Talk:English language

Content moved from the phonology section

Regional variation in consonants

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

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

Regional variation

The pronunciation of some vowels varies between dialects:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spread of Modern English

The section gave far too much prominence to a set of small ex-English colonies in the 18th century, my sources show that it wasn't until the early to middle 20th century that the USA starting facilitating the spread of English and gave far too little prominence to the British Empire and the Commonwealth. Most reliable sources show that English was spread by trade, colonisation, Empire, learning, the need for a standard methodology as well as science and technology. In the early part of the 20th century most movies were silent, then dubbed outside of Great Britain, the Commonwealth and the USA which at that time generated the most English-language films. Subsequently, I have corrected the chronology and given more weight to reflect the sources as well as reducing the impact the article suggested the 13 colonies and then America had on the spread of the language during the 18th and 19th centuries. Also, I have given some weight (backed up by sources) to the BBC, the largest broadcaster in the world, which has helped propagate English world-wide, regards. Twobells^t@lk 23:18, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll check the sources. For geographic spread, through about the first world war, Britain and its empire were plainly the major force. For increase in the number of speakers (a different section of the article, I suppose), the influence of the United States was early and decisive--and predicted by contemporary observers before the British colonies in North America became independent. Thanks for visiting the article talk page to discuss these edits and thanks for citing some new sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (Watch my talk, How I edit) 23:42, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing some balance to this section. Long overdue. Would it be worth spelling out BBC acronym? Some readers who are unfamiliar with the subject might misunderstand it to be a US broadcaster. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:14, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Until to the end of WWII, English was regarded in large regions of Europe just as an odd German dialect. Only after the emergence of the United States as a global superpower, English has become the leading language of international discourse. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.115.103.207 (talk) 22:49, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

This comment is ridiculous. The writer should at least read some history. Even people in Europe knew the British Empire was massive and spread all over the world using English as its core language. My uncle went from D-Day up to Denmark in WW2. He said he was surprised at how many people could speak some English in the places he went to along the way. He said , "we never knew a word of a foreign language". 90.220.27.146 (talk) 08:31, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I dispute that last comment, as in shown in the article, most countries that speak English such as Australia, New Zealand and India use British not American English. I think that the US use of English spread more after the Vietnam war and the explosion of US films and TV shows in the 1970s. This can be seen by the amount of people in Asia (not India or Pakistan areas) who tend to use American English. Solatiumz (talk) 22:58, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I spoke about Europe but not about Australia and New Zealand

Phylogenetic tree / bad picture

Saying that low german stems from low franconian is misleading if not outright wrong. Low franconian already is a low german dialect but there are other low german dialects that have nothing to do with low franconian, most notably low saxon. --92.202.39.184 (talk) 18:53, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

lingua franca

In the lead, the phrase lingua franca should be in italics, just as the title of the article is in italics once you go to it. As unregistered and/or non-logged in editors can't edit the article due to it being semi-protected, I would ask that that someone be kind enough to do so on my behalf. Thanks in advance. 98.26.248.199 (talk) 19:49, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

• I just noticed that phrase is used 5 times in the article, which might be excessive, but nonetheless each instance should be italicised. 98.26.248.199 (talk) 19:52, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
  • In my view there's no need for italics, it's well enough established as an English phrase. W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:54, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree that there is no need, but I have added them anyway. No harm either, I think.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:31, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

"Questions" section

I don't like it much.

I fixed a few things, and removed what was the final sentence, which was rather too opaque and winding to be worth including, don't you think? "For those speakers who do use it, it distinguishes between questions where the theme of the question is the grammatical subject of the verb, from those where it is the object or another grammatical role that is being questioned. E.g. who saw you?, but whom did you see?

