English was isolated from other Germanic languages on the continent and diverged considerably invocabulary,syntax, andphonology as a result. It is notmutually 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 Frisianwere 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]
Manuscript (written inuncial script) ofBeowulf, 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 was divided into two Anglian dialects (Mercian andNorthumbrian) and two Saxon dialects (Kentish andWest Saxon).[30] Through the influence exerted by the kingdom ofWessex, and the educational reforms instated byKing Alfred during the 9th century, the West Saxon dialect became thestandard written variety.[31] The epic poemBeowulf 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 theScots language developed from Northumbrian. During the earliest period of Old English, a few short inscriptions were made using arunic alphabet.[33] By the 6th century, aLatin alphabet had been adopted. Written withhalf-uncialletterforms, it included the runic letterswynn⟨ƿ⟩ andthorn⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letterseth⟨ð⟩, andash⟨æ⟩.[33][34]
Old English is a 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 moreinflectional endings and forms, and word order wasmuch freer than in Modern English. Modern English hascase 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 moreperson andnumber endings.[35][36][37]
Influence of Old Norse
Between the 8th and 11th centuries, the English spoken in some regionsunderwent significant changes due to contact withOld Norse, aNorth 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 theDanelaw surrounding York; today these features are still particularly present in Scots andNorthern English. The centre of Norse influence wasLindsey, located in theMidlands. 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 withth- (they,them,their) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns withh- (hie, him, hera).[38]
OtherNorse loanwords includegive,get,sky,skirt,egg, andcake, 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]
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.]
TheMiddle English period is often defined as beginning with theNorman Conquest in 1066. During the centuries that followed, English was heavily influenced by the form ofOld French spoken by the new Norman ruling class that had migrated to England (known asOld 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 theAnglo-Norman language.[42] The division between Old to Middle English can also be placed during the composition of theOrmulum (c. late 12th century), a work by theAugustinian canonOrrm 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 ofloanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains.[11] For instance, the French wordtrône appears for the first time, from which the English wordthrone 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 indicatingpossession. 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 includesGeoffrey Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales (c. 1400), andThomas Malory'sLe 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] Inthe first translation of the entire Bible into English byJohn Wycliffe (1382), Matthew 8:20 reads:"Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis."[49] Here the plural suffix-n on the verbhave is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present.
Early Modern English
Illustration of theGreat Vowel Shift that affected long vowels inEarly Modern English. After the highest vowels /i: u:/ broke intodiphthongs /ai au/, each of the lower vowels gradually shifted up one level to compensate.
The period ofEarly Modern English, lasting between 1500 and 1700, was characterised by theGreat Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was achain shift, meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system.Mid andopen vowels wereraised, andclose vowels werebroken intodiphthongs. For example, the wordbite was originally pronounced as the wordbeet is today, and the second vowel in the wordabout was pronounced as the wordboot 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 ofHenry V. Around 1430, theCourt of Chancery inWestminster began using English in itsofficial documents, and a new standard form of Middle English, known asChancery Standard, developed from the dialects of London and theEast Midlands. In 1476,William Caxton introduced theprinting 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 ofWilliam Shakespeare and the 1611King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, theconsonant clusters/knɡnsw/ inknight,gnat, andsword 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 ofof 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 Englishfugol).[54]
Spread of Modern English
By the late 18th century, theBritish 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][4] 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 multipleindigenous 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 theBBC[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 language has ever been.[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 hisDictionary of the English Language, which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828,Noah Webster published theAmerican 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 ashe andhim,she andher,who andwhom), andsubject–verb–object word order is mostly fixed.[63] Some changes, such as the use ofdo-support, have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the worddo 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 verbhave 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 ofdreamt), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g.more polite instead ofpoliter). 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]
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.[3]
As of 2016[update], 400 million people spoke English as theirfirst language, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a second language.[69] English is thelargest language by number of speakers, spoken by communities on every continent.[70] Estimates ofsecond language and foreign-language speakers vary greatly depending on how proficiency is defined, from 470 million to more than 1 billion.[7] 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 theThree 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 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 fromEnglish-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 apluricentric 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 theiraccents,[96] but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in internationalstandard 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 theEnglish-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 producekoiné 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 anofficial 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]
The United Kingdom does not have an official language. In Wales and Northern Ireland, English is co-official alongsideWelsh[109] andIrish[110] respectively. Neither Scotland nor England have an official language.
In the United States, English was designated the official language of the country byExecutive 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.
