tense and aspect and marked for agreement with a third person present singular subject. Only the copula verb
to be
is still inflected for agreement with the plural and first and second person subjects.
189
Auxiliary verbs such as
have
and
be
are paired with verbs in the
infinitive
, past, or progressive forms. They form
complex
tenses, aspects, and moods. Auxiliary verbs differ from other verbs in that they can be followed by the negation, and in that they can occur as the first constituent in a question sentence.
207
208
Most verbs have six inflectional forms. The primary forms are a plain present, a third person singular present, and a preterite (past) form. The secondary forms are a plain form used for the infinitive, a gerund-participle and a past participle.
209
The verb
to be
– which among other uses in English functions as the primary auxiliary verb indicating the
imperfective aspect
(e.g. "I
am
going"), as well as the
copula
210
– is the only verb to retain some of its original conjugation, and takes different inflectional forms depending on the subject. The first person present form is
am
, the third person singular form is
is
, and the form
are
is used in the second person singular and all three plurals. The only verb past participle is
been
and its gerund-participle is
being
211
English inflectional forms
Inflection
Strong
Regular
Plain present
take
love
3rd person sg.
present
takes
loves
Preterite
took
loved
Plain (infinitive)
take
love
Gerund–participle
taking
loving
Past participle
taken
loved
Tense, aspect, and mood
English has two primary tenses, past (preterite) and non-past. The preterite is inflected by using the preterite form of the verb, which for the regular verbs includes the suffix
-ed
, and for the strong verbs either the suffix
-t
or a change in the stem vowel. The non-past form is unmarked except in the third person singular, which takes the suffix
-s
207
Present
Preterite
First person
I run
I ran
Second person
You run
You ran
Third person
John runs
John ran
English does not have future verb forms.
212
The future tense is expressed periphrastically with one of the auxiliary verbs
will
or
shall
213
Many varieties also use a
near future
constructed with the
phrasal verb
"be going to" (
going-to future
).
214
Future
First person
"I will run"
Second person
"You will run"
Third person
"John will run"
Further aspectual distinctions are shown by auxiliary verbs, primarily
have
and
be
, which show the contrast between a perfect and non-perfect past tense ("I have run" vs. "I was running"), and compound tenses such as preterite perfect ("I had been running") and present perfect ("I have been running").
215
For the expression of mood, English uses a number of modal auxiliaries, such as
can
may
will
shall
and the past tense forms
could
might
would
should
. There are also
subjunctive
and
imperative moods
, both based on the plain form of the verb (i.e. without the third person singular
-s
), for use in subordinate clauses (e.g. subjunctive: "It is important that he run every day"; imperative
Run!
).
213
An infinitive form, that uses the plain form of the verb and the preposition
to
, is used for verbal clauses that are syntactically subordinate to a finite verbal clause. Finite verbal clauses are those that are formed around a verb in the present or preterite form. In clauses with auxiliary verbs, they are the finite verbs and the main verb is treated as a subordinate clause.
216
For example, "he has to go" where only the auxiliary verb
have
is inflected for time and the main verb
to go
is in the infinitive, or in a complement clause such as "I saw him leave", where the main verb is
see
, which is in a preterite form, and
leave
is in the infinitive.
Phrasal verbs
English also makes frequent use of constructions traditionally called
phrasal verbs
, verb phrases that are made up of a verb root and a preposition or particle that follows the verb. The phrase then functions as a single predicate. In terms of intonation the preposition is fused to the verb, but in writing it is written as a separate word. Examples of phrasal verbs are "to get up", "to ask out", "to get together", and "to put up with". The phrasal verb frequently has a highly
idiomatic
meaning that is more specialised and restricted than what can be simply extrapolated from the combination of verb and preposition complement (e.g.
lay off
meaning
terminate someone's employment
).
217
Some grammarians do not consider this type of construction to form a syntactic constituent and hence refrain from using the term "phrasal verb". Instead, they consider the construction simply to be a verb with a prepositional phrase as its syntactic complement, e.g. "he woke up in the morning" and "he ran up in the mountains" are syntactically equivalent.
218
Adverbs
The function of adverbs is to modify the action or event described by the verb by providing additional information about the manner in which it occurs.
