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Angeln
http://wn.com/Angeln -
Anguilla
Anguilla ( ) is a British overseas territory in the Caribbean, one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. It consists of the main island of Anguilla itself, approximately long by wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The island's capital is The Valley. The total land area of the territory is , with a population of approximately 13,500 (2006 estimate).
http://wn.com/Anguilla -
Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda (; Spanish for "ancient" and "bearded") is a twin-island nation lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of two major inhabited islands, Antigua and Barbuda, and a number of smaller islands (including Great Bird, Green, Guinea, Long, Maiden and York Islands). Separated by a few sea miles, the group is in the middle of the Leeward Islands part of the Lesser Antilles, roughly at 17 degrees north of the Equator. Being a former part of the British Empire has strongly influenced the country's governance, language, and culture.
http://wn.com/Antigua_and_Barbuda -
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic (, ), is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico, Colombia and Spain are more populous.
http://wn.com/Argentina -
Aruba
http://wn.com/Aruba -
Australia
{{Infobox country
http://wn.com/Australia -
Bahamas
http://wn.com/Bahamas -
Bahrain
Bahrain, officially Kingdom of Bahrain (, , literally: "Kingdom of the Two Seas"), is a small island country in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. While Bahrain is an archipelago of thirty-three islands, the largest (Bahrain Island) is long by wide. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain via the King Fahd Causeway, which was officially opened on 25 November 1986. Qatar is to the southeast across the Gulf of Bahrain.
http://wn.com/Bahrain -
Bangladesh
http://wn.com/Bangladesh -
Barbados
Barbados ()or (Bar-bay-dos) is an island nation of the Lesser Antilles, in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic Ocean and 100 kilometres (62 mi) east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and north-east of Venezuela. Barbados is outside of the principal Atlantic hurricane belt.
http://wn.com/Barbados -
Belize
Belize () (formerly British Honduras), is a democratic constitutional monarchy, and the northernmost Central American nation. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Although Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official language. Belize is bordered by Mexico to its north, by Guatemala to its south and west, and by the Caribbean Sea to the east.
http://wn.com/Belize -
Bermuda
Bermuda (; officially, the Bermudas or Somers Islands) is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida. Its capital city is Hamilton but the largest municipality is the town of Saint George's.
http://wn.com/Bermuda -
Bolivia
Bolivia (), officially known as the Plurinational State of Bolivia, (, ) is a landlocked country in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay and Argentina to the south, and Chile and Peru to the west.
http://wn.com/Bolivia -
Botswana
The Republic of Botswana () is a sub Saharan country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" (singular: Motswana). Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. It has held free and fair democratic elections since independence.
http://wn.com/Botswana -
Brazil
Brazil (; , ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (, ), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.
http://wn.com/Brazil -
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population at the time, and covered more than 13 million square miles (34 million km2), almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.
http://wn.com/British_Empire -
Brunei
http://wn.com/Brunei -
Cameroon
http://wn.com/Cameroon -
Canada
Canada () is a country in North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area. Canada's common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.
http://wn.com/Canada -
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands ( or ) is a British Overseas Territory located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica. It is considered a part of the geographic Western Caribbean Zone. The territory is a major offshore financial centre in the Caribbean.
http://wn.com/Cayman_Islands -
Charles University
http://wn.com/Charles_University -
Chile
http://wn.com/Chile -
Christmas Island
The Territory of Christmas Island is a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. It is located northwest of the Western Australian city of Perth, south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and ENE of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
http://wn.com/Christmas_Island -
Colombia
Colombia (), officially the Republic of Colombia (, ), is a constitutional republic in northwestern South America. Colombia is bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the northwest by Panama; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Colombia also shares maritime borders with Venezuela, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. With a population of over 45 million people, Colombia has the 29th largest population in the world and the second largest in South America, after Brazil. Colombia has the fourth largest Spanish-speaking population in the world after Mexico, the United States, and Spain.
http://wn.com/Colombia -
Cook Islands
http://wn.com/Cook_Islands -
Cork (city)
Cork (, , from corcach, meaning "swamp") is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban areas contained in the county brings the total to 190,384. Metropolitan Cork has a population of approximately 274,000, while the Greater Cork area is about 380,000.
http://wn.com/Cork_(city) -
Corrientes Province
Corrientes (, Currents or Streams; ) is a province in northeast Argentina, in the Mesopotamia region. It is surrounded by (from the North, clockwise): Paraguay, the province of Misiones, Brazil, Uruguay, and the provinces of Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Chaco.
http://wn.com/Corrientes_Province -
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe () is one of the oldest international organisations working towards European integration, having been founded in 1949. It has a particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation. It has 47 member states with some 800 million citizens. It is distinct from the European Union (EU) which has common policies, binding laws and only twenty-seven members. The two do however share certain symbols such as their flag.
http://wn.com/Council_of_Europe -
Curaçao
http://wn.com/Curaçao -
Cyprus
http://wn.com/Cyprus -
Danelaw
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (also known as the Danelagh; Old English: Dena lagu; ), is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to be geographical. The areas that comprised the Danelaw are in northern and eastern England. The origins of the Danelaw arose from the Viking expansion of the 9th century, although the term was not used to describe a geographic area until the 11th century. With the increase in population and productivity in Scandinavia, Viking warriors, having sought treasure and glory in nearby Britain, "proceeded to plough and support themselves", in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 876.
http://wn.com/Danelaw -
Denmark
http://wn.com/Denmark -
Dominica
Dominica, ( ) officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea. To the north-northwest lies Guadeloupe, to the southeast Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth of Dominica has an estimated population of 72,500. The capital is Roseau.
http://wn.com/Dominica -
Ecuador
http://wn.com/Ecuador -
England
England () is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
http://wn.com/England -
Eritrea
http://wn.com/Eritrea -
Ethiopia
{{Infobox country
http://wn.com/Ethiopia -
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands (; ) are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located approximately from the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago, consisting of East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 lesser islands, is a self-governing Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom. The capital, Stanley, is on East Falkland.
http://wn.com/Falkland_Islands -
Fiji
Fiji (; ), officially the Republic of the Fiji Islands (; ), is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about 2000 km northeast of New Zealand's North Island. Its more immediate neighbours are Vanuatu to the west, France's New Caledonia to the southwest, New Zealand's Kermadec to the southeast, Tonga to the east, the Samoas and France's Wallis and Futuna to the northeast and Tuvalu to the north. Fiji has had inhabitants since the second millennium B.C. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch and the British explored Fiji.Fiji was a British colony up until 1970; British occupation lasted almost a century. Because of the abundance of forest, mineral, and fish resources, Fiji is one of the most developed economies in the Pacific island realm. Today, the main sources of foreign exchange are its tourist industry and sugar exports. The country's currency is the Fijian dollar.
http://wn.com/Fiji -
Frisia
http://wn.com/Frisia -
Gambia
http://wn.com/Gambia -
Germany
Germany (), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (, ), is a country in Western Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The territory of Germany covers 357.021 km2 and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state of the European Union, and home to the third-largest number of international migrants worldwide.
http://wn.com/Germany -
Ghana
http://wn.com/Ghana -
Gibraltar
Gibraltar () is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. The territory itself is a peninsula of whose isthmus connects to the north with Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the area and gives its name to the densely populated town, home to almost 30,000 Gibraltarians.
http://wn.com/Gibraltar -
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 60.0 million people in mid-2009, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1,000 smaller islands and islets. The island of Ireland lies to its west. Politically, Great Britain may also refer to the island itself together with a number of surrounding islands which comprise the territory of England, Scotland and Wales.
http://wn.com/Great_Britain -
Grenada
Grenada () is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Grenada is located northwest of Trinidad and Tobago, northeast of Venezuela, and southwest of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
http://wn.com/Grenada -
Guam
http://wn.com/Guam -
Guernsey
The Bailiwick of Guernsey ( ; , ) is a British Crown Dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.
http://wn.com/Guernsey -
Guyana
Guyana ( ), officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana and previously known as British Guiana, is a state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana has been a former colony of the British, Dutch and for a brief period, the French. It is the only state of the Commonwealth of Nations on mainland South America, and is also a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which has its secretariat headquarters in Guyana's capital, Georgetown. Guyana achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 26 May 1966 and became a Republic on 23 February 1970.