Modern English is sometimes described as the first globallingua franca,[60][115] or as the firstworld 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 byTreaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919.[118] By the time theUnited Nations was founded at the end ofWorld 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 theInternational Olympic Committee, specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations, such as theEuropean Free Trade Association (EFTA),Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),[61] andAsia-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 requiredcontrolled natural languages[123]Seaspeak and Airspeak, used asinternational languages of seafaring[124] and aviation.[125]
English is the most frequently taughtforeign 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 andMalta). 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 aboutlanguage death,[128] and to claims oflinguistic 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 think 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 byChemical 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 akoiné language, with a standard form that unifies speakers around the world.[142]
English phonology andphonetics differ from one dialect to another, usually without interfering with mutual communication. Phonological variation affects the inventory ofphonemes (speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes.[143] This overview mainly describesReceived Pronunciation (RP) andGeneral American (GA), thestandard varieties of the United Kingdom and the United States respectively.[144][145][146]
Consonants
Most English dialects share the same 24consonant phonemes (or 26, if marginal/x/ and glottal stop/ʔ/ are included). The consonant inventory shown below is valid forCalifornia English,[147] and for RP.[148]
For pairs ofobstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives) such as/pb/,/tʃdʒ/, and/sz/, the first isfortis (strong) and the second is lenis (weak). Fortis obstruents, such as/ptʃs/ are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as/bdʒz/, and are alwaysvoiceless. Lenis consonants are partlyvoiced 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 areaspirated[pʰ] when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and oftenunreleased[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) thannib[nɪˑb̥] (see below).[149]
In RP, the lateral approximant/l/ has two mainallophones (pronunciation variants): the clear or plain[l], as inlight, and the dark orvelarised[ɫ], as infull.[150] GA has darkl in most cases.[151]
Clearl: RPlight[laɪt]
Darkl: RP and GAfull[fʊɫ], GAlight[ɫaɪt]
Allsonorants (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]
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 vowelphonemes in RP and GA, with example words fromlexical 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 atriangular colon ⟨ː⟩ in the table above, such as the vowel ofneed[niːd] as opposed tobid[bɪd].[154] In GA, vowel length is non-distinctive.[155]
In both RP and GA, vowels are phoneticallyshortened before fortis consonants in the samesyllable, like/ttʃf/, but not before lenis consonants like/ddʒv/ or in open syllables: thus, the vowels ofrich[rɪtʃ],neat[nit], andsafe[seɪ̯f] are noticeably shorter than the vowels ofridge[rɪˑdʒ],need[niˑd], andsave[seˑɪ̯v], and the vowel oflight[laɪ̯t] is shorter than that oflie[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 thatrabbit andabbot rhyme andLenin andLennon are homophonous, a dialectal feature called theweak vowel merger.[159] GA/ɜr/ and/ər/ are realised as anr-coloured vowel[ɚ], as infurther[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 insprint/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 wordstrengths/strɛŋkθs/ 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 inplay; a voiceless fricative and approximant, as infly orsly;s and a voiceless stop, as instay; ands, a voiceless stop, and an approximant, as instring.[161] Clusters of nasal and stop are only allowed in codas. Clusters of obstruents always agree in voicing, and clusters ofsibilants and ofplosives 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 plays an important role in English. Certainsyllables 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 frequentlyreduced while vowels in stressed syllables are not.[163]
Stress in English isphonemic. For instance, the wordcontract is stressed on the first syllable (/ˈkɒntrækt/KON-trakt) when used as a noun, but on the last syllable (/kənˈtrækt/kən-TRAKT) for most meanings (for example, "reduce in size") when used as a verb.[164][165][166] Here stress is connected tovowel 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" (/ˈbɜːrnaʊt/) versus "to burn out" (/ˈbɜːrnˈaʊt/), and "a hotdog" (/ˈhɒtdɒɡ/) versus "a hot dog" (/ˈhɒtˈdɒɡ/).[167]
In terms ofrhythm, English is generally described as astress-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 invowel quality:vowel reduction.[169]
Regional variation
Phonological features in Standard English varieties[170]
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 asCanada,Australia,Ireland,New Zealand andSouth Africa have their own standard varieties which are less often used as standards for education internationally.[170]
English has undergone manyhistorical sound changes, some of them affecting all varieties, and others affecting only a few. Most standard varieties are affected by theGreat 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 theNorthern Cities Vowel Shift andCanadian Shift have produced very different vowel landscapes in some regional accents.[171]
Some dialects have fewer or more consonant phonemes andphones than the standard varieties. Some conservative varieties like Scottish English have avoiceless[ʍ] sound inwhine that contrasts with the voiced[w] inwine, but most other dialects pronounce both words with voiced[w], a dialect feature calledwine–whine merger. The voiceless velar fricative sound/x/ is found in Scottish English, which distinguishesloch/lɔx/ fromlock/lɔk/. Accents likeCockney with "h-dropping" lack the glottal fricative/h/, and dialects withth-stopping andth-fronting likeAfrican-American Vernacular andEstuary 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 asyod-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 thesyllable coda). GA is arhotic 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 theopen front andopen back vowels/æɑːɒɔː/. These four vowels are only distinguished in RP, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In GA, these vowels merge to three/æɑɔ/,[176] and in Canadian English, they merge to two/æɑ/.[177]
Grammar
