In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (sometimes spelled shwa) can mean the following:

An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. Such vowels are often transcribed with the symbol <ə>, regardless of their actual phonetic value.

The mid-central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded) in the middle of the vowel chart, stressed or unstressed. In IPA phonetic transcription, it is written as . In this case the term ''mid-central vowel'' may be used instead of ''schwa'' to avoid ambiguity.

Etymology

The word ''schwa'' is from the Hebrew word shva (שְׁוָא ''shewa’'', , modern ''shva'' ), which designates the Hebrew niqqud vowel sign shva "ְ" that in modern Hebrew indicates either the phoneme /e/ or the complete absence of a vowel. Also the Hebrew shva is sometimes represented by the upside-down e symbol for schwa, a misleading transliteration, since the schwa vowel is not representative of modern Hebrew pronunciation of shva and is not characteristic of earlier pronunciations either (see Tiberian vocalization → Mobile Shwa). The term was introduced into European linguistics by Jacob Grimm in the early 19th century, so the spelling ''sch'' is German in origin. It was first used in English texts between 1890–1895.

Description

Sometimes the term "schwa" is used for any epenthetic vowel, even though different languages use different epenthetic vowels (e.g., the Navajo epenthetic vowel is ).

In English, schwa is the most common vowel sound. It is a reduced vowel in many unstressed syllables, especially if syllabic consonants are not used:

like the 'a' in ''about'' like the 'e' in ''taken'' like the 'i' in ''pencil'' like the 'o' in ''eloquent'' like the 'u' in ''supply'' like the 'y' in ''sibyl''

Schwa is a very short neutral vowel sound, and like all vowels, its precise quality varies depending on the adjacent consonants. In most varieties of English, schwa mostly occurs in unstressed syllables (exceptions include BrE ''concerted''), but in New Zealand English and South African English the high front lax vowel (as in the word ''bit'') has shifted open and back to sound like schwa, and these dialects include both stressed and unstressed schwas. In General American, schwa is one of the two vowel sounds that can be rhotacized. This sound is used in words with unstressed "er" syllables, such as ''dinner''.

Quite a few languages have a sound similar to schwa. It is similar to a short French unaccented ''e'', which in that language is rounded and less central, more like an open-mid or close-mid front rounded vowel. It is almost always unstressed, though Albanian, Bulgarian, Slovene and Afrikaans are some of the languages that allow stressed schwas. In most dialects of Russian an unstressed ''a'' or ''o'' reduces to a schwa. In dialects of Kashubian a schwa occurs. Many Caucasian languages and some Uralic languages (e.g. Komi) also use phonemic schwa, and allow schwas to be stressed. In Dutch, the vowel of the suffix ''-lijk'', as in ''waarschijnlijk'' (''probably'') is pronounced as a schwa. In Dutch adjective words carry a schwa at their ending 'rood' becomes 'rode'. Anytime an 'e' falls at the end of Dutch words it becomes a schwa. Compare 'de' and 'het'. In the Eastern dialects of Catalan, including the standard language variety, based in the dialect spoken in and around Barcelona, an unstressed "a" or "e" is pronounced as a schwa (called ''"vocal neutra"'', "neutral vowel"). In the dialects of Catalan spoken in the Balearic Islands, a stressed schwa can occur. Stressed schwa can occur in Romanian as in ''mătură'' ('broom'). In European and some African dialects of Portuguese, the schwa occurs in many unstressed syllables that end in "e", such as ''noite'' (night), ''tarde'' (afternoon, late), ''pêssego'' (peach), and ''pecado'' (sin). However, that is rare in Brazilian Portuguese except in such areas as Curitiba in the state of Paraná. The inherent vowel in the Devanagari script, an abugida used to write Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit is a schwa, written अ in isolation or to begin a word.

Other characters used to represent this sound include in Armenian, in Romanian, and ë in Albanian. In Bulgarian Cyrillic, the letter , which has a much different orthographic function in modern Russian, is used. In Korean, the letter (or rather jamo) ㅡ is used, though it may also represent a "null" vowel used in the transcription of foreign consonant clusters, where it may be deleted.

Indonesian and Malay

In Indonesian, schwa can be stressed or not. Most of the times, the letter is read as a schwa. There is also a phenomenon of pronouncing the ''a'' in the final syllable (usually second syllable, since most Indonesian root words consist of two syllables) as a stressed schwa. This is only done in colloquial informal speech but never in formal speech.

Examples: datang (=come), pronounced , and often written as ''dateng'' in informal writing. kental (=viscous), pronounced . hitam (=black), pronounced , written as ''item'' in informal language. dalam (=deep, in), pronounced , often written as ''dalem''. malam (=night), pronounced , written as ''malem'' in informal language.

Indonesian orthography formerly used unmarked only for the schwa sound, while the full vowel /e/ was written <é>. Malay orthography, on the other hand, formerly indicated the schwa with <ĕ> (called ''pĕpĕt''), while unmarked stood for /e/.

In the 1972 spelling reform that unified Indonesian and Malaysian spelling conventions (''Ejaan yang Disempurnakan'', regulated by MABBIM), it was agreed to use neither diacritic. Hence there is no orthographic distinction any longer between /ə/ and /e/; both are spelled with unmarked . This means the pronunciation of any given letter ''e'' in Indonesian and Malay is not immediately obvious to the learner, and must be learned separately. However, in a number of Indonesian dictionaries and Indonesian lesson books for foreign learner, the notation is preserved to help learners produce the right pronunciation. For example, the word for 'train' in Indonesia or 'wheeled vehicle' in Malaysia, which was formerly spelled ''keréta'' in Indonesia and ''kĕreta'' in Malaysia, is now spelled ''kereta'' in both countries.

In southern Malaysian pronunciation, which is considered the standard, the final letter -''a'' represents schwa, while final ''-ah'' stands for /a/. The dialect of Kedah in northern Malaysia, however, pronounces final -''a'' as /a/ also. In loanwords, a nonfinal short /a/ may become schwa in Malay. For example, ''Mekah'' (Makkah'', Malay pronunciation ).

Letter

Azeri

When the new Latin alphabet was introduced for the Azerbaijani language on December 25, 1991, A-umlaut was selected to represent the sound /æ/. However, on May 16, 1992, it was replaced by the schwa letter, which also employs a capital form "Ə". Although use of "Ä"/"ä" (also used in Tatar, Turkmen, and Gagauz) seems to be a simpler alternative as the schwa letter is absent in several character sets, particularly Turkish encoding, it was reintroduced; the schwa letter was used continuously from 1929 to 1991 to represent Azeri's most-common vowel, in both post-Arabic alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic) of Azerbaijan.

Schwa syncope

Hindi

Although the Devanagari script is used as a standard to write modern Hindi, the schwa (''ə'', sometimes written as ''a'') implicit in each consonant of the script is "obligatorily deleted" at the end of words and in certain other contexts. This phenomenon has been termed the "schwa syncope rule" or the "schwa deletion rule" of Hindi. One formalization of this rule has been summarized as ''ə -> ø | VC_CV''. In other words, when a vowel-preceded consonant is followed by a vowel-succeeded consonant, the schwa inherent in the first consonant is deleted. However, this formalization is inexact and incomplete (i.e. sometimes deletes a schwa when it shouldn't or, at other times, fails to delete it when it should), and can yield errors. Schwa deletion is computationally important because it is essential to building text-to-speech software for Hindi.

As a result of schwa syncope, the correct Hindi pronunciation of many words differs from that expected from a literal rendering of Devanagari. For instance, राम is ''Rām'' (incorrect: ''Rāma''), रचना is ''Rachnā'' (incorrect: ''Rachanā''), वेद is ''Véd'' (incorrect: ''Véda'') and नमकीन is ''Namkeen'' (incorrect: ''Namakeena'').