http://wn.com/Guyana -
Hong Kong
Hong Kong () is one of two special administrative regions (SARs) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the other being Macau. Situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour. With a land mass of and a population of seven million people, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hong Kong's population is 95 percent ethnic Chinese and 5 percent from other groups. Hong Kong's Han Chinese majority originate mainly from the cities of Guangzhou and Taishan in the neighbouring Guangdong province.
http://wn.com/Hong_Kong -
India
India (), officially the Republic of India ( ; see also official names of India), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.18 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Mainland India is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east; and it is bordered by Pakistan to the west; Bhutan, the People's Republic of China and Nepal to the north; and Bangladesh and Burma to the east. In the Indian Ocean, mainland India and the Lakshadweep Islands are in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share maritime border with Thailand and the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the Andaman Sea. India has a coastline of .
http://wn.com/India -
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man (; , ), otherwise known simply as Mann (, ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is represented by a Lieutenant Governor. The island is not part of the United Kingdom, but its foreign relations and defence are the responsibility of the UK Government. Although it does not usually interfere in the island's domestic matters, its "good government" is the ultimate responsibility of the Crown (i.e., in practice, the Government of the United Kingdom).
http://wn.com/Isle_of_Man -
Jamaica
http://wn.com/Jamaica -
Jersey
http://wn.com/Jersey -
Kenya
The Republic of Kenya (pronounced ) is a country in East Africa. Lying along the Indian Ocean to its southeast and at the equator, Kenya is bordered by Somalia to the northeast, Ethiopia to the north, Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west and Tanzania to the south. Lake Victoria is to the southwest and is shared between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya has numerous wildlife reserves, containing thousands of animal species. The capital city is Nairobi. Kenya's area is 580,000 km2 with a population of nearly 39 million which is diverse: more than 40 different ethnic groups are present. The country is named after Mount Kenya, a significant landmark and second among Africa's highest mountain peaks.
http://wn.com/Kenya -
Kiribati
Kiribati ( ; ), officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. It is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres, (1,351,000 square miles) straddling the equator, and bordering the International Date Line at its easternmost point.
http://wn.com/Kiribati -
Lesotho
http://wn.com/Lesotho -
Liberia
http://wn.com/Liberia -
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony ( ) lies in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany. In rural areas Northern Low Saxon, a dialect of Low German, is still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining.
http://wn.com/Lower_Saxony -
Madagascar
Madagascar, or Republic of Madagascar (older name Malagasy Republic, French: ), is an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa. The main island, also called Madagascar, is the fourth-largest island in the world.
http://wn.com/Madagascar -
Malawi
The Republic of Malawi (; Chichewa ) is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size is over with an estimated population of more than 13,900,000. Its capital is Lilongwe, the second largest city is Blantyre and the third large city is Mzuzu. The name Malawi comes from the Maravi, an old name of the Nyanja people that inhabit the area.
http://wn.com/Malawi -
Malaysia
Malaysia (pronounced or ) is a federal constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia. It consists of thirteen states and three federal territories and has a total landmass of . The country is separated by the South China Sea into two regions, Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo (also known as West and East Malaysia respectively). Malaysia shares land borders with Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei and has maritime boundaries with Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population as of 2009 stood at over 28 million.
http://wn.com/Malaysia -
Malta
Malta , officially the Republic of Malta (), is a southern European country and consists of an archipelago situated centrally in the Mediterranean, 93 km south of Sicily and 288 km east of Tunisia, with the Strait of Gibraltar 1,826 km to the west and Alexandria 1,510 km to the east.
http://wn.com/Malta -
Marshall Islands
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. The population is about 62,000. In 1986 independence was attained under a Compact of Free Association with the United States.
http://wn.com/Marshall_Islands -
Mauritius
http://wn.com/Mauritius -
Montserrat
Montserrat () is a British overseas territory located in the Leeward Islands, part of the chain of islands called the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. It measures approximately 16 km (10 miles) long and 11 km (7 miles) wide, giving of coastline. Christopher Columbus gave Montserrat its name on his second voyage to the New World in 1493, after Montserrat mountain located in Catalonia. Montserrat is nicknamed the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean, both for its resemblance to coastal Ireland and for the Irish descent of its inhabitants.
http://wn.com/Montserrat -
Mosquito Coast
The Caribbean Mosquito Coast (or Miskito Coast) historically consisted of an area along the Atlantic coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It was named after the local Miskito Indians and long dominated by British interests. The Mosquito Coast was incorporated into Nicaragua in 1894; however, in 1960 the northern part was granted to Honduras by the International Court of Justice.
http://wn.com/Mosquito_Coast -
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia (, ), is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990 following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek. Namibia is a member state of the United Nations (UN), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU), and the Commonwealth of Nations.
http://wn.com/Namibia -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( ; ), also called the "(North) Atlantic Alliance", is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, and the organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party.
http://wn.com/NATO -
Nauru
Nauru ( ), officially the Republic of Nauru and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island nation in Micronesia in the South Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 km to the east. Nauru is the world's smallest island nation, covering just .
http://wn.com/Nauru -
Netherlands
{{Infobox country
http://wn.com/Netherlands -
New Zealand
{{Infobox Country
http://wn.com/New_Zealand -
Nigeria
Nigeria (), officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. The three largest and most influential ethnic groups in Nigeria are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. In terms of religion Nigeria is roughly split half and half between Muslims and Christians with a very small minority who practice traditional religion.
http://wn.com/Nigeria -
Niue
http://wn.com/Niue -
Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island (Norfuk: Norfuk Ailen ) is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance. Together with two neighbouring islands, it forms one of Australia's external territories.
http://wn.com/Norfolk_Island -
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland (, Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlann) is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west. At the time of the 2001 UK Census, its population was 1,685,000, constituting about 30% of the island's total population and about 3% of the population of the United Kingdom.
http://wn.com/Northern_Ireland -
Northumbria
Northumbria or Northhumbria () was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.
http://wn.com/Northumbria -
Pakistan
{{Infobox country
http://wn.com/Pakistan -
Palau
Palau , officially the Republic of Palau (), is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles (800 km) east of the Philippines and 2,000 miles (3,200 km) south of Tokyo. Having emerged from United Nations trusteeship (administered by the United States) in 1994, it is one of the world's youngest and smallest sovereign states. In English, the name is sometimes spelled Belau in accordance with the native pronunciation. It was formerly also spelled Pelew.
http://wn.com/Palau -
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea ( , also or ; Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) (PNG), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands (the western portion of the island is a part of the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua). It is located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, in a region defined since the early 19th century as Melanesia. The capital is Port Moresby.
http://wn.com/Papua_New_Guinea -
Paraguay
http://wn.com/Paraguay -
Philippines
The Philippines ( ), officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (), is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam. The Sulu Sea to the southwest lies between the country and the island of Borneo, and to the south the Celebes Sea separates it from other islands of Indonesia. It is bounded on the east by the Philippine Sea. Its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and its tropical climate make the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons but have also endowed the country with natural resources and made it one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world. An archipelago comprising 7,107 islands, the Philippines is categorized broadly into three main geographical divisions: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Its capital city is Manila.
http://wn.com/Philippines -
Pitcairn Islands
http://wn.com/Pitcairn_Islands -
Puerto Rico
http://wn.com/Puerto_Rico -
Republic of Ireland
Ireland (, , , ), described as the Republic of Ireland (), is a state in northwest Europe with a population of almost 4.5 million people. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional republic occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned into two jurisdictions in 1921. It is bordered to the northeast by Northern Ireland, which is a part of the United Kingdom, and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea to the east, St George's Channel to the southeast, and the Celtic Sea to the south.
http://wn.com/Republic_of_Ireland -
Rwanda
The Republic of Rwanda (, , or in English, or in Kinyarwanda) is a unitary republic of central and eastern Africa. It borders Uganda to the north; Tanzania to the east; Burundi to the south; and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Rwanda is landlocked but is noted for its lakes, particularly Lake Kivu, which occupies the floor of the Rift Valley along most of the country's western border. Although close to the equator, the country has a temperate climate due to its high elevation, with the highest point being Mount Karisimbi. The terrain consists of mountains and gently rolling hills, with plains and swamps in the east. Abundant wildlife, including rare mountain gorillas, have led to a fast-growing tourism sector. The largest cities in Rwanda are Kigali, Gitarama, and Butare. Unlike many African countries, Rwanda is home to only one significant ethnic and linguistic group, the Banyarwanda. The country is well known for its native styles of dance, particularly the Intore dance, and for its drummers. Kinyarwanda, English and French are the official languages.