Typical for an Indo-European language,English grammar followsaccusativemorphosyntactic alignment. Unlike other Indo-European languages, English has largely abandoned the inflectionalcase system in favour ofanalytic constructions. Only thepersonal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any otherword 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 intosubordinators andcoordinators, and add the class of interjections.[178] English also has a rich set ofauxiliary verbs, such ashave anddo, expressing the categories of mood and aspect. Questions are marked bydo-support,wh-movement (fronting of question words beginning withwh-) and word orderinversion with some verbs.[179]
Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in English, such as the distinction between irregularly inflectedstrong stems inflected throughablaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairsspeak / spoke andfoot / feet) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such aslove / 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 thecopula verbto be.[180]
The seven word classes are exemplified in this sample sentence:[181]
The
chairman
of
the
committee
and
the
loquacious
politician
clashed
violently
when
the
meeting
started.
Det.
Noun
Prep.
Det.
Noun
Conj.
Det.
Adj.
Noun
Verb
Advb.
Conj.
Det.
Noun
Verb
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 intoproper nouns (names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically intocount nouns andmass nouns.[182]
Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the pluralsuffix -s, 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 possessiveenclitic -s (also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the prepositionof. Historically the -s possessive has been used foranimate nouns, whereas theof possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -s also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from a singular noun with an apostrophe. If the noun is plural formed with -s the apostrophe follows the -s.[179]
Possessive constructions:
With -s: "The woman's husband's child"
Withof: "The child of the husband of the woman"
Nouns can formnoun 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 asthe 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 asand, or prepositions such aswith, 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 followsIndia and notPresident.
The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms ofdefiniteness, wherethe marks a definite noun anda oran 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 includeone,many,some andall, 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.) butall men (pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.[185]
Adjectives
English adjectives are words such asgood,big,interesting, andCanadian that most typically modify nouns,denoting characteristics of theirreferents (e.g. "ared 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 ishappy").[187]
In Modern English, adjectives are not inflected so as toagree 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 adjectiveslender does not change form to agree with either the number or gender of the noun.[188]
Some adjectives are inflected fordegree 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 irregularsuppletive comparative and superlative forms, such asgood,better, andbest. Other adjectives have comparatives formed byperiphrastic constructions, with the adverbmore marking the comparative, andmost marking the superlative:happier ormore happy,the happiest ormost 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 asthe,each,many,some, andwhich, occurring most typically in noun phrases before the head nouns and any modifiers and marking the noun phrase asdefinite or indefinite.[191] They often agree with the noun innumber. 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 (I/me,he/him,she/her,we/us,they/them) as well as an animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishingit from the three sets of animate third person singular pronouns) and an optional gender distinction in the animate third person singular (distinguishing between feminineshe/her,epicenethey/them, and masculinehe/him.[192][193] Thesubjective case corresponds to the Old Englishnominative case, and theobjective case is used in the sense both of the previousaccusative case (for a patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and of the Old English dative case (for a recipient orindirect 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 asHenry Sweet[197] andOtto Jespersen[198] noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Latin-based system, some contemporary grammars, includingThe Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, retain traditionalnominative andaccusative labels for the cases.[199]
Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as inmy 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 pronounthou 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:
In the third person, thethey/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, thethey/them series (sometimes with the addition of the singular-specific reflexive formthemself) serve as agender-neutral set of pronouns. These pronouns are becoming more accepted, especially as part of theLGBTQ culture.[192][202][203]
Pronouns are used to refer to entitiesdeictically oranaphorically. A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it relative to the speech situation – for example, the pronounI identifies the speaker, and the pronounyou, the addressee. Anaphoric pronouns such asthat 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 prepositionto marks the indirect object of the verbto 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 verbto be is still inflected for agreement with the plural and first and second person subjects.[189] Auxiliary verbs such ashave andbe are paired with verbs in the infinitive, past, or progressive forms. They formcomplex 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 verbto be – which among other uses in English functions as the primary auxiliary verb indicating theimperfective aspect (e.g. "Iam going"), as well as thecopula[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 isam, the third person singular form isis, and the formare is used in the second person singular and all three plurals. The only verb past participle isbeen and its gerund-participle isbeing.[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 verbswill orshall.[213] Many varieties also use anear future constructed with thephrasal 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, primarilyhave andbe, 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 ascan,may,will,shall and the past tense formscould,might,would,should. There are alsosubjunctive andimperative 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"; imperativeRun!).[213]
An infinitive form, that uses the plain form of the verb and the prepositionto, 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 verbhave is inflected for time and the main verbto go is in the infinitive, or in a complement clause such as "I saw him leave", where the main verb issee, which is in a preterite form, andleave is in the infinitive.