Correct schwa deletion is also critical because, in some cases, the same Devanagari letter-sequence is pronounced two different ways in Hindi depending on context, and failure to delete the appropriate schwas can change the sense of the word. For instance, the sequence धड़कने in दिल धड़कने लगा ("the heart started beating") and in दिल की धड़कनें ("beats of the heart") is identical prior to the nasalization in the second usage. Yet, it is pronounced ''dhadak.ne'' in the first and ''dhad.kane'' in the second. While native speakers correctly pronounce the sequence differently in different contexts, non-native speakers and voice-synthesis software can make them "sound very unnatural", making it "extremely difficult for the listener" to grasp the intended meaning.

American English

American English has a tendency towards schwa deletion in medial posttonic syllables. Examples of this are ''sep(a)rate'', ''choc(o)late'', ''cam(e)ra'' and ''elab(o)rate'', where the schwa (shown in parentheses) has a tendency to be deleted.

Schwa indogermanicum

The term "schwa" is also used for vowels of uncertain quality (rather than neutral sound) in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. It was observed that, while for the most part ''a'' in Latin and Ancient Greek corresponds to ''a'' in Sanskrit, there are instances where Sanskrit has ''i'' while Latin and Greek have ''a'', such as ''pitar'' (Sanskrit) vs ''pater'' (Latin and Ancient Greek). This postulated "schwa indogermanicum" evolved into the theory of the so-called laryngeals. Most scholars of Proto-Indo-European would now postulate three different phonemes rather than a single indistinct schwa. Some scholars postulate yet more, to explain further problems in the Proto-Indo-European vowel system. Most reconstructions of '''' in older literature would correspond to *-h₂- in contemporary notation.

See also

R-colored vowel

Weak form and strong form

Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages

Further reading

References

Category:Vowels Category:Niqqud

als:Schwa ar:مصوت مخفى br:Schwa ca:Vocal neutra cs:Šva de:Schwa es:Schwa eo:Ŝvao fa:واکه بی‌رنگ fr:Schwa ko:슈와 hi:श्वा id:Pepet it:Schwa he:שווא (פונטיקה) nl:Sjwa ja:シュワー pl:Szwa pt:Xevá ru:Шва sq:Schwa sl:Polglasnik fi:Švaa sv:Schwa tr:Schwa uk:Шва

Name	English
Familycolor	Indo-European
Pronunciation
Region	(see below)
Speakers	First language: 309–400 million Second language: 199 million–1.4 billionOverall: 500 million–1.8 billion
Fam2	Germanic
Fam3	West Germanic
Fam4	Anglo–Frisian
Fam5	Anglic
Script	English alphabet (Latin script)
Nation	54 countries27 non-sovereign entitiesUnited NationsEuropean UnionCommonwealth of Nations CoE NATO NAFTA OAS OIC PIF UKUSA
Iso1	en |iso2eng |iso3eng |lingua52-ABA
Map	Anglospeak.svg
Mapcaption	,
Notice	IPA }}

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via the British Empire, and of the United States since the mid-20th century, it has been widely dispersed around the world, become the leading language of international discourse, and has acquired use as ''lingua franca'' in many regions. It is widely learned as a second language and used as an official language of the European Union and many Commonwealth countries, as well as in many world organizations. It is the third most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.

Historically, English originated from the fusion of languages and dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) settlers by the 5th century – with the word ''English'' being derived from the name of the Angles. A significant number of English words are constructed based on roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the ''lingua franca'' of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life. The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language due to Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries.

The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman-French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the superficial appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages to what had now become Middle English. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events that mark the emergence of Modern English from Middle English.

Owing to the significant assimilation of various European languages throughout history, modern English contains a very large vocabulary. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical or slang terms, or words that belong to multiple word classes.

Significance

Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca, is the dominant language or in some instances even the required international language of communications, science, information technology, business, seafaring, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy. Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late 19th century its reach was truly global . Following British colonisation from the 16th to 19th centuries, it became the dominant language in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The growing economic and cultural influence of the US and its status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language's spread across the planet. English replaced German as the dominant language of science Nobel Prize laureates during the second half of the 20th century (compare the Evolution of Nobel Prizes by country).

A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.

One impact of the growth of English is the reduction of native linguistic diversity in many parts of the world. Its influence continues to play an important role in language attrition. Conversely, the natural internal variety of English along with creoles and pidgins have the potential to produce new distinct languages from English over time.

History

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Up to that point, in Roman Britain the native population is assumed to have spoken the Celtic language Brythonic alongside the acrolectal influence of Latin, from the 400-year Roman occupation.

One of these incoming Germanic tribes was the Angles, whom Bede believed to have relocated entirely to Britain. The names 'England' (from ''Engla land'' "Land of the Angles") and ''English'' (Old English ''Englisc'') are derived from the name of this tribe—but Saxons, Jutes and a range of Germanic peoples from the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jutland and Southern Sweden also moved to Britain in this era.

Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Great Britain but one of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate, and it is in this that the poem ''Beowulf'' is written.

Old English was later transformed by two waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of the North Germanic language branch when Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless started the conquering and colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries (see Danelaw). The second was by speakers of the Romance language Old Norman in the 11th century with the Norman conquest of England. Norman developed into Anglo-Norman, and then Anglo-French – and introduced a layer of words especially via the courts and government. As well as extending the lexicon with Scandinavian and Norman words these two events also simplified the grammar and transformed English into a borrowing language—more than normally open to accept new words from other languages.

The linguistic shifts in English following the Norman invasion produced what is now referred to as Middle English, with Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales'' being the best known work.

Throughout all this period Latin in some form was the ''lingua franca'' of European intellectual life, first the Medieval Latin of the Christian Church, but later the humanist Renaissance Latin, and those that wrote or copied texts in Latin commonly coined new terms from Latin to refer to things or concepts for which there was no existing native English word.

Modern English, which includes the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, is generally dated from about 1550, and when the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the lingua franca to avoid the political difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. As a result of the growth of the British Empire, English was adopted in North America, India, Africa, Australia and many other regions, a trend extended with the emergence of the United States as a superpower in the mid-20th century.

Classification and related languages

The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic family, a member of the Indo-European languages. Modern English is the direct descendant of Middle English, itself a direct descendant of Old English, a descendant of Proto-Germanic. Typical of most Germanic languages, English is characterised by the use of modal verbs, the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, and common sound shifts from Proto-Indo-European known as Grimm's Law. The closest living relatives of English are the Scots language (spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Ireland) and Frisian (spoken on the southern fringes of the North Sea in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany).

After Scots and Frisian come those Germanic languages that are more distantly related: the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages (Dutch, Afrikaans, Low German, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the (partial) exception of Scots, none of the other languages is mutually intelligible with English, owing in part to the divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology, and to the isolation afforded to the English language by the British Isles, although some, such as Dutch, do show strong affinities with English, especially to earlier stages of the language. Isolation has allowed English and Scots (as well as Icelandic and Faroese) to develop independently of the Continental Germanic languages and their influences over time.

In addition to isolation, lexical differences between English and other Germanic languages exist due to heavy borrowing in English of words from Latin and French. For example, compare "exit" (Latin), vs. Dutch ''uitgang'', literally "out-going" (though ''outgang'' survives dialectally in restricted usage) and "change" (French) vs. German ''Änderung'' (literally "alteration, othering"); "movement" (French) vs. German ''Bewegung'' ("be-way-ing", i.e. "proceeding along the way"); etc. Preference of one synonym over another also causes differentiation in lexis, even where both words are Germanic, as in English ''care'' vs. German ''Sorge''. Both words descend from Proto-Germanic *''karō'' and *''surgō'' respectively, but *''karō'' has become the dominant word in English for "care" while in German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, the *''surgō'' root prevailed. *''Surgō'' still survives in English, however, as ''sorrow''.