179
Many
English adverbs
are derived from adjectives by appending the suffix
-ly
. For example, in the phrase "the woman walked quickly", the adverb
quickly
is derived from the adjective
quick
. Some commonly used adjectives have irregular adverbial forms, such as
good
, which has the adverbial form
well
219
Syntax
In the English sentence "The cat sat on the mat", the subject is
the cat
(a noun phrase), the verb is
sat
, and
on the mat
is a prepositional phrase composed of a noun phrase
the mat
, headed by the preposition
on
Modern English syntax is moderately
analytic
220
It has developed features such as
modal verbs
and
word order
as resources for conveying meaning.
Auxiliary verbs
mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the
passive voice
and progressive
aspect
221
Basic constituent order
English has moved from the Germanic
verb-second (V2) word order
to being almost exclusively
subject–verb–object
(SVO).
222
The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates clusters of two or more verbs at the centre of the sentence, such as "he had been hoping to try opening it".
223
In most sentences, English only marks grammatical relations through word order.
224
The subject constituent precedes the verb and the object constituent follows it. The grammatical roles of each constituent are marked only by the position relative to the verb:
The dog
bites
the man
The man
bites
the dog
An exception is found in sentences where one of the constituents is a pronoun, in which case it is doubly marked, both by word order and by case inflection, where the subject pronoun precedes the verb and takes the subjective case form, and the object pronoun follows the verb and takes the objective case form.
225
The example below demonstrates this double marking in a sentence where both object and subject are represented with a third person singular masculine pronoun:
He
hit
him
Indirect objects
(IO) of ditransitive verbs can be placed either as the first object in a double object construction (S V IO O), such as "I gave
Jane
the book" or in a prepositional phrase, such as "I gave the book
to Jane
".
226
Clause syntax
Main article:
English clause syntax
English sentences may be composed of one or more clauses, that may in turn be composed of one or more phrases (e.g. noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases). A clause is built around a verb and includes its constituents, such as any noun or prepositional phrases. Within a sentence, there is always at least one main clause (or matrix clause) whereas other clauses are subordinate to a main clause. Subordinate clauses may function as arguments of the verb in the main clause. For example, in the phrase "I think (that) you are lying", the main clause is headed by the verb
think
, the subject is
, but the object of the phrase is the subordinate clause "(that) you are lying". The subordinating conjunction
that
shows that the clause that follows is a subordinate clause, but it is often omitted.
227
Relative clauses
are clauses that function as a modifier or specifier to some constituent in the main clause: For example, in the sentence "I saw the letter that you received today", the relative clause "that you received today" specifies the meaning of the word
letter
, the object of the main clause. Relative clauses can be introduced by the pronouns
who
whose
whom
, and
which
as well as by
that
(which can also be omitted).
228
In contrast to many other Germanic languages there are no major differences between word order in main and subordinate clauses.
229
Auxiliary verb constructions
English auxiliary verbs
are relied upon for many functions, including the expression of tense, aspect, and mood. Auxiliary verbs form main clauses, and the main verbs function as heads of a subordinate clause of the auxiliary verb. For example, in the sentence "the dog did not find its bone", the clause "find its bone" is the complement of the negated verb
did not
Subject–auxiliary inversion
is used in many constructions, including focus, negation, and interrogative constructions.
230
The verb
do
can be used as an auxiliary even in simple declarative sentences, where it usually serves to add emphasis, as in "I did shut the fridge." However, in the negated and inverted clauses referred to above, it is used because the rules of English syntax permit these constructions only when an auxiliary is present. Modern English does not allow the addition of the negating adverb
not
to an ordinary
finite
lexical verb, as in *"I know not" – it can only be added to an auxiliary (or
copular
) verb, hence if there is no other auxiliary present when negation is required, the auxiliary
do
is used, to produce a form like "I do not (don't) know." The same applies in clauses requiring inversion, including most questions – inversion must involve the subject and an auxiliary verb, so it is not possible to say *"Know you him?"; grammatical rules require "Do you know him?"
231
Negation is done with the adverb
not
, which precedes the main verb and follows an auxiliary verb. A contracted form of not -
n't
can be used as an enclitic attaching to auxiliary verbs and to the copula verb
to be
. Just as with questions, many negative constructions require the negation to occur with
do
-support, thus in Modern English "I don't know him" is the correct answer to the question "Do you know him?", but not *"I know him not", although this construction may be found in older English.