http://wn.com/Rwanda -
Saba
Saba () is a Caribbean island and the smallest special municipality of the Netherlands, located at . It consists largely of the potentially active volcano Mount Scenery (877 m), the highest point of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Netherlands proper.
http://wn.com/Saba -
Saint Helena
http://wn.com/Saint_Helena -
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia (; ) is an island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 620 km2 (238 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 160,000. Its capital is Castries. The island nation has been the home of two Nobel laureates, Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott. It is the nation with the second most such honorees per capita after Faroe Islands.
http://wn.com/Saint_Lucia -
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa and German Samoa, is a country governing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in Polynesia, Savai'i. The capital city Apia and Faleolo International Airport are situated on the island of Upolu.
http://wn.com/Samoa -
Schleswig-Holstein
http://wn.com/Schleswig-Holstein -
Scotland
Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Alba) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland includes over 790 islands including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.
http://wn.com/Scotland -
Seychelles
Seychelles ( ; French: ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (; Creole: Repiblik Sesel), is an island country spanning an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar.
http://wn.com/Seychelles -
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone () (Krio: Sa Lone), officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has a population estimated at 6.5 million. It is a former British Colony and now a constitutional republic comprising three provinces and the Western Area; which are further divided into fourteen districts.
http://wn.com/Sierra_Leone -
Singapore
{{Infobox Country
http://wn.com/Singapore -
Sint Eustatius
Sint Eustatius ( ), also known affectionately to the locals as Statia () or Statius, is a Caribbean island and a special municipality of the Netherlands. It lies in the northern Leeward Islands portion of the West Indies, southeast of the Virgin Islands and immediately to the northwest of Saint Kitts and Nevis and to the southeast of Saba, at . The island is named after the legendary Christian martyr Saint Eustace. The regional capital is Oranjestad.
http://wn.com/Sint_Eustatius -
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands ) is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of 28,400 square kilometres (10,965 sq mi). The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal. The nation of the Solomon Islands is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
http://wn.com/Solomon_Islands -
Somaliland
http://wn.com/Somaliland -
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an independent country wholly surrounded by South African territory.
http://wn.com/South_Africa -
South Sudan
http://wn.com/South_Sudan -
Sri Lanka
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (commonly known as Sri Lanka (, , or ); ; , ) is a country and a sovereign state off souther coast of the Indian subcontinent. A island nation in South Asia, it was till 1972 known as Ceylon (, , or ). Sri Lanka is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait.
http://wn.com/Sri_Lanka -
Sudan
Sudan (), officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and tenth largest in the world by area. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east,Kenya and Uganda to the southeast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west and Libya to the northwest. The world's longest river, the Nile, divides the country between east and west sides.
http://wn.com/Sudan -
Suriname
http://wn.com/Suriname -
Swaziland
The Kingdom of Swaziland (Umbuso weSwatini), sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique. The nation, as well as its people, are named after the 19th century king Mswati II.
http://wn.com/Swaziland -
Sweden
http://wn.com/Sweden -
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania (; phonetical: tan-zann-ei-a; or sometimes tan-zanneia; ) is a country in central East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.
http://wn.com/Tanzania -
The Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is a country consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets (rocks). It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States (nearest to the state of Florida). Its total land area is ; slightly larger than the US states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined), with an estimated population of 330,000. Its capital is Nassau. Geographically, the Bahamas lie in the same island chain as Cuba, Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands, the designation of the Bahamas refers normally to the commonwealth and not the geographic chain.
http://wn.com/The_Bahamas -
The Gambia
The Republic of the Gambia, commonly known as the Gambia, or Gambia, is a country in Western Africa. The Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, bordered to the north, east, and south by Senegal, with a small coast on the Atlantic Ocean in the west.
http://wn.com/The_Gambia -
Tokelau
Tokelau () is a territory of New Zealand that consists of three tropical coral atolls with a combined land area of 10 km2 and a population of approximately 1,400 in the South Pacific Ocean. The atolls lie north of the Samoan Islands, east of Tuvalu, south of the Phoenix Islands, southwest of the more distant Line Islands (both islands groups belonging to Kiribati) and northwest of the Cook Islands.
http://wn.com/Tokelau -
Trinidad and Tobago
The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago () is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying northeast of the South American country of Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. It shares maritime boundaries with other nations including Barbados to the northeast, Guyana to the southeast, and Venezuela to the south and west.
http://wn.com/Trinidad_and_Tobago -
Tuvalu
Tuvalu ( or ), formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa and Fiji. It comprises four reef islands and five true atolls. Its population of 12,373 makes it the second-least populous sovereign state in the world, with only Vatican City having fewer inhabitants. In terms of physical land size, at just Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world, larger only than the Vatican City at , Monaco at and Nauru at .
http://wn.com/Tuvalu -
Uganda
The Republic of Uganda ( or ) is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, which is also bordered by Kenya and Tanzania.
http://wn.com/Uganda -
United Arab Emirates
http://wn.com/United_Arab_Emirates -
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a country and sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island nation, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border with another sovereign state, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. Great Britain is linked to continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel.
http://wn.com/United_Kingdom -
United States
The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.
http://wn.com/United_States -
Uruguay
Uruguay (, ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (sometimes rendered as the Eastern Republic of Uruguay in the English language; , ), is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.4 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area. An estimated 88% of the population are of European descent.
http://wn.com/Uruguay -
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (, Bislama: Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, west of Fiji, and southeast of the Solomon Islands, near New Guinea.
http://wn.com/Vanuatu -
Venezuela
http://wn.com/Venezuela -
Zambia
The Republic of Zambia () is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. The capital city is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of the country. The population is concentrated mainly around the Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt to the northwest.
http://wn.com/Zambia -
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe ( ; officially the Republic of Zimbabwe and formerly Southern Rhodesia, the Republic of Rhodesia, and Zimbabwe Rhodesia) is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the continent of Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three official languages: English, Shona (a Bantu language), and Ndebele (also a Bantu language).
http://wn.com/Zimbabwe
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Angles
The Angles is a modern English word for a Germanic-speaking people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The Angles were one of the main groups that settled in Britain in the post-Roman period, founding several of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name "England".
http://wn.com/Angles -
Anglo-Saxon runes
http://wn.com/Anglo-Saxon_runes -
Bede
http://wn.com/Bede -
Beowulf
Beowulf (; in Old English or ) is the conventional title of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.
http://wn.com/Beowulf -
Brummie
Brummie (sometimes Brummy) is a colloquial term for the inhabitants, accent and dialect of Birmingham, England, as well as being a general adjective used to denote a connection with the city, locally called Brum. The terms are all derived from Brummagem or Bromwichham, historical variants or alternatives to 'Birmingham'.
http://wn.com/Brummie -
Charles Kay Ogden
Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957) was an English linguist, philosopher, and writer. Described as a polymath but also an eccentric and outsider, he took part in many ventures related to literature, politics, the arts and philosophy, having a broad impact particularly as an editor, translator, and activist on behalf of a reformed version of the English language. He is typically defined as a linguistic psychologist, and is now mostly remembered as the inventor and propagator of Basic English.
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Danelaw
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (also known as the Danelagh; Old English: Dena lagu; ), is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to be geographical. The areas that comprised the Danelaw are in northern and eastern England. The origins of the Danelaw arose from the Viking expansion of the 9th century, although the term was not used to describe a geographic area until the 11th century. With the increase in population and productivity in Scandinavia, Viking warriors, having sought treasure and glory in nearby Britain, "proceeded to plough and support themselves", in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 876.
http://wn.com/Danelaw -
David Crystal
David Crystal OBE FLSW FBA (born 1941) is a linguist, academic and author.
http://wn.com/David_Crystal -
Geoffrey Chaucer
http://wn.com/Geoffrey_Chaucer -
Geoffrey K. Pullum
Geoffrey Keith "Geoff" Pullum (; born 1945 in Irvine, Scotland) is a British-American linguist specialising in the study of English. , he is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
http://wn.com/Geoffrey_K_Pullum -
George Orwell
http://wn.com/George_Orwell -
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic (also known as Common Germanic), spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic peoples moving south from northern Europe in the second century BC, to settle in northern central Europe.
http://wn.com/Germanic_languages -
Halfdan Ragnarsson
Halfdan Ragnarsson was a Viking chief and one of the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok with Aslaug. It has been suggested that Halfdan is the same person as Ragnar's son Hvitserk.
http://wn.com/Halfdan_Ragnarsson -
Hong Kong
Hong Kong () is one of two special administrative regions (SARs) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the other being Macau. Situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour. With a land mass of and a population of seven million people, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hong Kong's population is 95 percent ethnic Chinese and 5 percent from other groups. Hong Kong's Han Chinese majority originate mainly from the cities of Guangzhou and Taishan in the neighbouring Guangdong province.
http://wn.com/Hong_Kong -
Indigenous language
An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations. Indigenous languages may not be national languages, or may have fallen out of use, because of language deaths or linguicide caused by colonization, where the original language is replaced by that of the colonists.