Despite lexical borrowing, English retains classification as a Germanic language due to its structure and grammar. Non-native words are incorporated into a Germanic system of conjugation, declension, and syntax (For example, the word ''reduce'' is borrowed from Latin ''redūcere''; however, in English we say "I reduce"/"I reduced"/"I will reduce" rather than "redūcō"/"redūxī"/"redūcam"). Furthermore, in English, all basic grammatical particles added to nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are Germanic. For nouns, these include the normal plural marker ''-s''/''-es'', and the possessive markers '' -'s'' and ''-s' ''. For verbs, these include the third person present ending ''-s''/''-es'' (e.g. ''he stands''/''he reaches'' ), the present participle ending ''-ing'', the simple past tense and past participle ending ''-ed'', and the formation of the English infinitive using ''to'' (e.g. "''to'' drive"; cf. Old English ''tō'' drīfenne). Adverbs generally receive an ''-ly'' ending, and adjectives and adverbs are inflected for the comparative and superlative using ''-er'' and ''-est'' (e.g. ''fast/faster/fastest''), or through a combination with ''more'' and ''most''. These particles append freely to all English words regardless of origin (''tsunamis; communicates; to buccaneer; during; bizarrely'') and all derive from Old English. Even the lack or absence of affixes, known as zero or null (-Ø) affixes, derive from endings which previously existed in Old English (usually ''-e, -a, -u, -o, -an,'' etc.), that later weakened to ''-e'', and have since ceased to be pronounced and spelt (e.g. Modern English "I sing" = ''I sing-Ø'' < ''I singe'' < Old English ''ic singe''; "we thought" = ''we thought-Ø'' < ''we thoughte(n)'' < Old English ''wē þōhton'').

Although the syntax of English is somewhat different from that of other West Germanic languages with regards to the placement and order of verbs (for example, "I have never seen anything in the square" = German ''Ich habe nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen'', and the Dutch ''Ik heb nooit iets op het plein gezien'', where the participle is placed at the end), English syntax continues to adhere closely to that of the North Germanic languages, which are believed to have influenced English syntax during the Middle English Period (e.g., Danish ''Jeg har aldrig set noget på torvet''; Icelandic ''Ég hef aldrei séð neitt á torginu''). As in most Germanic languages, English adjectives usually come before the noun they modify, even when the adjective is of Latinate origin (e.g. ''medical emergency, national treasure''). Also, English continues to make extensive use of self-explaining compounds (e.g. ''streetcar, classroom''), and nouns which serve as modifiers (e.g. ''lamp post, life insurance company''), traits inherited from Old English (See also Kenning).

The kinship with other Germanic languages can also be seen in the tensing of English verbs (e.g. English ''fall/fell/fallen/will or shall fall'', West Frisian ''fal/foel/fallen/sil falle'', Dutch ''vallen/viel/gevallen/zullen vallen'', German ''fallen/fiell/gefallen/werden fallen''), the comparatives of adjectives and adverbs (e.g. English ''good/better/best'', West Frisian ''goed/better/best'', Dutch ''goed/beter/best'', German ''gut/besser/best''), and the large amount of cognates (e.g. English ''wet'', Scots ''weet'', West Frisian ''wiet'', Swedish ''våt''; English ''send'', Dutch ''zenden'', German ''senden''; English ''meaning'', Swedish ''mening'', Icelandic ''meining'', etc.). It also gives rise to false friends (e.g. English ''time'' vs Norwegian ''time'', meaning "hour"; English ''gift'' vs German ''Gift'', meaning "poison"), while differences in phonology can obscure words that really are related (''tooth'' vs. German ''Zahn''; compare also Danish ''tand''). Sometimes both semantics ''and'' phonology are different (German ''Zeit'' ("time") is related to English "tide", but the English word, through a transitional phase of meaning "period"/"interval", has come primarily to mean gravitational effects on the ocean by the moon, though the original meaning is preserved in forms like ''tidings'' and ''betide'', and phrases such as ''to tide over'').

Many North Germanic words entered English due to the settlement of Viking raiders and Danish invasions which began around the 9th century (see Danelaw). Many of these words are common words, often mistaken for being native, which shows how close-knit the relations between the English and the Scandinavian settlers were (''See below: Old Norse origins''). Dutch and Low German also had a considerable influence on English vocabulary, contributing common everyday terms and many nautical and trading terms (''See below: Dutch and Low German origins'').

Finally, English has been forming compound words and affixing existing words separately from the other Germanic languages for over 1500 years and has different habits in that regard. For instance, abstract nouns in English may be formed from native words by the suffixes "‑hood", "-ship", "-dom" and "-ness". All of these have cognate suffixes in most or all other Germanic languages, but their usage patterns have diverged, as German "Freiheit" vs. English "freedom" (the suffix "-heit" being cognate of English "-hood", while English "-dom" is cognate with German "-tum"). The Germanic languages Icelandic and Faroese also follow English in this respect, since, like English, they developed independent of German influences.

Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker, especially when they are seen in writing (as pronunciations are often quite different), because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest, and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (e.g. inflectional endings, use of old French spellings, lack of diacritics, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning of so-called false friends: for example, compare "library" with the French ''librairie'', which means bookstore; in French, the word for "library" is ''bibliothèque''. The pronunciation of most French loanwords in English (with the exception of a handful of more recently borrowed words such as ''mirage'', ''genre'', ''café''; or phrases like ''coup d’état'', ''rendez-vous'', etc.) has become largely anglicised and follows a typically English phonology and pattern of stress (compare English "nature" vs. French ''nature'', "button" vs. ''bouton'', "table" vs. ''table'', "hour" vs. ''heure'', "reside" vs. ''résider'', etc.).

Geographical distribution

Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese languages (depending on whether or not distinctions in the latter are classified as "languages" or "dialects").

Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured. Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.

The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million), United Kingdom (61 million), Canada (18.2 million), Australia (15.5 million), Nigeria (4 million), Ireland (3.8 million), South Africa (3.7 million), and New Zealand (3.6 million) 2006 Census.

Countries such as the Philippines, Jamaica and Nigeria also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to a more standard version of English. Of those nations where English is spoken as a second language, India has the most such speakers ('Indian English'). Crystal claims that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world.

Countries in order of total speakers

96% 125,344,736 79,000,000 59,600,000 48,800,000 25,246,220 18,172,989

Country	Comment
United States of America	251,388,301	|	215,423,557	35,964,744	262,375,152	Source: US Census 2000: Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000, Table 1. Figure for second language speakers are respondents who reported they do not speak English at home but know it "very well" or "well". Note: figures are for population age 5 and older
India	|	12%	226,449	86,125,221 ''second'' language speakers. 38,993,066 ''third'' language speakers	1,028,737,436	Figures include both those who speak English as a ''second language'' and those who speak it as a ''third language''. 2001 figures. The figures include English ''speakers'', but not English ''users''.
Nigeria	|	53%	4,000,000	>75,000,000	148,000,000	Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin, an English-based pidgin or creole. Ihemere gives a range of roughly 3 to 5 million native speakers; the midpoint of the range is used in the table. Ihemere, Kelechukwu Uchechukwu. 2006. "A Basic Description and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian Pidgin." ''Nordic Journal of African Studies'' 15(3): 296–313.
United Kingdom	|	98%	58,100,000	1,500,000	60,000,000	Source: Crystal (2005), p. 109.
Philippines	|	58%	3,427,000	43,974,000	84,566,000	Total speakers: Census 2000, text above Figure 7. 63.71% of the 66.7 million people aged 5 years or more could speak English. Native speakers: Census 1995, as quoted by Andrew González in The Language Planning Situation in the Philippines, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 19 (5&6), 487–525. (1998). Ethnologue lists 3.4 million native speakers with 52% of the population speaking it as an additional language.
Canada	|	85%	17,694,830	7,551,390	29,639,030	Source: 2001 Census – Knowledge of Official Languages and Mother Tongue. The native speakers figure comprises 122,660 people with both French and English as a mother tongue, plus 17,572,170 people with English and not French as a mother tongue.
Australia	|	92%	15,581,329	2,591,660	19,855,288	Source: 2006 Census. The figure shown in the first language English speakers column is actually the number of Australian residents who speak only English at home. The additional language column shows the number of other residents who claim to speak English "well" or "very well". Another 5% of residents did not state their home language or English proficiency.

Countries where English is a major language

English is the primary language in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guernsey, Guyana, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jamaica, Jersey, Montserrat, Nauru, New Zealand, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In some countries where English is not the most spoken language, it is an official language; these countries include Botswana, Cameroon, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines (Philippine English), Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

It is also one of the 11 official languages that are given equal status in South Africa (South African English). English is also the official language in current dependent territories of Australia (Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and Cocos Island) and of the United States (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands), and the former British colony of Hong Kong. (See List of countries where English is an official language for more details.)