232
Passive constructions also use auxiliary verbs. A passive construction rephrases an active construction in such a way that the object of the active phrase becomes the subject of the passive phrase, and the subject of the active phrase is either omitted or demoted to a role as an oblique argument introduced in a prepositional phrase. They are formed by using the past participle either with the auxiliary verb
to be
or
to get
, although not all varieties of English allow the use of passives with
get
. For example, putting the sentence "she sees him" into the passive becomes "he is seen (by her)", or "he gets seen (by her)".
233
Questions
Both
yes/no questions
and
wh
-questions
in English are mostly formed using
subject–auxiliary inversion
("Am I going tomorrow?", "Where can we eat?"), which may require
do
-support ("Do you like her?", "Where did he go?"). In most cases,
interrogative words
(or wh
-words
) – which include
who
what
when
where
why
, and
how
– appear in a
fronted position
. For example, in the question "What did you see?", the word
what
appears as the first constituent despite being the
grammatical object
of the sentence. When the
wh
-word is the subject or forms part of the subject, no inversion occurs (e.g. "Who saw the cat?").
Prepositional phrases
can also be fronted when they are the questions theme (e.g. "To whose house did you go last night?"). The personal interrogative pronoun
who
is the only interrogative pronoun to still show inflection for case, with the variant
whom
serving as the objective case form, although this form may be going out of use in many contexts.
234
Discourse level syntax
While English is a subject-prominent language, at the discourse level it tends to use a
topic–comment
structure, where the known information (topic) precedes the new information (comment). Because of the strict SVO syntax, the topic of a sentence generally has to be the grammatical subject of the sentence. In cases where the topic is not the grammatical subject of the sentence, it is often promoted to subject position through syntactic means. One way of doing this is through a passive construction, "the girl was stung by the bee". Another way is through a
cleft sentence
where the main clause is demoted to be a complement clause of a copula sentence with a
dummy subject
such as
it
or
there
, e.g. "it was the girl that the bee stung", "there was a girl who was stung by a bee".
235
Dummy subjects are also used in constructions where there is no grammatical subject such as with impersonal verbs (e.g. "it is raining") or in existential clauses ("there are many cars on the street"). Through the use of these complex sentence constructions with informationally vacuous subjects, English is able to maintain both a topic–comment sentence structure and a SVO syntax.
236
Focus constructions
emphasise a particular piece of new or salient information within a sentence, generally through allocating the main sentence level stress on the focal constituent. For example, "the girl was stung by
a bee
" (emphasising it was a bee and not, for example, a wasp that stung her), or "
the girl
was stung by a bee" (contrasting with another possibility, for example that it was the boy).
237
Topic and focus can also be established through syntactic dislocation, either preposing or postposing the item to be focused on relative to the main clause. For example, "That girl over there, she was stung by a bee", emphasises the girl by preposition, but a similar effect could be achieved by postposition, "she was stung by a bee, that girl over there", where reference to the girl is established as an afterthought.
238
Cohesion
between sentences is achieved through the use of deictic pronouns as
anaphora
(e.g. "that is exactly what I mean" where
that
refers to some fact known to both interlocutors, or
then
used to locate the time of a narrated event relative to the time of a previously narrated event).
239
Discourse markers
such as
oh
so
, or
well
, also signal the progression of ideas between sentences and help to create cohesion. Discourse markers are often the first constituents in sentences. Discourse markers are also used for
stance taking
in which speakers position themselves in a specific attitude towards what is being said, for example, "no way is that true!" (the idiomatic marker "no way!" expressing disbelief), or "boy! I'm hungry" (the marker
boy
expressing emphasis). While discourse markers are particularly characteristic of informal and spoken registers of English, they are also used in written and formal registers.
240
Vocabulary
The English
lexicon
consists of around 170,000 words (or 220,000, if counting obsolete words), according to an estimate based on the 1989 edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary
241
Over one-half are nouns, one-quarter are adjectives, and one-seventh are verbs. Another estimate – which includes
scientific jargon
prefixed
and
suffixed
words, loanwords of extremely limited use, technical
acronyms
, etc. – counts around 1 million total English words.
242
English borrows vocabulary quickly from many languages and other sources. Early studies of English vocabulary by
lexicographers
(scholars who study vocabulary and compile dictionaries) were impeded by a lack of comprehensive data on actual vocabulary in use from high-quality
linguistic corpora
243
(collections of actual written texts and spoken passages). Many statements published before the end of the 20th century about the growth of English vocabulary over time, the dates of first use of various words in English, and the sources of English vocabulary will have to be corrected as new computerised analyses of linguistic corpus data become available.