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Jenny Cheshire
Jenny Cheshire is a British sociolinguist and professor at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research interests include language variaton and change, especially grammatical and discourse variation, spoken English syntax and narrative analysis. She has written widely on these topics for various publications.
http://wn.com/Jenny_Cheshire -
Joseph Bosworth
http://wn.com/Joseph_Bosworth -
Joseph M. Williams
Joseph M. Williams (18 August 1933, Cleveland, Ohio, - 22 February 2008, South Haven, Michigan) was a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.
http://wn.com/Joseph_M_Williams -
Jutes
http://wn.com/Jutes -
Jürgen Schmidhuber
http://wn.com/Jürgen_Schmidhuber -
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FRS FBA born 6 October 1939, is an English author, broadcaster and media personality who, aside from his many literary endeavours, is perhaps most recognised for his work on The South Bank Show.
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Mockney
In British English, Mockney (a portmanteau of "" and "Cockney") is an attempt to present oneself as Cockney with the intention of gaining popular credibility. A stereotypical Mockney comes from a middle or upper-middle class background in England's Home Counties.
http://wn.com/Mockney -
R. G. Collingwood
http://wn.com/R_G_Collingwood -
Saxons
The Saxons () were a confederation of Old Germanic tribes. Their modern-day descendants are generally considered ethnic Germans, Dutch or English. They are primarily found in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony-Anhalt, Westphalia, Drenthe, Overijssel and England (the state of Saxony is not inhabited by Saxon descendants, and was so-named because it came to be ruled by Saxon feudal dynasty).
http://wn.com/Saxons -
Victor H. Mair
Victor Henry Mair (born 1943) is a Philologist specializing in Sinitic and Indo-European languages, and holds the position of Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States. Among other accomplishments, Professor Mair has edited the standard Columbia History of Chinese Literature and the Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature.
http://wn.com/Victor_H_Mair -
Vilamovian language
http://wn.com/Vilamovian_language -
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
http://wn.com/William_Shakespeare
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The English Language In 24 Accents
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:14
- Published: 18 Sep 2010
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Check out my newest accent video www.youtube.com Anyway this video is me attempting to do 24 different accents from my own country and from other countries around the world. Hopefully I got most of them right but I may have made mistakes and I can do some better than others. However, I made this video for my friends because I promised them I would do an accent video. I mean no offence to anyone and please don't be upset if I have not included your specific accent or got it wrong. Please enable and read the annotations too, as they explain a few things. Also please note that I learned most of these accents randomly off of TV, movies and video games over the years and some can be very stereotypical. And yes, I am filming in the garden shed lol as its more quiet in there.
http://wn.com/The_English_Language_In_24_Accents
History of English (combined)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:21
- Published: 08 Nov 2011
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Free learning from The Open University www.open.ac.uk --- A look at the history of the English language. (this is a combination of all 10 parts of the series into one video) (all parts - combined) Playlist link - www.youtube.com --- Study 'English Language' at the Open University: www3.open.ac.uk Explore qualifications in Languages with the OU www3.open.ac.uk Explore qualifications in Arts and Humanities with the OU www3.open.ac.uk Study 'Worlds of English' with the OU www3.open.ac.uk ---
http://wn.com/History_of_English_combined
The English Language In 30 Accents (Animated)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:58
- Published: 06 Jul 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
An animated remake/extension of my last accent video that went viral back in late 2010 (sorry for the wait lol). This time I have added some new accents and my friend Chris (aka CmOrigins) has animated each one of them. He has been one of my good friends since secondary school and did a fantastic job with the animations in this video so I would appreciate it if you check out his YouTube channel www.youtube.com and subscribe to him. Anyway I understand that the accents may not all be perfect some may be quite bad (depending on your own perception of them) but they are just a bit of fun and I did my best with them. I learned most of them over the years randomly from TV, Movies, Videogames and real life experiences. As I always say and have repeatedly said in this video: These accents and (animated scenarios) are not meant to offend anyone and should not be taken seriously. I apologise for the all the accents I have missed out or done a terrible job on. CREDITS (as if anyone is going to bother reading them let alone the description lol) Written and produced by: Jake Wardle (Truseneye92) Voiced by: Jake Wardle (Obviously :P) Edited by: Jake Wardle Animations by: Chris Mendoza (CmOrigins) (Obviously! :P)
http://wn.com/The_English_Language_In_30_Accents_Animated
Lesson 5, Part 1 - Simple Past/ Past Progressive - Verb Tenses in English
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 13:11
- Published: 13 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Part 1 Topic: Forms and uses of the simple past Level: Intermediate and advanced This series is designed for upper level students. We will review how each verb tense is formed and used. We will be comparing and contrasting verb tenses as well. TEACHERS: Please visit my blog for related classroom activities. englishwithjennifer.wordpress.com englishwithjennifer.wordpress.com STUDENTS and TEACHERS: Please post comments and questions on my website. www.englishwithjennifer.com Music credit "Fender Bender" Artist: Erik Nugent Retrieved from www.nununugent.com
http://wn.com/Lesson_5,_Part_1_Simple_Past_Past_Progressive_Verb_Tenses_in_English
The Adventure of English - Birth of A Language - Ep 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 50:28
- Published: 28 Aug 2011
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Melvyn Bragg travels throughout Britain to explore the roots of the English language which evolved from a German dialect that arrived in the country in the fifth century and evolved into a language that is understood by more people around the world and explores its history that helped it to become what it is today. ©ITV
http://wn.com/The_Adventure_of_English_Birth_of_A_Language_Ep_1
The english language challenged by a 102 year old.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:55
- Published: 10 Jan 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
The english language challenged by a 102 year old.
http://wn.com/The_english_language_challenged_by_a_102_year_old
PSY - "GANGNAM STYLE" (강남스타일) PARODY - ENGLISH VERSION
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:32
- Published: 14 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Hot Dog Condom Style! The English Translation of Gangnam Style by PSY. GET THIS SONG ON iTUNES - bit.ly TWEET THIS - clicktotweet.com Get The Original Song - tinyurl.com BEAT REMADE BY - www.youtube.com SUBSCRIBE TO HIM Watch the Original video - www.youtube.com BECOME A FACEBOOK FAN - www.facebook.com FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER - www.twitter.com GOOGLE + ME - bit.ly 2nd CHANNEL - www.youtube.com Facebook Meon.fb.me "Gangnam Style" Parody Featuring Bart Baker - www.youtube.com Arika Sato - www.youtube.com PeeDeeFlo - www.youtube.com Tim DeLaGhetto - www.youtube.com Ricky Schucks - www.youtube.com "Gangnam Style" Parody - Directed by Bart Baker "Gangnam Style" Parody - Edited by Bart Baker "Gangnam Style" Parody - Written by Bart Baker "Gangnam Style" Parody - Produced by Ken Furer -twitter.com "Gangnam Style" Parody - Shot by Mike Bauman "Gangnam Style" Parody Sound Engineer - Bart Baker "Gangnam Style" Parody - Coordinated by Michael Surh "Gangnam Style" Parody - PA Morris Ellis Costume Design - Morgan Christanson - youtube.com Costume Design - Sulai Rajkirin - youtube.com
http://wn.com/PSY_GANGNAM_STYLE_강남스타일_PARODY_ENGLISH_VERSION
Wisin & Yandel - Something About You ft. Chris Brown, T-Pain
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:56
- Published: 28 Aug 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Music video by Wisin & Yandel performing Something About You. (C) 2012 Machete Music
http://wn.com/Wisin_Yandel_Something_About_You_ft_Chris_Brown,_T-Pain
06 U-KISS - STOP GIRL (ENG VER) (7TH MINI ALBUM DOWNLOAD LINK)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:38
- Published: 20 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
READ 1) Go to www.mediafire.com 2) Extract the file containing the mp3s 유키스(U-KISS) -- Stop Girl [7th Mini Album] Release Date: 2012.09.20 Genre: Dance Pop, Ballad Language: Korean Bit Rate: MP3-320kbps Track List: 01. Imma New Thang (Intro) 02. Stop Girl 03. Time To Go 04. Remember (Acoustic ver.) 05. Sexy Baby 06. Stop Girl (English ver.) 07. Stop Girl (inst.)