Phrasal verbs
English also makes frequent use of constructions traditionally calledphrasal 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 highlyidiomatic 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 meaningterminate 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] ManyEnglish adverbs are derived from adjectives by appending the suffix-ly. For example, in the phrase "the woman walked quickly", the adverbquickly is derived from the adjectivequick. Some commonly used adjectives have irregular adverbial forms, such asgood, which has the adverbial formwell.[219]
Syntax
In the English sentence "The cat sat on the mat", the subject isthe cat (a noun phrase), the verb issat, andon the mat is a prepositional phrase composed of a noun phrasethe mat, headed by the prepositionon.
English has moved from the Germanicverb-second (V2) word order to being almost exclusivelysubject–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
S
V
O
The man
bites
the dog
S
V
O
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
S
V
O
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 gaveJane the book" or in a prepositional phrase, such as "I gave the bookto Jane".[226]
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 verbthink, the subject isI, but the object of the phrase is the subordinate clause "(that) you are lying". The subordinating conjunctionthat 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 wordletter, the object of the main clause. Relative clauses can be introduced by the pronounswho,whose,whom, andwhich as well as bythat (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 verbdid not.Subject–auxiliary inversion is used in many constructions, including focus, negation, and interrogative constructions.[230]
The verbdo can be used as an auxiliary even in simple declarative sentences, where it usually serves to add emphasis, as in "Idid 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 adverbnot to an ordinaryfinite lexical verb, as in *"I know not" – it can only be added to an auxiliary (orcopular) verb, hence if there is no other auxiliary present when negation is required, the auxiliarydo 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 adverbnot, 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 verbto be. Just as with questions, many negative constructions require the negation to occur withdo-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 verbto be orto get, although not all varieties of English allow the use of passives withget. 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
Bothyes/no questions andwh-questions in English are mostly formed usingsubject–auxiliary inversion ("Am I going tomorrow?", "Where can we eat?"), which may requiredo-support ("Do you like her?", "Where did he go?"). In most cases,interrogative words (or wh-words) – which includewho,what,when,where,why, andhow – appear in afronted position. For example, in the question "What did you see?", the wordwhat appears as the first constituent despite being thegrammatical object of the sentence. When thewh-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 pronounwho is the only interrogative pronoun to still show inflection for case, with the variantwhom 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 atopic–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 acleft sentence where the main clause is demoted to be a complement clause of a copula sentence with adummy subject such asit orthere, 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 bya 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 asanaphora (e.g. "that is exactly what I mean" wherethat refers to some fact known to both interlocutors, orthen used to locate the time of a narrated event relative to the time of a previously narrated event).[239]Discourse markers such asoh,so, orwell, 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 forstance 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 markerboy 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 Englishlexicon consists of around 170,000 words (or 220,000, if countingobsolete words), according to an estimate based on the 1989 edition of theOxford English Dictionary.[241] Over one-half are nouns, one-quarter are adjectives, and one-seventh are verbs. Another estimate – which includesscientific jargon,prefixed andsuffixed words, loanwords of extremely limited use, technicalacronyms, etc. – counts around 1 million total English words.[242]
English borrows vocabulary quickly from many languages and other sources. Early studies of English vocabulary bylexicographers (scholars who study vocabulary and compile dictionaries) were impeded by a lack of comprehensive data on actual vocabulary in use from high-qualitylinguistic 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 asbabysitter orice cream orhomesick.[246]