244
245
Word-formation processes
English forms new words from existing words or roots in its vocabulary through a variety of processes. One of the most productive processes in English is conversion,
246
using a word with a different grammatical role, for example using a noun as a verb or a verb as a noun. Another productive word-formation process is nominal compounding,
242
245
producing compound words such as
babysitter
or
ice cream
or
homesick
246
Formation of new words, called
neologisms
, based on
Greek or Latin roots
(for example
television
or
optometry
) is a highly productive process in modern European languages like English, so much so that it is often difficult to determine in which language a neologism originated. For this reason, American lexicographer
Philip Gove
attributed many such words to the "
international scientific vocabulary
" (ISV) when compiling
Webster's Third New International Dictionary
(1961). Another active word-formation process in English is that of
acronyms
, which result from pronouncing abbreviations of longer phrases as single words, e.g.
NATO
laser
scuba
247
Word origins
Further information:
Foreign-language influences in English
and
Lists of English words by country or language of origin
See also:
Linguistic purism in English
English lexicon by source language
248
French, including Anglo-Norman (28.3%)
Latin, including scientific and technical loans (28.2%)
Germanic (Old English, Old Norse, Dutch) (25.0%)
Greek (5.32%)
None given (4.03%)
Derived from proper names (3.28%)
Other (5.83%)
Throughout its history, English has been a particularly frequent borrower of loanwords from other languages.
249
West Germanic words in use since the Anglo-Saxon period still comprise most of the language's core vocabulary, as well as most of its most frequently used words.
250
251
242
Many sentences can be constructed without loanwords, but not without core Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.
252
English has formal and informal
speech registers
; informal registers, including child-directed speech, tend to be made up predominantly of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, while Latinate vocabulary appears more frequently in legal, scientific, and academic writing.
253
254
Prolonged and intense contact with French has resulted in English having a very high proportion of Latinate words – with French loanwords borrowed during different stages of the language's history comprising 28 per cent of the English lexicon.
255
In all periods of its history, English has also borrowed words from Latin directly,
245
242
representing another 28 per cent of the lexicon.
256
In turn, many of these words had originally entered Latin from Greek. Greek and Latin stems remain highly productive sources for new literary, technical, and scientific vocabulary in English.
257
Loanwords from Old Norse primarily entered English between the 8th and 11th centuries, during the Norse colonisation of eastern and northern England, and typically displaced an Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Many represent core vocabulary – including
give
get
sky
skirt
egg
, and
cake
258
39
English loans in other languages
Main article:
Englishisation
Sign written in
United States Spanish
, using the English word
free
instead of the Spanish
gratis
English has had a strong influence on the vocabulary of other languages.
255
259
The influence of English comes from such factors as opinion leaders in other countries knowing the English language, the role of English as a world lingua franca, and the large number of books and films that are translated from English into other languages.
260
That pervasive use of English leads to a conclusion in many places that English is an especially suitable language for expressing new ideas or describing new technologies. Among varieties of English, it is especially American English that influences other languages.
261
Some languages, such as Chinese, write words borrowed from English mostly as
calques
, while others, such as Japanese, readily take in English loanwords written in sound-indicating script.
262
Dubbed films and television programmes are an especially fruitful source of English influence on languages in Europe.
262
Orthography
Since the 9th century, English has been written using the
English alphabet
, which uses the
Latin script
Anglo-Saxon runes
were previously used to write Old English, but only in short inscriptions; the overwhelming majority of attested writings in Old English are in the
Old English Latin alphabet
33
English orthography
is multi-layered and complex, with elements of French, Latin, and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system.
263
Further complications have arisen through
sound changes
with which the orthography has not kept pace.
50
Compared to European languages for which official organisations have promoted
spelling reforms
, English has spelling that is a less consistent indicator of pronunciation, and standard spellings of words that are more difficult to guess from knowing how a word is pronounced.
264
There are also systematic
spelling differences between British and American English
. These situations have prompted
proposals for spelling reform in English
265
Although letters and speech sounds do not have a one-to-one correspondence in standard English spelling, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetic changes in derived words, and word accent are reliable for most English words.