http://wn.com/06_U-KISS_STOP_GIRL_ENG_VER_7TH_MINI_ALBUM_DOWNLOAD_LINK
Midttrafik commercial: The Bus (UK version) [official]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:29
- Published: 14 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Riding the bus has never been cooler than in this new Midttrafik commercial by M2Film. Visit our website: www.m2film.dk
http://wn.com/Midttrafik_commercial_The_Bus_UK_version_official_
The Longest Words in the English Language
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:16
- Published: 06 Feb 2009
- Updated: 24 Sep 2012
Scary 'Mary Poppins' Recut Trailer, Honorificabilitudinitas, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, ablative, Antidisestablishmentarianism, Church of England, Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer, Martin Luther, floccinoccinihilipilification, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, The National Puzzlers' League, Titin Join us at Rocketboom.com for an ad free experience.
http://wn.com/The_Longest_Words_in_the_English_Language
Football Manager 2013 Video Blogs: Comparison (English version)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:41
- Published: 21 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
In the run-up to the launch of Football Manager 2013, Sports Interactive's Studio Director Miles Jacobson presents a series of video blogs detailing a number of the game's new and improved features. In this video Miles talks about the changes made to player and staff comparisons. www.footballmanager.com http www.twitter.com
http://wn.com/Football_Manager_2013_Video_Blogs_Comparison_English_version
32 Accents of the English Language
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:59
- Published: 31 Jul 2011
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
32 different accents of the English language. I just ad libbed as I went along. Some will be no doubt better than others but if you like the video then press like. Also, leave a comment, whether it be because you love it, hate it or just want to troll; I don't care, just leave a comment. You can subscribe too, I might put up more videos. Thanks for watching. If you want to start stalking me, follow me @MrDavidCallan
http://wn.com/32_Accents_of_the_English_Language
English Language Learning Tips #1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:02
- Published: 16 Feb 2012
- Updated: 24 Sep 2012
First in a series of cute animations from University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations. The series provides tips for people learning English, starting with this fun 'test your English' episode.
http://wn.com/English_Language_Learning_Tips_1
Tales of the Lane trailer - English version
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:06
- Published: 19 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
talesofthelane.com Tales of the Lane is the next tournament from the Kings of Europe Team : Chips et Noi ! Donate to the project going to www.mymajorcompany.com , and Fund the Fight between Top 10 European League of Legends Teams : CLG.eu, SK and Moscow5. Purchase HD Stream, T-shirts and Original Soundtrack of the tournament, and come and attend the Grand Finals in Paris at The Casino de Paris, on November 11th 2012, and write the Tales of the Lane with us :D! music by : www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/Tales_of_the_Lane_trailer_English_version
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance - Unboxing - English Version
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:06
- Published: 18 Jul 2012
- Updated: 15 Sep 2012
Got the game 2 days early. Will start the Playthrough later on today. Still wondering why the EU/UK didn't get a special edition. Would have been nice but oh wells.
http://wn.com/Kingdom_Hearts_3D_Dream_Drop_Distance_Unboxing_English_Version
English Speaking - Basic English Training Module Chapter 01
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:48
- Published: 10 Aug 2009
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
English Speaking Courses : www.letstalk.co.in Lets Talk Institute - for spoken English | Personality development | Business English in Mumbai
http://wn.com/English_Speaking_Basic_English_Training_Module_Chapter_01
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance - English Version - Part 9 - The Grid 1/3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 22:52
- Published: 23 Jul 2012
- Updated: 07 Sep 2012
Enemies are starting to annoy me.
http://wn.com/Kingdom_Hearts_3D_Dream_Drop_Distance_English_Version_Part_9_The_Grid_1_3
Football Manager 2013 Video Blogs: Transfers & Contracts 1: Loans & Scouting (English version)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:43
- Published: 24 Sep 2012
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
In the run-up to the launch of Football Manager 2013, Sports Interactive's Studio Director Miles Jacobson presents a series of video blogs detailing a number of the game's new and improved features. In the first of a two parts, Miles discusses the changes made to transfers and contracts in the new game. www.footballmanager.com http www.twitter.com
http://wn.com/Football_Manager_2013_Video_Blogs_Transfers_Contracts_1_Loans_Scouting_English_version
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance - English Version - Part 12 - Pranksters Paradise 1/3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 29:17
- Published: 26 Jul 2012
- Updated: 09 Sep 2012
An ok level.
http://wn.com/Kingdom_Hearts_3D_Dream_Drop_Distance_English_Version_Part_12_Pranksters_Paradise_1_3
2NE1 - CAN'T NOBODY (English Ver.) M/V
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:34
- Published: 07 Apr 2011
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
1ST ALBUM [TO ANYONE] ▶ NOW available on iTunes: bit.ly ▶ 2NE1 Products on eBay: stores.ebay.com ▶ Released at YG-eShop: bit.ly For More Information @ www.facebook.com twitter.com me2day.net www.yg-2ne1.com App Store goo.gl Google Play: goo.gl
http://wn.com/2NE1_CAN'T_NOBODY_English_Ver_M_V
Why This Kolaveri Di - English R&B; Remix
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:43
- Published: 10 Dec 2011
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Arjun - How Could You Do This To Me www.facebook.com www.twitter.com www.arjunofficial.com The Kolaveri craze has reached the UK and seeing as I'm part Tamil myself, I thought I should do a remix Check out the original version here: www.youtube.com Performed by Arjun Original song by Dhanush & Anirudh New arrangement/production by Arjun Video shot by Hasinth Pathirana
http://wn.com/Why_This_Kolaveri_Di_English_R&B;_Remix
IAMX - Bernadette Official Video - Extraordinary camera shift technique
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:11
- Published: 28 Jul 2011
- Updated: 25 Sep 2012
Download at www.iamx.eu First shift technique video using ten Canon 5d II. See behind the scenes: www.youtube.com Watch the German version here: www.youtube.com CREDITS: director: a nice idea every day ad: claire kurylowski dop: julia franken production: daniela höller unit manager: bastian seitz camera--assitant1: benjamin wistorf camera--assitant2: christoph hüttner dit: matthias hecht lighting: berta valin model: nicole roscher / seeds styling: stiina huhtanen make--up: carina wittmann www.iamx.eu www.aniceideaeveryday.com LYRICS: You and me in our playhouse Living in a veil We never need to go without Memories bring no joy or peace We are alone And all we need Tuning out of the poison Every waking day Intolerance to overcome Fortunes won by the boys with the guns We are alone Nowhere to run Bernadette You are my liberty I celebrate the day That you changed my history Life and death Will always lead you into love and regret But you have answers And I have the key For the door to Bernadette Winding down our emotions Family and friends Becoming ghosts to dream of and pass on Time will erase every face every name We are alone No-one to blame
http://wn.com/IAMX_Bernadette_Official_Video_Extraordinary_camera_shift_technique
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Creative Commons / Aloys5268![Keezell Hall, home of the university's English and Foreign Language departments. The school is nationally recognized for its academics. U.S. News & World Report has ranked JMU as the top public (3rd overall), masters-level university in the South for 16 consecutive years,[16][17] and among public colleges Forbes.](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556im_/http://cdn5.wn.com/pd/47/93/98b0fccbe8e3727aaecb29467745_small.jpg "Keezell Hall, home of the university's English and Foreign Language departments. The school is nationally recognized for its academics. U.S. News & World Report has ranked JMU as the top public (3rd overall), masters-level university in the South for 16 consecutive years,[16][17] and among public colleges Forbes.")