Formation of new words, calledneologisms, based onGreek or Latin roots (for exampletelevision oroptometry) 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 lexicographerPhilip Gove attributed many such words to the "international scientific vocabulary" (ISV) when compilingWebster's Third New International Dictionary (1961). Another active word-formation process in English is that ofacronyms, which result from pronouncing abbreviations of longer phrases as single words, e.g.NATO,laser,scuba.[247]
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 informalspeech 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 – includinggive,get,sky,skirt,egg, andcake.[258][39]
Sign written inUnited States Spanish, using the English wordfree instead of the Spanishgratis
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 ascalques, 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]
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 throughsound 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 systematicspelling differences between British and American English. These situations have promptedproposals 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 wordsphotograph,photography, andphotographic,[266] or the wordselectricity andelectrical. 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 ordigraphs used to spell consonant sounds. The lettersb,d,f,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,r,s,t,v,w,y,z represent, respectively, the phonemes/b,d,f,h,dʒ,k,l,m,n,p,r,s,t,v,w,j,z/. The lettersc andg normally represent/k/ and/ɡ/, but there is also asoftc pronounced/s/, and asoftg pronounced/dʒ/. The differences in the pronunciations of the lettersc andg are often signalled by the following letters in standard English spelling. Digraphs used to represent phonemes and phoneme sequences includech for/tʃ/,sh for/ʃ/,th for/θ/ or/ð/,ng for/ŋ/,qu for/kw/, andph for/f/ in Greek-derived words. The single letterx 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 (a,e,i,o,u,y, and very rarelyw). As a result, some "long vowels" are often indicated by combinations of letters (like theoa inboat, theow inhow, and theay instay), or the historically basedsilente (as innote andcake).[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 ofpunctuation 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 manyEnglish 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 separateregional accents. The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into the two extremely general categories ofBritish English (BrE) andNorth American English (NAE).[276]
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 withSouth 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 1950–61Survey 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. In fact, 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 ish-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 asWest Country English), Midlands English andNorthern English. Within each of these regions, several local dialects exist: within the Northern region, there is a division between theYorkshire dialects, theGeordie dialect (spoken aroundNewcastle, inNorthumbria) and theLancashire dialects, which include the urban subdialects ofManchester (Mancunian) andLiverpool (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 theWest Midlands, dialects such asBlack Country (Yam Yam), and by less extentBirmingham (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, theCockney 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 ofintrusive R (drawing is pronounced "drawring"/ˈdrɔːrɪŋ/),t-glottalisation (Potter is pronounced with a glottal stop asPo'er/ˈpɒʔə/) andth-fronting, or the pronunciation ofth- as/f/ (thanks pronounced "fanks") or/v/ (bother pronounced "bover").[287]
Scots is today considered a separate language from English, but it hasits origins in early Northern Middle English[288] and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, particularlyScottish 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]
InIreland, various forms of English have been spoken following theNorman invasion of the island during the 11th century. InCounty Wexford and in the area surroundingDublin, two extinct dialects known asForth and Bargy andFingallian developed as offshoots from Early Middle English and were spoken until the 19th century. ModernIrish English, however, has its roots in English colonisation in the 17th century. Today Irish English is divided intoUlster English, the Northern Ireland dialect with strong influence from Scots, and various dialects of the Republic of Ireland. Like Scottish and most North American accents, almost all Irish accents preserve therhoticity which has been lost in the dialects influenced by RP.[19][290]
Percentage of Americans aged 5+ in the 50 states,Washington, D.C., andPuerto Rico who speak English at home, according to the 2016–2021American Community SurveyRhoticity dominates inNorth American English, butThe 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.