266
Moreover, standard English spelling shows etymological relationships between related words that would be obscured by a closer correspondence between pronunciation and spelling – for example, the words
photograph
photography
, and
photographic
266
or the words
electricity
and
electrical
. While few scholars agree with Chomsky and Halle (1968) that conventional English orthography is "near-optimal",
263
there is a rationale for current English spelling patterns.
267
The standard orthography of English is the most widely used writing system in the world.
268
Standard English spelling is based on a graphomorphemic segmentation of words into written clues of what meaningful units make up each word.
269
Readers of English can generally rely on the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation to be fairly regular for letters or
digraphs
used to spell consonant sounds. The letters
represent, respectively, the phonemes
/b,
d,
f,
h,
dʒ,
k,
l,
m,
n,
p,
r,
s,
t,
v,
w,
j,
z/
. The letters
and
normally represent
/k/
and
/ɡ/
, but there is also a
soft
pronounced
/s/
, and a
soft
pronounced
/dʒ/
. The differences in the pronunciations of the letters
and
are often signalled by the following letters in standard English spelling. Digraphs used to represent phonemes and phoneme sequences include
ch
for
/tʃ/
sh
for
/ʃ/
th
for
/θ/
or
/ð/
ng
for
/ŋ/
qu
for
/kw/
, and
ph
for
/f/
in Greek-derived words. The single letter
is generally pronounced as
/z/
in word-initial position and as
/ks/
otherwise. There are exceptions to these generalisations, often the result of loanwords being spelled according to the spelling patterns of their languages of origin
266
or residues of proposals by scholars in the early period of Modern English to follow the spelling patterns of Latin for English words of Germanic origin.
270
For the vowel sounds of the English language, however, correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are more irregular. There are many more vowel phonemes in English than there are single vowel letters (
, and very rarely
). As a result, some "
long vowels
" are often indicated by combinations of letters (like the
oa
in
boat
, the
ow
in
how
, and the
ay
in
stay
), or the historically based
silent
(as in
note
and
cake
).
267
The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that learning to read and write can be challenging in English. It can take longer for school pupils to become independently fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including Italian, Spanish, and German.
271
Nonetheless, there is an advantage for learners of English reading in learning the specific sound-symbol regularities that occur in the standard English spellings of commonly used words.
266
Such instruction greatly reduces the risk of children experiencing reading difficulties in English.
272
273
Making primary school teachers more aware of the primacy of morpheme representation in English may help learners learn more efficiently to read and write English.
274
English writing also includes a system of
punctuation
marks that is similar to those used in most alphabetic languages around the world. The purpose of punctuation is to mark meaningful grammatical relationships in sentences to aid readers in understanding a text and to indicate features important for reading a text aloud.
275
Dialects, accents, and varieties
Dialectologists identify many
English dialects
, which usually refer to regional varieties that differ from each other in terms of patterns of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The pronunciation of particular areas distinguishes dialects as separate
regional accents
. The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into the two extremely general categories of
British English
(BrE) and
North American English
(NAE).
276
Britain and Ireland
An example of a man with a contemporary
Received Pronunciation
accent (
Alain de Botton
).
An example of a man with a
Cockney accent
Danny Baker
).
An example of an
Essex
man with a working-class
Estuary English
accent (
Russell Brand
).
An example of a man with a (
West
Yorkshire accent
Damien Hirst
).
An example of a man with a contemporary
Liverpool accent
John Bishop
).
An example of a man with a (
South
Wales accent
Rob Brydon
).
An example of a man with one of the many
accents of Scotland
Alex Salmond
).
An example of a man with a
Northern Irish accent
George Best
).
An example of a woman with one of the many
accents of Ireland
Mary Robinson
).
Primary dialect regions in the United Kingdom and Ireland
The fact that English has been spoken in England for 1,500 years explains why England has a great wealth of regional dialects.
277
Within the United Kingdom,
Received Pronunciation
(RP), an educated accent associated originally with
South East England
, has been traditionally used as a broadcast standard and is considered the most prestigious of British accents. The spread of RP (also known as BBC English) through the media has caused many traditional dialects of rural England to recede, as youths adopt the traits of the prestige variety instead of traits from local dialects. At the time of the 1950–61
Survey of English Dialects
, grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of lexical attrition has led most of this variation to disappear.