English is not an official language in the United States. Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments. Although falling short of official status, English is also an important language in several former colonies and protectorates of the United Kingdom, such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cyprus, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates.

English as a global language

Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language", the ''lingua franca'' of the modern era, and while it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language. Some linguists believe that it is no longer the exclusive cultural property of "native English speakers", but is rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it continues to grow. It is, by international treaty, the official language for aerial and maritime communications. English is an official language of the United Nations and many other international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee.

English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union, by 89% of schoolchildren, ahead of French at 32%, while the perception of the usefulness of foreign languages amongst Europeans is 68% in favour of English ahead of 25% for French. Among some non-English speaking EU countries, a large percentage of the adult population can converse in English – in particular: 85% in Sweden, 83% in Denmark, 79% in the Netherlands, 66% in Luxembourg and over 50% in Finland, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium, and Germany.

Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world, and English is the most commonly used language in the sciences with Science Citation Index reporting as early as 1997 that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking countries.

This increasing use of the English language globally has had a large impact on many other languages, leading to language shift and even language death, and to claims of linguistic imperialism. English itself is now open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole.

Dialects and regional varieties

The expansion of the British Empire and—since World War II—the influence of the United States have spread English around the world. Because of that global spread, English has developed a host of English dialects and English-based creole languages and pidgins.

Several educated native dialects of English have wide acceptance as standards in much of the world,. In the United Kingdom much emphasis is placed on Received Pronunciation, an educated dialect of South East England. General American, which is spread over most of the United States and much of Canada, is more typically the model for the American continents and areas (such as the Philippines) that have had either close association with the United States, or a desire to be so identified. In Oceania, the major native dialect of Australian English is spoken as a first language by the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Australian continent, with General Australian serving as the standard accent. The English of neighbouring New Zealand as well as that of South Africa have to a lesser degree been influential native varieties of the language.

Aside from these major dialects, there are numerous other varieties of English, which include, in most cases, several subvarieties, such as Cockney, Scouse and Geordie within British English; Newfoundland English within Canadian English; and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") and Southern American English within American English. English is a pluricentric language, without a central language authority like France's Académie française; and therefore no one variety is considered "correct" or "incorrect" except in terms of the expectations of the particular audience to which the language is directed.

Scots has its origins in early Northern Middle English and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, but following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from Standard English, causing dialectalisation. Whether it is now a separate language or a dialect of English better described as Scottish English is in dispute, although the UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. There are a number of regional dialects of Scots, and pronunciation, grammar and lexis of the traditional forms differ, sometimes substantially, from other varieties of English.

English speakers have many different accents, which often signal the speaker's native dialect or language. For the most distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English, and for a complete list of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language. Within England, variation is now largely confined to pronunciation rather than grammar or vocabulary. At the time of the Survey of English Dialects, grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of ''lexical attrition'' has led most of this variation to die out.

Just as English itself has borrowed words from many different languages over its history, English loanwords now appear in many languages around the world, indicative of the technological and cultural influence of its speakers. Several pidgins and creole languages have been formed on an English base, such as Jamaican Patois, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tok Pisin. There are many words in English coined to describe forms of particular non-English languages that contain a very high proportion of English words.

Constructed varieties of English

Basic English is simplified for easy international use. Manufacturers and other international businesses tend to write manuals and communicate in Basic English. Some English schools in Asia teach it as a practical subset of English for use by beginners.

E-Prime excludes forms of the verb ''to be''.

English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.

Manually Coded English constitutes a variety of systems that have been developed to represent the English language with hand signals, designed primarily for use in deaf education. These should not be confused with true sign languages such as British Sign Language and American Sign Language used in Anglophone countries, which are independent and not based on English.

Seaspeak and the related Airspeak and Policespeak, all based on restricted vocabularies, were designed by Edward Johnson in the 1980s to aid international cooperation and communication in specific areas. There is also a tunnelspeak for use in the Channel Tunnel.

Simplified Technical English was historically developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals and is now used in various industries.

Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of only 1500 words.

Phonology

Vowels

It is the vowels that differ most from region to region. Length is not phonemic in most varieties of North American English.

!International Phonetic Alphabet

IPA !	word
monophthongs
	bd
	bd
	bd
	bd
	bx
	ped
	br
	gd
	bed
	bd
	bd
	Ros's
	ross
colspan="2" style="text-align:left; background:#dedede"	diphthongs
	bed
	bde
	cr
	c
	b
	b
	f

Notes for vowels

Consonants

This is the English consonantal system using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

!	bilabial consonant>Bilabial	labiodental consonant>Labio-dental	interdental consonant>Dental	alveolar consonant>Alveolar	postalveolar consonant>Post-alveolar	palatal consonant>Palatal	velar consonant>Velar	Labial-velar consonant>Labial-velar	glottal consonant>Glottal
nasal consonant>Nasal
Stop consonant>Plosive
affricate consonant>Affricate
fricative consonant>Fricative
flap consonant>Flap					style="text-align:center;" | is an allophone of and in unstressed syllables in North American English and Australian English. This is the sound of ''tt'' or ''dd'' in the words ''latter'' and ''ladder'', which are homophones for many speakers of North American English. In some accents such as Scottish English and Indian English it replaces . This is the same sound represented by single ''r'' in most varieties of Spanish.|group=cn|name=c2}}
approximant consonant>Approximant
lateral consonant>Lateral

Notes for consonants

Voicing and aspiration

Voicing and aspiration of stop consonants in English depend on dialect and context, but a few general rules can be given: Voiceless plosives and affricates (, , , and ) are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable compare ''pin'' and ''spin'' , ''crap'' and ''scrap'' .

* In some dialects, aspiration extends to unstressed syllables as well.

* In other dialects, such as Indian English, all voiceless stops remain unaspirated.

Word-initial voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects.

Word-terminal voiceless plosives may be unreleased or accompanied by a glottal stop in some dialects; examples: ''tap'' , ''sack'' . Word-terminal voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects (e.g. some varieties of American English) examples: ''sad'' , ''bag'' . In other dialects, they are fully voiced in final position, but only partially voiced in initial position.

Supra-segmental features

Tone groups

English is an intonation language. This means that the pitch of the voice is used syntactically; for example, to convey surprise or irony, or to change a statement into a question.

In English, intonation patterns are on groups of words, which are called tone groups, tone units, intonation groups, or sense groups. Tone groups are said on a single breath and, as a consequence, are of limited length, more often being on average five words long or lasting roughly two seconds. For example:

: ''Do you need anything?'' : ''I don't, no'' : ''I don't know'' (contracted to, for example, or ''I dunno'' in fast or colloquial speech that de-emphasises the pause between 'don't' and 'know' even further)

Characteristics of intonation—stress

English is a strongly stressed language, in that certain syllables, both within words and within phrases, get a relative prominence/loudness during pronunciation while the others do not. The former kind of syllables are said to be ''accentuated/stressed'' and the latter are ''unaccentuated/unstressed''. Stress can also be used in English to distinguish between certain verbs and their noun counterparts. For example, in the case of the verb ''contract'', the second syllable is stressed: ; in case of the corresponding noun, the first syllable is stressed: . Vowels in unstressed syllables can also change in quality, hence the verb ''contract'' often becomes (and indeed is listed in Oxford English Dictionary as) . In each word, there can be only one principal stress, but in long words, there can be secondary stress(es) too, e.g. in ''civilisation'' , the 1st syllable carries the secondary stress, the 4th syllable carries the primary stress, and the other syllables are unstressed.

Hence in a sentence, each tone group can be subdivided into syllables, which can either be stressed (strong) or unstressed (weak). The stressed syllable is called the nuclear syllable. For example:

: ''That | was | the | best | thing | you | could | have | done!''

Here, all syllables are unstressed, except the syllables/words ''best'' and ''done'', which are stressed. ''Best'' is stressed harder and, therefore, is the nuclear syllable.