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Creative Commons / Massimo Catarinella![Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556im_/http://cdn5.wn.com/pd/be/84/93c888fa616eaa51783daa7a89bc_small.jpg "Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the")
Creative Commons / Nvvchar![Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556im_/http://cdn8.wn.com/pd/2c/89/ca029117b6fe9cd89905059714a4_small.jpg "Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the")
Creative Commons / Nvvchar
US Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Troy Latham
![Keezell Hall, home of the university's English and Foreign Language departments. The school is nationally recognized for its academics. U.S. News & World Report has ranked JMU as the top public (3rd overall), masters-level university in the South for 16 consecutive years,[16][17] and among public colleges Forbes.](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556/http://cdn9.wn.com/pd/47/93/98b0fccbe8e3727aaecb29467745_medium.jpg "Keezell Hall, home of the university's English and Foreign Language departments. The school is nationally recognized for its academics. U.S. News & World Report has ranked JMU as the top public (3rd overall), masters-level university in the South for 16 consecutive years,[16][17] and among public colleges Forbes.")
![Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556/http://cdn9.wn.com/pd/be/84/93c888fa616eaa51783daa7a89bc_medium.jpg "Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the")
![Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556/http://cdn2.wn.com/pd/2c/89/ca029117b6fe9cd89905059714a4_medium.jpg "Moth Ki Masjid is a mosque located in Delhi, and was built in 1505 by Wazir Miya Bhoiya, Prime Minister during the reign of Sultan Sikander Lodi (1517–26). It was a new type of mosque developed by the Lodi dynasty in the fourth city of the medieval Delhi of the Delhi Sultanate.[1][2][3] The name of the mosque literally translated into English language means ‘Lentil Mosque’ and this name tag ‘Lentil’ has an interesting legend. This mosque was considered a beautiful Dome (Gumbad) structure of the")
Photo: AP / Charles Dharapak
25 Sep 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling If language is a form and manner of thinking, then Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney just disqualified himself when he declared that a...
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25 Sep 2012
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![Stephen Colbert of the Comedy Channel´s "The Colbert Report" attends the "Night of Too Many Stars", a benefit for Autism Education, Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006 in New York. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin) nf2](http://web.archive.org./web/20120926015556im_/http://cdn6.wn.com/ph/img/c6/57/22020bc3b3d937c99056068769b5-grande.jpg "Stephen Colbert of the Comedy Channel´s "The Colbert Report" attends the "Night of Too Many Stars", a benefit for Autism Education, Sunday, Oct. 15, 2006 in New York. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin) nf2")
15 Sep 2012
By Rachel Zoll Associated Press Comments New York â In a rare public moment out of character, actor Stephen Colbert told students at the Jesuit Fordham University on Friday that he loves the Roman...
Photo: AP / Xinhua, Lan Hongguang
15 Sep 2012
Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping appeared in public today for the first time in about two weeks, visiting a Beijing university in what appeared to be an effort to dispel rumours of serious illness...
noodls
Telefilm Canada supports the production of six English-language feature-film projects for a total investment of $6.4 million Montreal, September 25, 2012 - Telefilm Canada is supporting the production of six English-language feature films through the Canada Feature Film Fund (CFFF). For the...(size: 6.8Kb)
Public Servants to Get English Language Training
25 Sep 2012
All Africa
[New Times]As part of...(size: 0.2Kb)
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History of the English language
19 Sep 2012
The Examiner
Related topics College & Career PlanningCourses and Workshopstherapyautism & children Advertisement Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;...(size: 7.8Kb)
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noodls
(Source: National Assembly for Wales) The WJEC has confirmed that as a result of the re-grading, 1202 students will now have their grades increased from a D to a C and 598 from a C grade to a B. The lowering of grade boundaries also meant there were some changes at other grades, resulting in an...(size: 2.4Kb)
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(Source: University of Windsor) For Tiffany Lu, the English language is more than a means of expression. It is a key to making more friends and getting better career opportunities. The first-year accounting major is one of 300 international students starting the English Language Improvement Program...(size: 3.0Kb)
| English | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation | /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/[1] | |||
| Spoken in | (see below) | |||
| Native speakers | ca. 380 million (2001)[2] L2: ≈ 250 million (2001)[2] to ≈ 1.8 billion (2004)[3] |
|||
| Language family | ||||
| Writing system | English alphabet (Latin script) | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | 54 countries 27 non-sovereign entities United Nations European Union Commonwealth of Nations CoE NATO NAFTA OAS OIC PIF UKUSA |
|||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | en | |||
| ISO 639-2 | eng | |||
| ISO 639-3 | eng | |||
| Linguasphere | 52-ABA | |||
Countries where English is an official or de facto official language, or national language, and is spoken fluently by the majority of the population
Countries where it is an official but not primary language
|
||||
|
||||
English is a West Germanic language spoken originally in England, and is now the most widely used language in the world.[4] It is spoken as a first language by a majority of the inhabitants of several nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish,[5] and the most commonly used as a second language; its total number of speakers – counting both native and non-native – exceeds those of any other language. English is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and United Nations, as well as in many world organisations.
English arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and what is now south-east Scotland, but was then under the control of the kingdom of Northumbria. Following the extensive 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,[6][7][8][9] it has been widely dispersed around the world, becoming the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions.[10][11]
Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related 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, and ultimately from their ancestral region of Angeln (in what is now Schleswig-Holstein).[12] 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.[13] 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 appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages[14][15] to what had then 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 assimilation of words from many other languages throughout history, modern English contains a very large vocabulary. Modern English has not only assimilated words from other European languages but also from all over the world, including words of Hindi and African origin. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, and slang terms.[16][17]
Contents |
Significance[link]
See also: English-speaking world and Anglosphere
Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[18][19] is the dominant language or in some instances even the required international language of communications, science, information technology, business, seafaring,[20] aviation,[21] entertainment, radio and diplomacy.[22] 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.[3] 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.[19] English replaced German as the dominant language of science Nobel Prize laureates during the second half of the 20th century.[23] English equalled and may have surpassed French as the dominant language of diplomacy during the last half of the 19th century.
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.[24]
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.[25] Conversely, the natural internal variety of English along with creoles and pidgins have the potential to produce new distinct languages from English over time.[26]
History[link]
Main article: History of the English language
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.[27] 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.[28]
One of these incoming Germanic tribes was the Angles,[29] who Bede believed to have relocated entirely to Britain.[30] The names 'England' (from Engla land[31] "Land of the Angles") and English (Old English Englisc[32]) 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.[33][34][35]
Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Great Britain[36] 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; Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is its 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[13] 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[37] 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[link]
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 Scots (spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland where Ulster Scots is spoken) 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.[38]
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 extensive lexical borrowing, the workings of the English language are resolutely Germanic, and English remains classified as a Germanic language due to its structure and grammar. Borrowed words get incorporated into a Germanic system of conjugation, declension, and syntax, and behave exactly as though they were native Germanic words from Old English (For example, the word reduce is borrowed from Latin redūcere; however, in English one says "I reduce - I reduced - I will reduce" rather than "redūcō - redūxī - redūcam"; likewise, we say: "John's life insurance company" (cf. Dutch "Johns levensverzekeringsmaatschappij" [= leven (life) + verzekering (insurance) + maatschappij (company)] rather than "the company of insurance life of John", cf. the French: la compagnie d'assurance-vie de John). 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 (apple - apples; cf. Frisian appel - appels; Dutch appel - appels; Afrikaans appel - appels), and the possessive markers -'s (Brad's hat; German Brads Hut; Danish Brads hat) and -s' . For verbs, these include the third person present ending -s/-es (e.g. he stands/he reaches ), the present participle ending -ing (cf. Dutch -ende; German -end(e)), the simple past tense and past participle ending -ed (Swedish -ade/-ad), and the formation of the English infinitive using to (e.g. "to drive"; cf. Old English tō drīfenne; Dutch te drijven; Low German to drieven; German zu treiben). Adverbs generally receive an -ly ending (cf. German -lich; Swedish -ligt), and adjectives and adverbs are inflected for the comparative and superlative using -er and -est (e.g. hard/harder/hardest; cf. Dutch hard/harder/hardst), or through a combination with more and most. These particles append freely to all English words regardless of origin (tsunamis; communicates; to buccaneer; during; calmer; 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).