278
Nonetheless, this attrition has mostly affected dialectal variation in grammar and vocabulary. Only 3% of the English population actually speak RP, the remainder speaking in regional accents and dialects with varying degrees of RP influence.
279
There is also variability within RP, particularly along class lines between Upper and Middle-class RP speakers and between native RP speakers and speakers who adopt RP later in life.
280
Within Britain, there is also considerable variation along lines of social class; some traits, though exceedingly common, are nonetheless considered "non-standard" and associated with lower-class speakers and identities. An example of this is
-dropping
, which was historically a feature of lower-class London English, particularly Cockney, and can now be heard in the local accents of most parts of England. However, it remains largely absent in broadcasting and among the upper crust of British society.
281
English in England
can be divided into four major dialect regions: South East English, South West English (also known as
West Country English
), Midlands English and
Northern English
. Within each of these regions, several local dialects exist: within the Northern region, there is a division between the
Yorkshire dialects
, the
Geordie
dialect (spoken around
Newcastle
, in
Northumbria
) and the
Lancashire
dialects, which include the urban subdialects of
Manchester
Mancunian
) and
Liverpool
Scouse
). Having been the centre of Danish occupation during the Viking invasions of England, Northern English dialects, particularly the Yorkshire dialect, retain Norse features not found in other English varieties.
282
In the
West Midlands
, dialects such as
Black Country
Yam Yam
), and by less extent
Birmingham
Brummie
), preserve archaic features from early modern and Middle English, retaining Germanic elements such as specific grammatical structures and vocabulary.
283
Since the 15th century, South East England varieties have centred on London, which has been the centre from which dialectal innovations have spread to other dialects. In London, the
Cockney
dialect was traditionally used by the lower classes, and it was long a socially stigmatised variety. The spread of Cockney features across the South East led the media to talk of Estuary English as a new dialect, but the notion was criticised by many linguists on the grounds that London had been influencing neighbouring regions throughout history.
284
285
286
Traits that have spread from London in recent decades include the use of
intrusive R
drawing
is pronounced "drawring"
/ˈdrɔːrɪŋ/
),
-glottalisation
Potter
is pronounced with a glottal stop as
Po'er
/ˈpɒʔə/
) and
th
-fronting
, or the pronunciation of
th-
as
/f/
thanks
pronounced "fanks") or
/v/
bother
pronounced "bover").
287
Scots
is today considered a separate language from English, but it has
its origins
in early Northern Middle English
288
and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, particularly
Scottish Gaelic
and Old Norse. Scots itself has a number of regional dialects. In addition to Scots,
Scottish English
comprises the varieties of Standard English spoken in Scotland; most varieties are Northern English accents, with some influence from Scots.
289
In
Ireland
, various forms of English have been spoken following the
Norman invasion of the island
during the 11th century. In
County Wexford
and in the area surrounding
Dublin
, two extinct dialects known as
Forth and Bargy
and
Fingallian
developed as offshoots from Early Middle English and were spoken until the 19th century. Modern
Irish English
, however, has its roots in English colonisation in the 17th century. Today Irish English is divided into
Ulster English
, the Northern Ireland dialect with strong influence from Scots, and various dialects of Ireland. Like Scottish and most North American accents, almost all Irish accents preserve the
rhoticity
which has been lost in the dialects influenced by RP.
19
290
North America
An example of a
Midwestern American
man with a
General American accent
Emery Emery
).
An Alabama woman with a contemporary
Southern American accent
Martha Roby
).
A man with a
New York City accent
Chuck Zito
).
A man with a
Boston accent
Marty Walsh
).
An example of two men with
AAVE accents
, the interviewer from
Georgia
D. J. Shockley
) and the interviewee from
Louisiana
Russell Gage
).
An Ontario woman with a
Standard Canadian accent
Margaret Atwood
).
Percentage of Americans aged 5+ in the 50 states,
Washington, D.C.
, and
Puerto Rico
who speak English at home, according to the 2016–2021
American Community Survey
Rhoticity dominates in
North American English
, but
The Atlas of North American English
found over 50 per cent non-rhoticity, with at least one local speaker in each US metropolitan area (marked with a red dot) and non-rhotic AAVE pronunciations found primarily among African Americans regardless of location.