The nuclear syllable carries the main point the speaker wishes to make. For example:

: ''John'' had not stolen that money. (... Someone else had.) : John ''had not'' stolen that money. (... Someone said he had. or... Not at that time, but later he did.) : John had not ''stolen'' that money. (... He acquired the money by some other means.) : John had not stolen ''that'' money. (... He had stolen some other money.) : John had not stolen that ''money''. (... He had stolen something else.)

Also

: ''I'' did not tell her that. (... Someone else told her) : I ''did not'' tell her that. (... You said I did. or... but now I will) : I did not ''tell'' her that. (... I did not say it; she could have inferred it, etc) : I did not tell ''her'' that. (... I told someone else) : I did not tell her ''that''. (... I told her something else)

This can also be used to express emotion:

: ''Oh'', really? (...I did not know that) : Oh, ''really''? (...I disbelieve you. or... That is blatantly obvious)

The nuclear syllable is spoken more loudly than the others and has a characteristic change of pitch. The changes of pitch most commonly encountered in English are the rising pitch and the falling pitch, although the fall-rising pitch and/or the rise-falling pitch are sometimes used. In this opposition between falling and rising pitch, which plays a larger role in English than in most other languages, falling pitch conveys certainty and rising pitch uncertainty. This can have a crucial impact on meaning, specifically in relation to polarity, the positive–negative opposition; thus, falling pitch means, "polarity known", while rising pitch means "polarity unknown". This underlies the rising pitch of yes/no questions. For example:

: ''When do you want to be paid?'' : ''Now?'' (Rising pitch. In this case, it denotes a question: "Can I be paid now?" or "Do you desire to pay now?") : ''Now.'' (Falling pitch. In this case, it denotes a statement: "I choose to be paid now.")

Grammar

English grammar has minimal inflection compared with most other Indo-European languages. For example, Modern English, unlike Modern German or Dutch and the Romance languages, lacks grammatical gender and adjectival agreement. Case marking has almost disappeared from the language and mainly survives in pronouns. The patterning of strong (e.g. ''speak/spoke/spoken'') versus weak verbs (e.g. ''love/loved or kick/kicked'') inherited from its Germanic origins has declined in importance in modern English, and the remnants of inflection (such as plural marking) have become more regular.

At the same time, the language has become more analytic, and has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.

Vocabulary

The English vocabulary has changed considerably over the centuries.

Like many languages deriving from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), many of the most common words in English can trace back their origin (through the Germanic branch) to PIE. Such words include the basic pronouns ''I'', from Old English ''ic'', (cf. German ''Ich'', Gothic ''ik'', Latin ''ego'', Greek ''ego'', Sanskrit ''aham''), ''me'' (cf. German ''mich, mir'', Gothic ''mik, mīs'', Latin ''mē'', Greek ''eme'', Sanskrit ''mam''), numbers (e.g. ''one'', ''two'', ''three'', cf. Dutch ''een'', ''twee'', ''drie'', Gothic ''ains'', ''twai'', ''threis (þreis)'', Latin ''ūnus, duo, trēs'', Greek ''oinos'' "ace (on dice)", ''duo, treis''), common family relationships such as mother, father, brother, sister etc. (cf. Dutch ''moeder'', Greek ''meter'', Latin ''mater'', Sanskrit ''matṛ''; ''mother''), names of many animals (cf. German ''Maus'', Dutch ''muis'', Sanskrit ''mus'', Greek ''mus'', Latin ''mūs''; ''mouse''), and many common verbs (cf. Old High German ''knājan'', Old Norse ''knā'', Greek ''gignōmi'', Latin ''gnoscere'', Hittite ''kanes'';'' to know'').

Germanic words (generally words of Old English or to a lesser extent Old Norse origin) tend to be shorter than Latinate words, and are more common in ordinary speech, and include nearly all the basic pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs etc. that form the basis of English syntax and grammar. The shortness of the words is generally due to syncope in Middle English (e.g. OldEng ''hēafod'' > ModEng ''head'', OldEng ''sāwol'' > ModEng ''soul'') and to the loss of final syllables due to stress (e.g. OldEng ''gamen'' > ModEng ''game'', OldEng ''ǣrende'' > ModEng ''errand''), not because Germanic words are inherently shorter than Latinate words (the lengthier, higher-register words of Old English were largely forgotten following the subjugation of English after the Norman Conquest, and most of the Old English lexis devoted to literature, the arts, and sciences ceased to be productive when it fell into disuse. Only the shorter, more direct, words of Old English tended to pass into the Modern language.) Consequently, those words which tend to be regarded as elegant or educated in Modern English are usually Latinate. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is considered at times to be either pretentious or an attempt to obfuscate an issue. George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", considered an important scrutinisation of the English language, is critical of this, as well as other perceived misuses of the language.

An English speaker is in many cases able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: ''come'' or ''arrive''; ''sight'' or ''vision''; ''freedom'' or ''liberty''. In some cases, there is a choice between a Germanic derived word (''oversee''), a Latin derived word (''supervise''), and a French word derived from the same Latin word (''survey''); or even words derived from Norman French (e.g., ''warranty'') and Parisian French (''guarantee''), and even choices involving multiple Germanic and Latinate sources are possible: ''sickness'' (Old English), ''ill'' (Old Norse), ''infirmity'' (French), ''affliction'' (Latin). Such synonyms harbor a variety of different meanings and nuances. Yet the ability to choose between multiple synonyms is not a consequence of French and Latin influence, as this same richness existed in English prior to the extensive borrowing of French and Latin terms. Old English was extremely resourceful in its ability to express synonyms and shades of meaning on its own, in many respects rivaling or exceeding that of Modern English (synonyms numbering in the thirties for certain concepts were not uncommon). Take for instance the various ways to express the word "astronomer" or "astrologer" in Old English: ''tunglere, tungolcræftiga, tungolwītega, tīdymbwlātend, tīdscēawere''. In Modern English, however, the role of such synonyms has largely been replaced in favour of equivalents taken from Latin, French, and Greek. Familiarity with the etymology of groups of synonyms can give English speakers greater control over their linguistic register. See: List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English, Doublet (linguistics).

An exception to this and a peculiarity perhaps unique to a handful of languages, English included, is that the nouns for meats are commonly different from, and unrelated to, those for the animals from which they are produced, the animal commonly having a Germanic name and the meat having a French-derived one. Examples include: ''deer'' and ''venison''; ''cow'' and ''beef''; ''swine''/''pig'' and ''pork''; and ''sheep''/''lamb'' and ''mutton''. This is assumed to be a result of the aftermath of the Norman conquest of England, where an Anglo-Norman-speaking elite were the consumers of the meat, produced by lower classes, which happened to be largely Anglo-Saxon, though this same duality can also be seen in other languages like French, which did not undergo such linguistic upheaval (e.g. ''boeuf'' "beef" vs. ''vache'' "cow"). With the exception of ''beef'' and ''pork'', the distinction today is gradually becoming less and less pronounced (''venison'' is commonly referred to simply as ''deer meat'', ''mutton'' is ''lamb'', and ''chicken'' is both the animal and the meat over the more traditional term ''poultry''. (Use of the term ''mutton'', however, remains, especially when referring to the meat of an older sheep, distinct from ''lamb''; and ''poultry'' remains when referring to the meat of birds and fowls in general. Use of the term ''swineflesh'' for ''pork'', is also widespread, especially in religious contexts)

There are Latinate words that are used in everyday speech. These words no longer appear Latinate and oftentimes have no Germanic equivalents. For instance, the words ''mountain'', ''valley'', ''river'', ''aunt'', ''uncle'', ''move'', ''use'', ''push'' and ''stay ("to remain")'' are Latinate. Likewise, the inverse can occur: ''acknowledge'', ''meaningful'', ''understanding'', ''mindful'', ''behaviour'', ''forbearance'', ''behoove'', ''forestall'', ''allay'', ''rhyme'', ''starvation'', ''embodiment'' come from Anglo-Saxon, and ''allegiance'', ''abandonment'', ''debutant'', ''feudalism'', ''seizure'', ''guarantee'', ''disregard'', ''wardrobe'', ''disenfranchise'', ''disarray'', ''bandolier'', ''bourgeoisie'', ''debauchery'', ''performance'', ''furniture'', ''gallantry'' are of Germanic origin, usually through the Germanic element in French, so it is oftentimes impossible to know the origin of a word based on its register.