Due to the Viking colonisation and influence of Old Norse upon Middle English, English syntax follows a pattern similar to that of North Germanic languages (Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, etc.) in contrast to other West Germanic languages, such as Dutch and German. This is especially evident in the order and placement of verbs. For example, English "I will never see you again" = Danish "Jeg vil aldrig se dig igen"; Icelandic "Ég mun aldrei sjá þig aftur", whereas in Dutch and German the main verb is placed at the end (e.g. Dutch "Ik zal je nooit weer zien"; German "Ich werde dich nie wieder sehen", literally, "I will you never again see"). This is also observable in perfect tense constructions, as in English "I have never seen anything in the square" = Danish "Jeg har aldrig set noget på torvet"; Icelandic "Ég hef aldrei séð neitt á torginu", where Dutch and German place the past participle at the end (e.g. Dutch "Ik heb nooit iets op het plein gezien"; German "Ich habe nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen", literally, "I have never anything in the square seen"). 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/fiel/gefallen/werden fallen, Norwegian faller/falt/falt or falne/vil or skal falle), 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), the treatment of nouns (English shoemaker, shoemaker's, shoemakers, shoemakers'; Dutch schoenmaker, schoenmakers, schoenmakers, schoenmakeren; Swedish skomakare, skomakares, skomakare, skomakares), 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).[citation needed]
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"; compare also North Frisian fridoem, Dutch vrijdom, Norwegian fridom, "freedom"). 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[link]
Pie chart showing the relative numbers of native English speakers in the major English-speaking countries of the world
US (57.3%)
UK (16.3%)
Canada (4.9%)
Australia (4.1%)
Nigeria (1.1%)
Ireland (1%)
South Africa (1%)
New Zealand (1%)
Other (13.3%)
Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.[39] English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[5][40] 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").[41][42]
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.[43][44] Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[45]
The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: the United States (215 million),[46] the United Kingdom (61 million),[47] Canada (18.2 million),[48] Australia (15.5 million),[49] Nigeria (4 million),[50] Ireland (3.8 million),[47] South Africa (3.7 million),[51] and New Zealand (3.6 million) in a 2006 Census.[52]
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.[53][54]
Countries in order of total speakers[link]
| Country | Total | Percent of population | First language | As an additional language | Population | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 251,388,301 | 96% | 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 | 125,344,736 | 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.[55][56] The figures include English speakers, but not English users.[57] | |
| Nigeria | 79,000,000 | 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 | 59,600,000 | 98% | 58,100,000 | 1,500,000 | 60,000,000 | Source: Crystal (2005), p. 109. | |
| Philippines | 48,800,000 | 58%[58] | 3,427,000[58] | 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.[58] | |
| Canada | 25,246,220 | 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 | 18,172,989 | 92% | 15,581,329 | 2,591,660 | 19,855,288 | Source: 2006 Census.[59] 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. | |
| Note: Total = First language + Other language; Percentage = Total / Population | |||||||
Countries where English is a major language[link]
Main article: List of countries where English is an official 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. Also there are countries where in a part of the territory English became a co-official language, e.g. Colombia's San Andrés y Providencia and Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast. This was a result of the influence of British colonisation in the area.
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),[60] 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.[61] Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments.[62] 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[link]
See also: English in computing, International English, World language, and English as a foreign or second language
Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language", the lingua franca of the modern era,[19] 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.[19] It is, by international treaty, the official language for aerial and maritime communications.[63] 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.[64] Among some non-English-speaking EU countries, a large percentage of the adult population claims to be able to 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.[65]
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[19] 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,[66] and to claims of linguistic imperialism.[67] English itself is now open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole.[67]
Dialects and varieties[link]
Main article: List of dialects of the English language
English has been subject to a large degree of regional dialect variation for many centuries. Its global spread now means that a large number of dialects and English-based creole languages and pidgins can be found all over the world.
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[68] and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources. However, following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from Standard English. Whether Scots is now a separate language or is better described as a dialect of English (i.e. part of Scottish English) is in dispute, although the UK government accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[69] 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.[70]
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.
Formal written English[link]
Main article: 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, and other national varieties of English.
Simplified and constructed varieties[link]
Artificially simplified versions of the language have been created that are easier for non-native speakers to read. Basic English is a constructed language with a restricted number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English.[citation needed] 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 impart some knowledge of English in a short time.
Ogden did not include any words in Basic English that could be said instead with a combination of other words already in the Basic English lexicon, 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.
Simplified English is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It employs a carefully limited and standardised[71] 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".
Other constructed varieties of English include:
- E-Prime excludes forms of the verb to be.
- English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.
- Manually Coded English consists of 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 starting from the 1980s to aid international cooperation and communication in specific areas.
- Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of only 1500 words.
Phonology[link]
Main article: English phonology
The phonology (sound system) of English differs between dialects. The descriptions below are most closely applicable to the standard varieties known as Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American. For information concerning a range of other varieties, see IPA chart for English dialects.
Consonants[link]
The table below shows the system of consonant phonemes that functions in most major varieties of English. The symbols are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and are also used in the pronunciation keys of many dictionaries. For more detailed information see English phonology: Consonants.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Labial- velar |
Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | ||||||
| Affricate | tʃ dʒ | ||||||||
| Fricative | f v | θ ð | s z | ʃ ʒ | (x) | h | |||
| Approximant | r | j | w | ||||||
| Lateral | l |
Where consonants are given in pairs (as with "p b"), the first is voiceless, the second is voiced. Most of the symbols represent the same sounds as they normally do when used as letters (see Writing system below), but /j/ represents the initial sound of yacht. The symbol /ʃ/ represents the sh sound, /ʒ/ the middle sound of vision, /tʃ/ the ch sound, /dʒ/ the sound of j in jump, /θ/ and /ð/ the th sounds in thing and this respectively, and /ŋ/ the ng sound in sing. The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is not a regular phoneme in most varieties of English, although it is used by some speakers in Scots/Gaelic words such as loch or in other loanwords such as Chanukah.
Some of the more significant variations in the pronunciation of consonants are these:
- In non-rhotic accents such as Received Pronunciation and Australian English, /r/ can only appear before a vowel (so there is no "r" sound in words like card). The actual pronunciation of /r/ varies between dialects; most common is the alveolar approximant [ɹ].
- In North American English and Australian English, /t/ and /d/ are flapped [ɾ] in many positions between vowels.[72] This means that word pairs such as latter and ladder may become homophones for speakers of these dialects.
- The th sounds /θ/ and /ð/ are sometimes pronounced as /f/ and /v/ in Cockney, and as dental plosives (contrasting with the usual alveolar plosives) in some Irish varieties. In African American Vernacular English, /ð/ has merged with dental /d/.
- A voiceless w, [ʍ], sometimes written /hw/, for the wh in words like when and which, is preserved in Scottish and Irish English and by some speakers elsewhere.
- The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ are frequently aspirated, particularly at the start of stressed syllables, but they are not aspirated after an initial /s/, as in spin.
Vowels[link]
The system of vowel phonemes and their pronunciation is subject to significant variation between dialects. The table below lists the vowels found in Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American, with examples of words in which they occur. The vowels are represented with symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet; those given for RP are in relatively standard use in British dictionaries and other publications. For more detailed information see English phonology: Vowels.
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Some points to note:
- For words which in RP have /ɒ/, most North American dialects have /ɑ/ (as in the example of box above) or /ɔ/ (as in cloth). However some North American varieties do not have the vowel /ɔ/ at all (except before /r/); see cot–caught merger.
- In General American and some other rhotic accents, the combination of vowel+/r/ is often realized as an r-colored vowel. For example, butter /ˈbʌtər/ is pronounced with an r-colored schwa, [ɚ]. Similarly nurse contains the r-colored vowel [ɝ].
- The vowel conventionally written /ʌ/ is actually pronounced more centrally, as [ɐ], in RP. In the northern half of England this vowel is replaced by /ʊ/ (so cut rhymes with put).
- In unstressed syllables there may or may not be a distinction between /ə/ (schwa) and /ɪ/ (/ɨ/). So for some speakers there is no difference between roses and Rosa's. For more information see Reduced vowels in English.
- The diphthongs /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ (/oʊ/) tend towards the monophthongal pronunciations [eː] and [oː] in some dialects, including Canadian, Scottish, Irish and Northern English.
- In parts of North America /aɪ/ is pronounced [ʌɪ] before voiceless consonants. This is particularly true in Canada, where also /aʊ/ is pronounced [ʌʊ] in this position. See Canadian raising.
- The sound /ʊə/ is coming to be replaced by /ɔː/ in many words; for example, sure is often pronounced like shore. See English-language vowel changes before historic r.