STANDARD CANADIAN
Pacific
Northwest
Indigenous Canadian
Quebec
Ottawa-Valley
MTE
ATLANTIC CANADIAN
Lunenburg
Newfoundland
Due to the relatively strong degree of mixing, mutual accommodation, and koinéisation that occurred during the colonial period,
North American English
has traditionally been perceived as relatively homogeneous, at least in comparison with British dialects. However, modern scholars have strongly opposed this notion, arguing that North American English shows a great deal of phonetic, lexical, and geographic variability. This becomes all the more apparent considering social, ethnolinguistic, and regional varieties such as
African-American English
Chicano English
Cajun English
, or
Newfoundland English
291
American accent variation is increasing at the regional level and decreasing at the very local level,
292
though most Americans still speak within a phonological continuum of similar accents,
293
known collectively as
General American English
(GA), with differences hardly noticed even among Americans themselves, including
Midland
and
Western American English
294
295
296
Canadian English
varieties, excepting those from
Atlantic Canada
and possibly
Quebec
, are generally considered to belong to the GA continuum, although they often show
raising
of the vowels
aɪ
and
aʊ
before
voiceless consonants
and have distinct norms for writing and pronunciation as well.
297
Atlantic Canadian English
, notably distinct from
Standard Canadian English
298
comprises
Maritime English
and
Newfoundland English
. It was influenced mostly by British and Irish English, as well as
Irish
Scottish Gaelic
, and
Acadian French
299
In most American and Canadian English dialects,
rhoticity
(or
-fullness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (or
-dropping) being associated with lower prestige and social class, especially since the end of
World War II
. This contrasts with the situation in England, where non-rhoticity has become the standard.
300
Varieties beyond GA which have developed distinct sound systems include the
Southern American English
New York City English
Eastern New England English
, and
African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE) groups – all of which are historically non-rhotic, save a few varieties of Southern American.
In Southern American English, the most populous grouping outside GA,
301
rhoticity now strongly prevails, replacing the region's
historical non-rhotic prestige
302
303
304
Southern accents are colloquially described as a "drawl" or "twang",
305
being recognised most readily by the Southern Vowel Shift initiated by
glide-deleting
in the
/aɪ/
vowel (e.g. pronouncing
spy
almost like
spa
), the "Southern breaking" of several front pure vowels into a gliding vowel or even two syllables (e.g. pronouncing the word
press
almost like "pray-us"),
306
the
pin–pen merger
, and other distinctive phonological, grammatical, and lexical features, many of which are actually recent developments of the 19th century or later.
307
Spoken primarily by working- and middle-class African Americans,
African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE) is largely non-rhotic, and likely originated among enslaved Africans and African Americans influenced primarily by the non-standard
older Southern dialects
. A minority of linguists,
308
contrarily, propose that AAVE mostly traces back to African languages spoken by the slaves who had to develop a
pidgin
or
English-based creole
to communicate with slaves of other ethnic and linguistic origins.
309
AAVE's important commonalities with Southern accents suggest it developed into a highly coherent and homogeneous variety in the 19th or early 20th century. AAVE is commonly stigmatised in North America as a form of "broken" or "uneducated" English, as are white Southern accents, but linguists today recognise both as fully developed varieties of English with their own norms shared by large speech communities.
310
311
Australia and New Zealand
An example of a man with a
general Australian accent
An example of a
South Australian
woman with a
broad Australian accent
Julia Gillard
).
An example of a
Queensland
man with a cultivated Australian accent (
Geoffrey Rush
).
An example of a woman with a
New Zealand accent
Eleanor Catton
).
An example of a man with a
New Zealand accent
John Key
).
Since 1788, English has been spoken in
Oceania
, and
Australian English
has developed as the first language of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Australian continent, its standard accent being
General Australian
. The
English of neighbouring New Zealand
has to a lesser degree become an influential standard variety of the language.
312
Australian and New Zealand English are each other's closest relatives with few differentiating characteristics, followed by
South African English
and the English of South East England, all of which have similarly non-rhotic accents, aside from some accents in the
South Island
of New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand English stand out for their innovative vowels: many short vowels are fronted or raised, whereas many long vowels have diphthongised. Australian English also has a contrast between long and short vowels, not found in most other varieties. Australian English grammar aligns closely with British and American English; like American English, collective plural subjects take on a singular verb, e.g. "the government is" (rather than
are
).
313
314
New Zealand English uses front vowels that are often even higher than in Australian English.