English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and often imports new words and phrases. Examples of this phenomenon include contemporary words such as ''cookie'', ''Internet'' and ''URL'' (technical terms), as well as ''genre'', ''über'', ''lingua franca'' and ''amigo'' (imported words/phrases from French, German, Italian, and Spanish, respectively). In addition, slang often provides new meanings for old words and phrases. In fact, this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage.

Number of words in English

The ''General Explanations'' at the beginning of the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states:

The current FAQ for the ''OED'' further states: }}

The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation. Unlike other languages such as French (the Académie française), German (Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung), Spanish (Real Academia Española) and Italian (Accademia della Crusca), there is no academy to define officially accepted words and spellings. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science, technology and other fields, and new slang is constantly developed. Some of these new words enter wide usage; others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might or might not be widely considered as "English".

The ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition ''(OED2)'' includes over 600,000 definitions, following a rather inclusive policy:

}}

The editors of ''Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged'' (475,000 main headwords) in their preface, estimate the number to be much higher. It is estimated that about 25,000 words are added to the language each year.

The Global Language Monitor announced that the English language had crossed the 1,000,000-word threshold on 10 June 2009. The announcement was met with strong scepticism by linguists and lexicographers, though a number of non-specialist reports accepted the figure uncritically. However, in December 2010 a joint Harvard/Google study found the language to contain 1,022,000 words and was expanding at the rate of 8,500 words per year. The findings came from the computer analysis of 5,195,769 digitised books. The difference between the Google/Harvard estimate and that of the Global Language Monitor is about thirteen thousandth of one percent.

Comparisons of the vocabulary size of English to that of other languages are generally not taken very seriously by linguists and lexicographers. Besides the fact that dictionaries will vary in their policies for including and counting entries, what is meant by a given language and what counts as a word do not have simple definitions. Also, a definition of word that works for one language may not work well in another, with differences in morphology and orthography making cross-linguistic definitions and word-counting difficult, and potentially giving very different results. Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum has gone so far as to compare concerns over vocabulary size (and the notion that a supposedly larger lexicon leads to "greater richness and precision") to an obsession with penis length.

Word origins

One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words that are Germanic (mostly West Germanic, with a smaller influence from the North Germanic branch) and those that are "Latinate" (derived directly from Latin, or through Norman French or other Romance languages). The situation is further compounded, as French, particularly Old French and Anglo-French, were also contributors in English of significant numbers of Germanic words, mostly from the Frankish element in French (see ''List of English Latinates of Germanic origin'').

The majority (estimates range from roughly 50% to more than 80%) of the thousand most common English words are Germanic. However, the majority of more advanced words in subjects such as the sciences, philosophy and mathematics come from Latin or Greek, with Arabic also providing many words in astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry.

1st 1,000 97% 3% 0 0

+ Source of the most frequent 7,476 English words		1st 100	|	2nd 1,000	then on
Germanic	|	57%	39%	36%
Italic	|	36%	51%	51%
Hellenic	|	4%	4%	7%
Others	|	3%	6%	6%
Source:

Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the proportionate origins of English vocabulary. None, as of yet, is considered definitive by most linguists.

A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old ''Shorter Oxford Dictionary'' (3rd ed.) was published in ''Ordered Profusion'' by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) that estimated the origin of English words as follows:

''Langue d'oïl'', including French and Old Norman: 28.3%

Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%

Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English; does not include Germanic words coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages): 25%

Greek: 5.32%

No etymology given: 4.03%

Derived from proper names: 3.28%

All other languages: less than 1%

A survey by Joseph M. Williams in ''Origins of the English Language'' of 10,000 words taken from several thousand business letters gave this set of statistics:

French (langue d'oïl): 41%

"Native" English: 33%

Latin: 15%

Old Norse: 2%

Dutch: 1%

Other: 10%

French origins

A large portion of English vocabulary is of French or Langues d'oïl origin, and was transmitted to English via the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the upper classes in England in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. Words of Norman-French origin include ''competition'', ''mountain'', ''art'', ''table'', ''publicity'', ''police'', ''role'', ''routine'', ''machine'' and ''force''. As a result of the length of time they have been in use in English, these words have been anglicised to fit English rules of phonology, pronunciation and spelling.

Some French words were adopted during the 17th to 19th centuries, when French was the dominant language of Western international politics and trade. These words can normally be distinguished because they retain French rules for pronunciation and spelling, including diacritics, are often phrases rather than single words, and are sometimes written in italics. Examples include façade, table d'hôte and affaire de cœur. These words and phrases retain their French spelling and pronunciation because historically their French origin was emphasised to denote the speaker as educated or well-travelled at a time when education and travelling was still restricted to the middle and upper classes, and so their use implied a higher social status in the user. ''(See also: French phrases used by English speakers)''.

Old Norse origins

Many words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language, primarily from the Viking colonisation of eastern and northern England between 800–1000 CE during the Danelaw. These include common words such as ''anger, awe, bag, big, birth, blunder, both, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, cut, die, dirt, drag, drown, egg, fellow, flat, flounder, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, gust, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race (running), raise, root, rotten, same, scale, scare, score, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, skull, sky, stain, steak, sway, take, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till (until), trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong'', the pronoun ''they'' (and its forms), and even the verb ''are'' (the present plural form of ''to be'') through a merger of Old English and Old Norse cognates. More recent Scandinavian imports include ''angstrom, fjord, geyser, kraken, litmus, nickel, ombudsman, saga, ski, slalom, smorgasbord, and tungsten''.

Dutch and Low German origins

Many words describing the navy, types of ships, and other objects or activities on the water are of Dutch origin. ''Yacht'', ''skipper'', ''cruiser'', ''flag'', ''freight'', ''furlough'', ''breeze'', ''hoist'', ''iceberg'', ''boom'', ''duck'' ("fabric, cloth"), and ''maelstrom'' are examples. Other words pertain to art and daily life: ''easel'', ''etch'', ''slim'', ''staple'' (Middle Dutch ''stapel'' "market"), ''slip'' (Middle Dutch ''slippen''), ''landscape'', ''cookie'', ''curl'', ''shock'', ''aloof'', ''boss'', ''brawl'' (''brallen'' "to boast"), ''smack'' (''smakken'' "to hurl down"), ''shudder'', ''scum'', ''peg'', ''coleslaw'', ''waffle'', ''dope'' (''doop'' "dipping sauce"), ''slender'' (Old Dutch ''slinder''), ''slight'', ''gas'', ''pump''. Dutch has also contributed to English slang, e.g. ''spook'', and the now obsolete ''snyder'' (tailor) and ''stiver'' (small coin).

Words from Low German include ''bluster, cower, dollar, drum, geek, grab, lazy, mate, monkey, mud, ogle, orlop, paltry, poll, poodle, prong, scurvy, smug, smuggle, trade''.

Writing system

Since around the 9th century, English has been written in the Latin alphabet, which replaced Anglo-Saxon runes. The spelling system, or orthography, is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system; it has grown to vary significantly from the phonology of the language. The spelling of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken.

Though letters and sounds may not correspond in isolation, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are 75% or more reliable. Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic. However, English has fewer consistent relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages; for example, the letter sequence ''ough'' can be pronounced in 10 different ways. The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that reading can be challenging.