The use of "whom" depends on register and grammatical context rather than the speaker/writer. Most people still say "with whom", not "with who", which sounds decidedly thuddish, even to the casually incorrect speaker. But "Who do you like?" is commonplace, even in writing and fairly formal speech registers. Tony (talk) 09:32, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

IN general your changes were fine. I think they would be better if they incorporated a reference, but I guess I will have to add those myself. Your intuition about how "with who" sounds to most people is speculation and the and that most people actually say "with whom" is empirically wrong - I think it is well established that most English speakers never use "whom" and that within a few generations the last remnants of "whom" are expected to be gone. Sure there is a higher incidence in more formal registers, but there are many many speakers for whom it is simply not a part of their vocabulary.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:36, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm when searching the literature I can find many references stating that whom is dissappearing from some speech communities, but I can find no actual empirical studies of the sociolinguistic correlates of whom vs. who. May be simply one of the linguistic articles of faith since Sapir predicted the dissappearance of "whom" in 1921. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 11:19, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Changes good, except that the mention of do-support should be retained, as this is a very characteristic feature of English question formation. Should be links to that article and probably to several others. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:44, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Also agree with mention of do-support needing to be retained.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:56, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

"Word Order" and "Question" sections

Regarding the question section; I suggest that it be edited because "interrogative pronouns" is extremely misleading; only 2 out of 5 of those are actually pronouns; the remainder are adverbs as well as most "interrogative pronouns" are actually adverbs; wouldn't it make more sense and accuracy to use "words" instead of "pronouns"?

Also, regarding English's word order and this page's Word Order Section; true that, because of French influence, English is now predominately SVO but English still uses other constructs which are either essential or a convenient nuance which should be considered.

Example: OSV or OVS when the object respectively has the theme/topic or is desired to be emphasized.

OSV In the Modern English language

	Object	Subject	Verb
	Kind and polite folks	I	like.	...	EXAMPLE: "I don't like mean and/or disrespectful people; kind and polite folks I like."

OVS In the Modern English language

	Object	Verb	Subject
	A great and mighty man	was	he.	...	EXAMPLE: "My comrade, a great and mighty man was he."

Also, English still uses V2 word order (albeit in just vestiges).

V2 In the Modern English language

QuestionsPrepositional phrase themed questions

	Question Phrase	V2 Verb	Remainder of the clause
	Exactly how	did	you know that?

Prepositional phrase themed questions

	Prepositional phrase	V2 Verb	Remainder of the clause
	Within how many miles and yards of the finish-line	must	he be to complete the race?

Finally, the most common and traditional Modern English V2 use: Negative or limiter first.

V2 In the Modern English language

Negative or limiter first

	Negative/Limiter	V2 Verb	Remainder of the clause
	Very seldom(ly)	does	it rain here.
	Rarely	have	I ever seen such arrogance!
	Never again	will	I ever see such a wondrous spectacle!

And in light of the fact that English is a Germanic language (which all other Modern Germanic languages use V2 word order), I strongly suggest that these and others (if any other(s) are applicable) should be taken into consideration for the English Language page reformation.Wizymon (talk) 09:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

The mention of interrogative pronouns has already been changed. I am not going to read your examples since in the absence of a source they are simply Original Research. Please take the time to read the sources given for the information you wish to change (Huddleston and Pullum, and König), and then present an argument why other sources should be preferred. The relics of V2 word order are of very minor and specialized interest. Describing them in any detail is unnecessary when the task is to summarize the basics of Modern English syntax as it is here. The argument might be made to include it at English syntax, but it simply doesnt belong here in an article that is already out long as it can be. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:30, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

And what about my OSV and OVS sections/suggestions? Wizymon (talk) 09:35, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

No, those word orders are marked word orders in English, fulfilling only pragmatic purposes. The "O","S","V" description is only used to describe the basic, unmarked word order of a language, not the different permutations used by all languages for different pragmatic effects.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:39, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't like these simple claims of word order. It's more varied and subtle than that, and Maunus is right in raising the marked–unmarked issue. In fact, markedness involves the wording of interrogative just as much as indicative mood. Tony (talk) 11:13, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, indeed the fronting of wh-word can well be considered simply a form of focus construction limited to questions. The only reason the V2 vs. SVO distinction is note worthy is because those two kinds of basic unmarked wordorder are used for typological purposes. O initial word order constructions would be described by their specific pragmatic functions.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 11:26, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

"I am not going to read your examples since in the absence of a source they are simply Original Research." Fair point.

Consider the following then:

Never in my life have I seen such a mess.