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 asAfrican-American English,Chicano English,Cajun English, orNewfoundland 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 asGeneral American English (GA), with differences hardly noticed even among Americans themselves, includingMidland andWestern American English.[294][295][296]
In most American and Canadian English dialects,rhoticity (orr-fullness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (orr-dropping) being associated with lower prestige and social class, especially since the end ofWorld 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 theSouthern American English,New York City English,Eastern New England English, andAfrican-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'shistorical 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 byglide-deleting in the/aɪ/ vowel (e.g. pronouncingspy almost likespa), the "Southern breaking" of several front pure vowels into a gliding vowel or even two syllables (e.g. pronouncing the wordpress almost like "pray-us"),[306] thepin–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-standardolder 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 apidgin orEnglish-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]
Since 1788, English has been spoken inOceania, andAustralian English has developed as the first language of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Australian continent, its standard accent beingGeneral Australian. TheEnglish 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 bySouth African English and the English of South East England, all of which have similarly non-rhotic accents, aside from some accents in theSouth 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 thanare).[313][314] New Zealand English uses front vowels that are often even higher than in Australian English.[315][316][317]
English is an official language of thePhilippines. Its use is ubiquitous in the country, and appears in areas including onstreet 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 ofcode-switching betweenTagalog and English.[319]
English is spoken widely in southern Africa and is an official or co-official language in several of the region's countries. InSouth Africa, English has been spoken since 1820, co-existing withAfrikaans and various African languages such as theKhoe andBantu languages. Today, about nine per cent of the South African population speaksSouth 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 lackintrusive 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 inNigeria; 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, theLeeward andWindward Islands,Trinidad and Tobago,Barbados, theCayman Islands, andBelize. 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 areJamaican English andJamaican 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 frequentlycode-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 andboat 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 asghost is pronounced as an Indianvoiced aspirated stop[ɡʱ].[330]
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 thespeech rules of their mother tongue to English ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used infirst language acquisition. They may create novel pronunciations for English sounds not found in their first language.[331]
Bazelmans 2009, p. 326, "According to most researchers, this means that there cannot have been an 'original' Anglo-Frisian entity ..."
Stiles 2018, p. 31, "... It is not possible to construct the exclusive common relative chronology that is necessary in order to be able to establish a node on a family tree. The term and concept of 'Anglo-Frisian' should be banished to the historiography of the subject."
^Horobin, Simon."Chaucer's Middle English".The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. Louisiana State University.Archived from the original on 3 December 2019. Retrieved24 November 2019.The only appearances of their and them in Chaucer's works are in the Reeve's Tale, where they form part of the Northern dialect spoken by the two Cambridge students, Aleyn and John, demonstrating that at this time they were still perceived to be Northernisms
^Wycliffe, John."Bible"(PDF). Wesley NNU.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved9 April 2015.
^Romaine 1999a, p. 2, "Other changes such as the spread and regularisation of do support began in the thirteenth century and were more or less complete in the nineteenth. Although do coexisted with the simple verb forms in negative statements from the early ninth century, obligatoriness was not complete until the nineteenth. The increasing use of do periphrasis coincides with the fixing of SVO word order. Not surprisingly, do is first widely used in interrogatives, where the word order is disrupted, and then later spread to negatives.".
^Ward, Rowena (2019)."'National' and 'Official' Languages Across the Independent Asia-Pacific".Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies.16 (1/2):83–84.doi:10.5130/pjmis.v16i1-2.6510.The use of English in Australia is one example of both a de facto national and official language: it is widely used and is the language of government and the courts, but has never been legally designated as the country's official language.
^"Charter of the French language".Légis Québec. Québec Official Publisher. 26 March 2024. Retrieved5 June 2024.French is the official language of Québec. Only French has that status.
^"Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland".Irish Statute Book. January 2020. Retrieved5 June 2024.1 The Irish language as the national language is the first official language. 2 The English language is recognised as a second official language.
^"United States".The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. 29 May 2024. Retrieved5 June 2024.Note: data represent the language spoken at home; the US has no official national language, but English has acquired official status in 32 of the 50 states; Hawaiian is an official language in the state of Hawaii, and 20 indigenous languages are official in Alaska.
^Sweet 2014, p. 52, "But in that special class of nouns called personal pronouns we find a totally different system of case-inflection, namely, anominative case (he) and anobjective case (him)".
^Lee, Chelsea (31 October 2019)."Welcome, singular "they"". American Psychological Association.Archived from the original on 14 February 2020. Retrieved24 November 2021.
^Burnley 1992, pp. 409–499, "Latin and French each account for a little more than 28 per cent of the lexis recorded in theShorter Oxford English Dictionary (Finkenstaedt & Wolff 1973)".
^Thomas, Erik R. (2003)."Rural White Southern Accents"(PDF).Atlas of North American English.Mouton de Gruyter. p. 16. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 22 December 2014. Retrieved11 November 2015. [Later published as a chapter in: Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (eds) (2004).A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multimedia Reference Tool. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 300–324.]
^Dayag, Danilo (2008). "English-language media in the Philippines: Description and research". In Bautista, Ma. Lourdes; Bolton, Kingsley (eds.).Philippine English: Linguistic and Literary Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. pp. 49–66.doi:10.5790/hongkong/9789622099470.003.0004.ISBN978-962-209-947-0.
^Bjarkman, Peter C.; Hammond, Robert Matthew (1989).American Spanish Pronunciation. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. p. 226.ISBN978-0-87840-099-7.
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