It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish. "English-speaking children take up to two years more to learn reading than do children in 12 other European countries."(Professor Philip H K Seymour, University of Dundee, 2001) "[dyslexia] is twice as prevalent among dyslexics in the United States (and France) as it is among Italian dyslexics. Again, this is seen to be because of Italian's 'transparent' orthography." (Eraldo Paulesu and 11 others. Science, 2001)

Basic consonant sound-letter correspondence

t, th ''(rarely) thyme, Thames''

IPA	Alphabetic representation
	p
	b
	| th ''thing'' ''(African American, New York)''
	d
	c ''(+ a, o, u, consonants)'', k, ck, ch, qu ''(rarely) conquer'', kh ''(in foreign words)''
	g, gh, gu ''(+ a, e, i)'', gue ''(final position)''
	m
	n
	n ''(before g or k)'', ng
	f, ph, gh ''(final, infrequent) laugh, rough''
	v
	th ''thick, think, through''
	th ''that, this, the''
	s, c ''(+ e, i, y)'', sc ''(+ e, i, y)'', ç often c ''(façade/facade)''
	z, s ''(finally or occasionally medially)'', ss ''(rarely) possess, dessert'', word-initial x ''xylophone''
	sh, sch (some dialects) ''schedule'' (plus words of German origin), ti (before vowel) ''portion'', ci/ce (before vowel) ''suspicion'', ''ocean''; si/ssi (before vowel) ''tension'', ''mission''; ch ''(esp. in words of French origin)''; rarely s/ss before u ''sugar'', ''issue''; chsi in ''fuchsia'' only
	medial si (before vowel) ''division'', medial s (before "ur") ''pleasure'', zh ''(in foreign words)'', z before u ''azure'', g ''(in words of French origin) (+e, i, y) genre'', j ''(in words of French origin) bijou''
	kh, ch, h ''(in foreign words)''
	h ''(syllable-initially, otherwise silent)'', j ''(in words of Spanish origin) jai alai''
	ch, tch, t before u ''future'', ''culture''
	j, g ''(+ e, i, y)'', dg ''(+ e, i, consonant) badge, judg(e)ment''
	r, wr (initial) ''wrangle''
	y ''(initially or surrounded by vowels)'', j ''hallelujah''
alveolar lateral approximant	l	l
	w
	wh (''pronounced'' hw)

Written accents

Unlike most other Germanic languages, English has almost no diacritics except in foreign loanwords (like the acute accent in ''café''), and in the uncommon use of a diaeresis mark (often in formal writing) to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as one sound (e.g. ''naïve, Zoë''). Words such as ''décor'', ''café'', ''résumé''/'''', ''entrée'', ''fiancée'' and ''naïve'' are frequently spelled both with or without diacritics.

Some English words retain diacritics to distinguish them from others, such as ''animé, exposé, lamé, öre, pâté, piqué,'' and ''rosé'', though these are sometimes also dropped (for example, ''résumé/'', is often spelt ''resume'' in the United States). To clarify pronunciation, a small number of loanwords may employ a diacritic that does not appear in the original word, such as ''maté'', from Spanish ''yerba mate'', or ''Malé'', the capital of the Maldives, following the French usage.

Formal written English

A version of the language almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world is called formal written English. It takes virtually the same form regardless of where it is written, in contrast to spoken English, which differs significantly between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang and of colloquial and regional expressions. Local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited, being restricted largely to minor spelling, lexical and grammatical differences between British, American, Canadian and Australian English.

Basic and simplified versions

To make English easier to read, there are some simplified versions of the language. One basic version is named ''Basic English'', a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book ''Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar'' (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English. Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English. Thus, Basic English may be employed by companies that need to make complex books for international use, as well as by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time.

Ogden did not include any words in Basic English that could be said with a combination of other words, and he worked to make the vocabulary suitable for speakers of any other language. He put his vocabulary selections through a large number of tests and adjustments. Ogden also simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English users. Although it was not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised for various international uses.

Another version, Simplified English, exists, which is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardised subset of English. Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word ''close'' can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear".

See also

Changes to Old English vocabulary

English for Academic Purposes

English language in Europe

English language learning and teaching

Language Report

Lists of English words

Teaching English as a foreign language

''The Adventure of English'' (film)

''The Story of English''

References

Bibliographic

Cercignani, Fausto, ''Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981.

Kenyon, John Samuel and Knott, Thomas Albert, ''A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English'', G & C Merriam Company, Springfield, Mass, USA,1953.

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External links

Accents of English from Around the World (University of Edinburgh) Hear and compare how the same 110 words are pronounced in 50 English accents from around the world – instantaneous playback online

;Dictionaries

Collection of English bilingual dictionaries

dict.org

Dictionary of American Regional English

English language word roots, prefixes and suffixes (affixes) dictionary

Oxford's online dictionary

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary

Macquarie Dictionary Online

}}

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Michael Carlson (b. June 5, 1974) is a chef and restaurateur from Chicago, Illinois. After dropping out of culinary school, Carlson got his start in the industry working under Paul Bartolotta. From there he studied abroad in Italy under Valentino Marcattilii, and in England under Heston Blumenthal. Carlson says he learned more from American chef Grant Achatz than anyone else.

In late 2005 Carlson opened his first restaurant – Schwa – in Chicago. He quickly earned a positive reputation and ''Food & Wine'' magazine named him one of 2006's top new chefs. In 2007, Carlson was asked to host a gathering of world-famous chefs including Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and for Charlie Trotter's 20th anniversary celebration. The night went well, but put a severe strain on Carlson. He abruptly closed Schwa the next morning, and left the industry for four months before re-opening Schwa in February 2008.

Carlson is known for his "unstressed" approach to food, creating simple dishes from unconventional ingredients. He is known as a perfectionist who does not like standing still professionally. One food critic described Carlson as "culinary maverick ... whose choices often [fly] in the face of fine-dining expectations."

Despite Carlson's culinary skill, Schwa has struggled to remain afloat. Friends have attributed this to a complete lack of business acumen on Carlson's part, as well as his general lack of interest in material possessions. He has said he would rather cook and run his business the way he wants than make money.

Outsiders view Carlson as an inconsiderate recluse, but co-workers describe him as a kind and generous person. Carlson is known for his casual demeanor and conversation. He lives with his girlfriend, Rachel Brown, and his two-year-old daughter, Lily, in Logan Square.

Background

Michael Carlson was born June 5, 1974 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up the Chicago suburbs of Glen Ellyn and Lombard. The son of a financial planner father, Stan, and dental hygienist mother, Carlson describes his childhood as "normal." His parents divorced and his father served as a colonel in the US army reserves during the Gulf War. As a result, he briefly lived with his older brother during his teens.

Carlson says he is not sure when he first became interested in food, although his mother ascribes his interest to watching Julia Child as a young boy. He does, however, remember his first encounter with gourmet cooking. At age 12, while staying a fancy hotel in Quebec, he had duck with blueberries at the hotel's restaurant. He got his first professional cooking experience while working a local bar during college.

In 1998, after completing college Carlson enrolled at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (CHIC) and got chef's position at Spiaggia under Paul Bartolotta. He quit CHIC after one semester, due in part to an instructor who began a pasta-making class by demonstrating the proper way to open a box. Bartolotta, however, saw promise in Carlson and arranged for him to study under Valentino Marcattilii at San Domenico in Italy. While in Italy, Carlson staged at more than fifteen different restaurants. Carlson describes the experience as a turning point in his career. "It was the first time I really thought about food," he explains.

Upon returning to the states, Carlson became Grant Achatz's first hire at Trio. Carlson stayed at Trio for about 18 months, before moving to England to train under Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck. Carlson later described Achatz as the best chef he ever worked for and said he learned more under Achatz than he did in four years elsewhere. He enjoyed the job at Trio so much that he went in to work on his days off, despite only earning $20,000 a year.

Schwa

Carlson returned to Chicago and was offered the sous-chef position at Achatz's Alinea that was about to open. He was planning on accepting the position, but before the restaurant opened he bumped into an old friend. As it happened, the friend owned a small restaurant named Lovitt, which he was planning on closing in order to move out of state. Carlson fell in love with the space, and worked at Lovitt for several months before it closed, learning the business end of being a chef. Lovitt closed in the fall of 2005, and Carlson was offered the restaurant's equipment for a bargain price. Financed by his father, Carlson opened Schwa in Lovitt's old location. Schwa quickly gained the attention of both local and national critics. By May 2006, ''Chicago'' magazine had made note of Carlson's rapid rise saying "We love his food – and his genuine sense of surprise at Schwa’s success." At the end of 2006, Schwa was named one of Citysearch's "Top 10 New Restaurants" of 2006.