315
316
317
Southeast Asia
An example of a male teenager with a
Singaporean accent
Examples of a man and woman with
Filipino accents
English is an official language of the
Philippines
. Its use is ubiquitous in the country, and appears in areas including on
street signs
, marquees, and government documents, and in courtrooms, public media, the entertainment industry, and the business sector. It became an important and widely spoken language in the country during the period of American rule between 1898 and 1946.
318
Taglish
is a prominent form of
code-switching
between
Tagalog
and English.
319
Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
An example of a man with a
South African accent
An example of a woman with an educated
Nigerian accent
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
).
An example of a woman and man with
Jamaican accents
An example of a woman with an
Indian accent
Arundhati Roy
).
English is spoken widely in southern Africa and is an official or co-official language in several of the region's countries. In
South Africa
, English has been spoken since 1820, co-existing with
Afrikaans
and various African languages such as the
Khoe
and
Bantu languages
. Today, about nine per cent of the South African population speaks
South African English
(SAE) as a first language. SAE is a non-rhotic variety that tends to follow RP as a norm. It is one of the few non-rhotic English varieties that lack
intrusive R
. The second-language varieties of South Africa differ based on the native languages of their speakers.
320
Most phonological differences from RP are in the vowels.
321
Consonant differences include the tendency to pronounce
/p,
t,
t͡ʃ,
k/
without aspiration (e.g.
pin
pronounced
[pɪn]
rather than as
[pʰɪn]
as in most other varieties), while r is often pronounced as a flap
[ɾ]
instead of as the more common fricative.
322
Nigerian English is a variety of English spoken in
Nigeria
; over 150 million Nigerians speak some form of the language.
323
Though traditionally based on British English, increasing United States influence during the latter 20th century has resulted in American English vocabulary entering Nigerian English. Additionally, some new words and collocations have emerged from the variety out of a need to express concepts specific to the culture of the nation (e.g.
senior wife
).
324
Varieties of English are spoken throughout the former British colonial possessions in the Caribbean, including Jamaica, the
Leeward
and
Windward Islands
Trinidad and Tobago
Barbados
, the
Cayman Islands
, and
Belize
. Each of these areas is home both to a local variety of English and a local English-based creole, combining English and African languages. The most prominent varieties are
Jamaican English
and
Jamaican Creole
. In Central America, English-based creoles are spoken on the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Panama.
325
Residents are often fluent in both the local English variety and the local creole languages, and frequently
code-switch
between them. The relationship between different varieties can be conceptualised as a continuum, in which more creole-like or RP-like forms function as more formal and informal registers of the language respectively.
326
Most Caribbean varieties are based on British English and consequently, most are non-rhotic, except for formal styles of Jamaican English which are often rhotic. Jamaican English differs from RP in its vowel inventory, which has a distinction between long and short vowels rather than tense and lax vowels as in Standard English. The diphthongs
/ei/
and
/ou/
are monophthongs
[eː]
and
[oː]
or even the reverse diphthongs
[ie]
and
[uo]
(e.g.
bay
and
boat
pronounced
[bʲeː]
and
[bʷoːt]
). Often word-final consonant clusters are simplified so that "child" is pronounced
[t͡ʃail]
and "wind"
[win]
327
328
329
Indian English
historically tends towards RP as an ideal, with the proximity of speakers to RP generally reflective of class distinctions. Indian English accents are marked by the pronunciation of phonemes such as
/t/
and
/d/
(often pronounced with retroflex articulation as
[ʈ]
and
[ɖ]
) and the replacement of
/θ/
and
/ð/
with dentals
[t̪]
and
[d̪]
. Sometimes Indian English speakers may also use spelling-based pronunciations where the silent
⟨h⟩
found in words such as
ghost
is pronounced as an Indian
voiced aspirated
stop
[ɡʱ]
330
Non-native varieties
An example of a
Hispanophone
man speaking English.
An example of a Japanese man speaking English (
Shinzo Abe
).
An example of a German man speaking English (
Werner Herzog
).
Non-native English speakers
may pronounce words differently due to having not fully mastered English pronunciation. This can happen either because they apply the
speech rules
of their mother tongue to English ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used in
first language acquisition
. They may create novel pronunciations for English sounds not found in their first language.
331
See also
English in the Commonwealth of Nations
English-only movement
– Political movement in the U.S.
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Accents of English from Around the World (University of Edinburgh)
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