Only a few Icelandic sounds would an English speaker have trouble pronouncing. Wizymon (talk) 20:47, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wizymon (talk • contribs)

Yeah, it is well known that English has vestiges of V2 - it is however a specialized point that is not generally mentioned in grammatical descriptions of the language. As I said this can be added to the specific article on Grammar (Or perhaps better the article on V2 word order) But it does not belong in this general article about the language.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:13, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

References

EDIT PROPOSAL: ungrammatical misuse of the word "despite" in reference to North American English rhoticity

"In GA and Canadian English, rhoticity (or r-fulness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (r-dropping) becoming associated with lower prestige and social class especially after World War II, despite non-rhoticity's rising regularity and dominance in England."

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/despite?s=t despite [dih-spahyt] 1. prep. in spite of; notwithstanding. 2. n. contemptuous treatment; insult. 3. n. malice, hatred, or spite. 4. v. trans., obs., despited, despiting: to anger or annoy (someone) out of spite. Idioms 5. in despite of: in spite of, notwithstanding. He was tolerant in despite of his background and education.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/despite despite prep. de·spite \di-ˈspīt\ Simple Definition: without being prevented by (something) Full Definition: in spite of <played despite an injury>

Perhaps the Brits will correct me of my Western eccentricity, but in American English, the preposition "despite" is often used to imply that a relationship of contrast has occurred; and not just even in contravention to one's own expectations (as normativizing as even that would be), but also in contravention to nature (worse yet). This comes from its relationship with the concept of spite; one who does X despite Y (who does X in spite of Y), does X in the spirit of spite for Y (is spiting Y by doing X). The word "despite" is not fully assimilated into a context of mere contrast, but assumes that the contrast is not to be expected.

The only way that use of the word "despite" makes sense in this context is if it should ever have been expected that Americans would have maintained linguistic identity with Brits despite the vast contrast in ethnolinguistic heritage between the two polities (for example, unless I am mistaken, in England ethnic-Germans do not outnumber the ethnically-English). Perhaps there are sociological models of linguistics out there which would predict a lack of divergence between American and British English in light of geographic and human migratory conditions; frankly, such speculations don't matter until they're cited: and I can't find them anyway. I even searched.

Therefore, I propose at the very least that we drop the word "despite" and replace it with the prepositional phrase "in contrast to", since "in contrast to" means exactly what it must and nothing more:

"In GA and Canadian English, rhoticity (or r-fulness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (r-dropping) becoming associated with lower prestige and social class especially after World War II, in contrast to non-rhoticity's rising regularity and dominance in England."

However, I also question the idea that r-dropping is truly associated with lower prestige and social class. We're also quite aware of stereotypes about British people, and mock you duly (gently) for them (I can even grant this as evidence perhaps of rhoticity being associated with lower prestige); but since the stereotype is that you're all posh, it's fairly normal for a person to start faking a (non-rhotic) British accent if they're trying to make a wry portrayal of high-classiness (for example, if someone's going off to University). Moreover, there are various thickly rhotic rural accents (ones which heavily labialize the alveolar approximant) which are mocked just as strongly as non-rhotic Southerners'; certainly, the situation is more complex than a mere relationship of "if you drop your 'r's, you will be thought of as low-class".

Therefore, I further propose that, to ensure that people don't get the false impression that this is some universal thing for Americans to hate non-rhotic accents, we add the word "often", like so:

"In GA and Canadian English, rhoticity (or r-fulness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (r-dropping) often becoming associated with lower prestige and social class especially after World War II, in contrast to non-rhoticity's rising regularity and dominance in England."

I would love to simply make this edit myself as it seems like just the right combination of innocuous and meaningful; but of course there's that little problem that this page is semi-protected... anyone care to help a brother out? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.47.120.119 (talk) 21:23, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I changed it. W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:01, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

• There is nothing "ungrammatical" about this use of "despite", it could however simply be changed for "notwithstanding" or "in spite of the fact" or some other solution such as the one made by W. P. Uzer. Your argument about rhoticity is based on US stereotypes about British English, which are of course irrelevant here since the we are not talking about British evaluations of US english or US evaluations of British English. It is a fact that within Britain r-full accents are non-standard and low prestige, whereas in the US r-full accents are non-standard and low prestige. Regardless of the fact that Americans of course realize that the r-full RP accent is highly prestigeous in Britain. And just as Brits realize that an r-less Brooklyn accent is low prestige in the US.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:39, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree. What troubles me more is the clumsy "with + ing" as an agent of clause linking. The sentence in any case is rather large and could be improved by a split into two. Tony (talk) 13:42, 20 June 2016 (UTC)