Schwa combines "unstressed," upscale food with a "laid-back atmosphere."

Anniversary celebration

In October 2007, Carlson was invited to host many of the world's top chefs as part of Charlie Trotter's 20th anniversary celebration. At first Carlson declined the offer, but reconsidered saying "how often do you get to cook for those cats?" The event was only eleven days away, and Carlson was ill-equipped to handle the large party of famous chefs. He fired a cook he did not feel was worthy and had to borrow the services of his former, and Grant Achatz's current, sous-chef Nathan Klingbail. He had to buy more plates and went virtually without sleep. "You couldn’t imagine the anxiety," Carlson explains.

When the big day arrived, the guest list included more than a dozen world famous chefs including Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, and Pierre Hermé. The evening included an elaborate 14-course, 4-hour meal which Carlson later described "It was as high a pinnacle as you could ever have. It will never get better than that." He stated the event was "the most important night of [his] career," and refused to accept payment for his services.

The guests were delighted with the food. Blumenthal said he "ate everything on [his] plate" and that he loved the passion, while Adria added that the staff was "young and brilliant." Herme said he "enjoyed all the different flavors and textures," while Trotter himself described Carlson as brilliant. Mike Sheerin summed it up: "It was really an amazing dinner."

Despite its success, the service was a severe strain on Carlson. He called his father after everyone left and said "I don’t know if I have anything else in me now. The next morning he closed Schwa, leaving behind a stocked refrigerator and full reservation book. Carlson went on a drinking and drug binge and disappeared completely for public life for four months. At the age of 33, his career was assumed to be over.

Comeback

After a three month "physical, emotional, and spiritual break," Carlson got the urged to return to cooking. He reopened Schwa in February 2008, promising to strike a better work-family balance to avoid burning out again. He hired an additional chef, created a less labor-intensive menu, and turned more of his attention to the dining room. The customers quickly returned, as did the critic's praise, leading one observer to write "Forget ''Ratatouille''. This is an Oscar-worthy redemption story. Are you listening, Hollywood?"

In 2009, Carlson was again asked by Trotter to host an evening of world-famous chefs. This time Trotter insisted on paying and Carlson survived the evening without incident. Carlson continues to work long-hours, sometimes with his family at his side, but says he would not change anything, describing cooking as a "dream job." He has said he has no interest in cashing in on the current celebrity-chef craze, and does not see himself ever leaving Chicago. He was selected to appear on ''Iron Chef America'', but declined to participate.

Approach to food and critical acclaim

''The Chicago Sun-Times'' describes Carlson's cooking style as "New American", but Carlson himself prefers the description "unstressed food." "What's most important is that everyone ... has an incredible time," he says. One of Carlson's favorite cooking techniques is to make ingredients that people normally would not tolerate into something palatable. He is known to combine ingredients in bizarre ways, such as pairing oysters with oatmeal and raisins. Despite these wild dishes, Carlson is perhaps best known for his simplistic, modern interpretations of classic Italian dishes. His quail egg ravioli is considered his signature dish. The one element that ties all Carlson's dishes together is fat. "Fat carries flavor really well," he explains.

Carlson does not serve bread, once stating that he did not believe in it. He likes to combine sophisticated ingredients like brioche and quail eggs with a casual atmosphere. Carlson lists "pork bellies, lardo and large quantities of fat" as his favorite ingredients, and serves purées with most dishes.

Carlson cooking techniques have been described as "avant-garde," "innovative,", and "high-tech chemistry." He sometimes employs the sous-vide method of cooking and is known to use unconventional tools as such emulsifying gels, congealing agents, foams, and liquid nitrogen. while Frommer's remarks "Carlson's sensory imagination sometimes rises to the level of sheer poetry."

In 2006, ''Food & Wine'' magazine named Carlson one of the year's top new chefs, remarking "he ingeniously combines a classic Italian cooking sensibility with avant-garde techniques." Also in 2006, ''Chicago'' magazine named him "Best Chef" in their annual "Best of the Best" feature. In 2007, he won the Jean Banchet Award for rising chef of the year. In 2008, ''Maxim'' described Chicago as "America’s mecca for forward-looking cuisine," listing Carlson as one of four Chicago chefs driving cuisine forward. The magazine also listed Carlson's prosciutto consommé as a factor in naming Chicago the year's "Tastiest City."

Carlson has been nominated for top chef honors in the 2010 Jean Banchet Awards.

Business acumen

Despite Carlson's abundant culinary skills, his restaurant Schwa has struggled to stay afloat. Carlson has described the restaurant as living "from paycheck to paycheck". This has been attributed to a complete lack of business acumen, and is a source of frustration for Achatz and Trotter. Despite long reservation waiting lists, on any given night Schwa is usually half empty, partly by choice, partly because Carlson rarely answers the phone. The restaurant's voice mail is frequently full, meaning potential customers are unable to make, or cancel, reservations. Schwa does not have a liquor license, which takes away a large source of potential income (and an even larger source of potential profit). Carlson has claimed limited size of Schwa makes storing wine bottles and glasses difficult, and that it allows him to be educated by the sophisticated customers who bring in their own wines. Achatz called Carlson's decision not the offer wine "stupid," while Trotter said he was "crazy" for "leaving so much money on the friggin' table." For a portion of 2007, Carlson even closed Schwa on Saturdays – traditionally the most profitable day for restaurants – to spend time with his family.

Part of the problem arises from Carlson's lack of focus on money and material possessions. "If he and I and our daughter were living in the woods, he’d be fine," his girlfriend Rachel Brown remarked. Carlson has said he would rather run his business the way he wants than make money. Carlson has repeatedly rejected buyout offers, as well as friendly offers to help him expand, including from Trotter himself, saying that he is happy with the way things are.

Carlson's father, who is 49% owner in Schwa, is currently trying to teach Carlson how to run a business properly. So far the lessons have not yielded significant results. For example, Carlson has lost the business's credit card on multiple occasions.

Personality & personal life

Although he has been described as charismatic, outsiders tend to view Michael Carlson as a recluse. They view him as inconsiderate and incapable of effective communication. Mobil Travel Guide describes him as "the enfant terrible of the Chicago dining world." Friends note that Carlson is technically inept and rarely answers his cell phone or emails.

Carlson's co-workers, however, adore him, and view him as a sort of mad genius, a wild chef with a compassionate heart. Fellow Chicago chef and friend Stephanie Izard remarks "You want to jump into his mind for a day. But you’re also afraid you’ll run away screaming... He sees things in different ways than anybody else. He’s mind-churningly brilliant." Carlson's sous-chef Gaetano Nardulli describes him as "the nicest, most generous person I’ve met." Schwa chef Jonathan Ory says Carlson is a little nuts, but adds "what makes him nuts is that he’s striving to be perfect." Carlson once told an eager young chef who could not afford to eat at Schwa "for you we have a discount price of zero, man."

Carlson is known for his unusually casual style of conversation which entails ending most sentences with "man." ''GQ'' magazine described him as "the last hipster dude." If he was not a chef, Carlson says he would be "the world-famous poker player with the cowboy hat and sunglasses sitting in the corner."

Carlson and his girlfriend Rachel Brown live in a three-bedroom apartment in Logan Square. The couple met through Brown's roommate, who was working for Carlson at the time. They have a two-year-old daughter named Lily and a Siberian husky named Furious George. Carlson spends two hours playing with Lily each morning before he leaves for work, and describes those hours as the best part of his day.

Carlson lists former employee, and current sous-chef of Alinea, Nathan Klingbail as his best friend. Klingbail is the godfather of Lily.

References

Further reading

Extensive article on Charlie Trotter's anniversary event held at Schwa

"Kitchen Savant" - ''GQ'''s profile of Carlson

External links

Prosciutto Consommé recipe by Michael Carlson

Video look inside Schwa/interview with Michael Carlson

Category:1974 births Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:American chefs Category:Living people