Stress, rhythm and intonation[link]
English is a strongly stressed language, in which stress is said to be phonemic, i.e. capable of distinguishing words (such as the noun increase, stressed on the first syllable, and the verb increase, stressed on the second syllable; see also Initial-stress-derived noun). In almost any word of more than one syllable there will be one syllable identified as taking the primary stress, and possibly another taking a secondary stress, as in civilization /ˌsɪvəlaɪˈzeɪʃn̩/, in which the first syllable carries secondary stress, the fourth syllable carries primary stress, and the other syllables are unstressed.[73]
Closely related to stress in English is the process of vowel reduction; for example, in the noun contract the first syllable is stressed and contains the vowel /ɒ/ (in RP), whereas in the verb contract the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to /ə/ (schwa).[74] The same process applies to certain common function words like of, which are pronounced with different vowels depending on whether or not they are stressed within the sentence. For more details, see Reduced vowels in English.
English also has strong prosodic stress – the placing of additional emphasis within a sentence on the words to which a speaker wishes to draw attention, and corresponding weaker pronunciation of less important words. As regards rhythm, English is classed as a stress-timed language – one in which there is a tendency for the time intervals between stressed syllables to become equal, with corresponding faster pronunciation of groups of unstressed syllables.
As concerns intonation, the pitch of the voice is used syntactically in English; for example, to convey surprise or irony, or to change a statement into a question. Most dialects of English use falling pitch for definite statements, and rising pitch to express uncertainty, as in questions (particularly yes-no questions). There is also a characteristic change of pitch on strongly stressed syllables, particularly on the "nuclear" (most strongly stressed) syllable in a sentence or intonation group. For more details see Intonation (linguistics): Intonation in English.
Grammar[link]
Main article: English 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[link]
The English vocabulary has changed considerably over the centuries.[75]
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 kná, 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 Germanic 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 harbour 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.[76] In Modern English, however, the roles of such synonyms have largely been replaced by equivalents taken from Latin, French, and Greek, as English has taken the position of a diminished reliance upon native elements and resources for the creation of new words and terminologies. 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.)
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, lavish, 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.
See also: sociolinguistics
Number of words in English[link]
The General Explanations at the beginning of the Oxford English Dictionary states:
The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.
The current FAQ for the OED further states:
How many words are there in the English language? There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word.[77]
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:
It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang (Supplement to the OED, 1933).[78]
The editors of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged include 475,000 main headwords, but in their preface they estimate the true number to be much higher.
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,[79] 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,[80] with differences in morphology and orthography making cross-linguistic definitions and word-counting difficult, and potentially giving very different results.[81] 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.[82]
In December 2010 a joint Harvard/Google study found the language to contain 1,022,000 words and to expand at the rate of 8,500 words per year.[83] The findings came from a computer analysis of 5,195,769 digitised books. Others have estimated a rate of growth of 25,000 words each year.[84]
Word origins[link]
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%[85] to more than 80%[86]) 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.[87]
| 1st 100 | 1st 1,000 | 2nd 1,000 | Subsequent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germanic | 97% | 57% | 39% | 36% |
| Italic | 3% | 36% | 51% | 51% |
| Hellenic | 0 | 4% | 4% | 7% |
| Others | 0 | 3% | 6% | 6% |
| Source: Nation 2001, p. 265 | ||||
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)[88] 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:[89]
- French (langue d'oïl): 41%
- "Native" English: 33%
- Latin: 15%
- Old Norse: 2%
- Dutch: 1%
- Other: 10%
Old Norse origins[link]
Main article: List of English words of Old Norse origin
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.[90] More recent Scandinavian imports include angstrom, fjord, geyser, kraken, litmus, nickel, ombudsman, saga, ski, slalom, smorgasbord, and tungsten.
French origins[link]
Main article: List of English words of French origin
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, role, pattern, joust, choice, 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 police, routine, machine, 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).
Dutch and Low German origins[link]
Main article: List of English words of Dutch origin
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[link]
Main articles: English alphabet and English orthography
Since around the 9th century, English has been written in the Latin script, which replaced Anglo-Saxon runes. The modern English alphabet contains 26 letters of the Latin script: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z (which also have majuscule, capital or uppercase forms: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z). Other symbols used in writing English include the ligatures, æ and œ (though these are uncommon). There is also some usage of diacritics, mainly in foreign loanwords (like the acute accent in café and exposé), and in the occasional use of a diaeresis to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately (as in naïve, Zoë). For more information see English words with diacritics.
The spelling system, or orthography, of English is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system; further complications have arisen through sound changes with which the orthography has not kept pace. This means that, compared with many other languages, English spelling is not a reliable indicator of pronunciation and vice versa (it is not, generally speaking, a phonemic orthography).
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.[91] Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic.[92] 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.[93] It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish.[94] English-speaking children have been found to take up to two years longer to learn to read than children in 12 other European countries.[95]
As regards the consonants, the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation is fairly regular. The letters b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z represent, respectively, the phonemes /b/, /d/, /f/, /h/, /dʒ/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /v/, /w/, /z/ (as tabulated in the Consonants section above). The letters c and g normally represent /k/ and /g/, but there is also a soft c pronounced /s/, and a soft g pronounced /dʒ/. Some sounds are represented by digraphs: ch for /tʃ/, sh for /ʃ/, th for /θ/ or /ð/, ng for /ŋ/ (also ph is pronounced /f/ in Greek-derived words). Doubled consonant letters (and the combination ck) are generally pronounced as single consonants, and qu and x are pronounced as the sequences /kw/ and /ks/. The letter y, when used as a consonant, represents /j/. However this set of rules is not applicable without exception; many words have silent consonants or other cases of irregular pronunciation.
With the vowels, however, correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are even more irregular. As can be seen under Vowels above, there are many more vowel phonemes in English than there are vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u, y). This means that diphthongs and other long vowels often need to be indicated by combinations of letters (like the oa in boat and the ay in stay), or using a silent e or similar device (as in note and cake). Even these devices are not used consistently, and consequently vowel pronunciation remains the main source of irregularity in English orthography.
See also[link]
 |
Book: English language |
| Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print. | |
- Changes to Old English vocabulary
- English for academic purposes
- English language in Europe
- Language Report
- Lists of English words
- Teaching English as a foreign language
- The Adventure of English (film)
- The Story of English
- European Society for the Study of English
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- ^ Population by mother tongue and age groups, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories–20% sample data, Census 2006, Statistics Canada.
- ^ Census Data from Australian Bureau of Statistics Main Language Spoken at Home. The figure is the number of people who only speak English at home.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Census in Brief, page 15 (Table 2.5), 2001 Census, Statistics South Africa
- ^ "About people, Language spoken". Statistics New Zealand. 2006 census. http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2006-census-data/classification-counts-tables/about-people/language-spoken.aspx. Retrieved 28 September 2009. [dead link] (links to Microsoft Excel files)
- ^ Subcontinent Raises Its Voice, Crystal, David; Guardian Weekly: Friday 19 November 2004.
- ^ Yong Zhao; Keith P. Campbell (1995). "English in China". World Englishes 14 (3): 377–390. Hong Kong contributes an additional 2.5 million speakers (1996 by-census).
- ^ Table C-17: Population by Bilingualism and trilingualism, 2001 Census of India [1]
- ^ Tropf, Herbert S. 2004. India and its Languages[dead link]. Siemens AG, Munich
- ^ For the distinction between "English Speakers" and "English Users", see: TESOL-India (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). Their article explains the difference between the 350 million number mentioned in a previous version of this Wikipedia article and a more plausible 90 million number:
Wikipedia's India estimate of 350 million includes two categories – "English Speakers" and "English Users". The distinction between the Speakers and Users is that Users only know how to read English words while Speakers know how to read English, understand spoken English as well as form their own sentences to converse in English. The distinction becomes clear when you consider the China numbers. China has over 200~350 million users that can read English words but, as anyone can see on the streets of China, only handful of million who are English speakers.
- ^ a b c "Ethnologue report for Philippines". Ethnologue.com. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=PH. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
- ^ "Australian Bureau of Statistics". Censusdata.abs.gov.au. http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/ABSNavigation/prenav/ViewData?action=404&documentproductno=0&documenttype=Details&order=1&tabname=Details&areacode=0&issue=2006&producttype=Census%20Tables&javascript=true&textversion=false&navmapdisplayed=true&breadcrumb=TLPD&&collection=Census&period=2006&productlabel=Proficiency%20in%20Spoken%20English/Language%20by%20Age%20-%20Time%20Series%20Statistics%20(1996,%202001,%202006%20Census%20Years)&producttype=Census%20Tables&method=Place%20of%20Usual%20Residence&topic=Cultural%20&. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
- ^ Nancy Morris (1995). Puerto Rico: Culture, Politics, and Identity. Praeger/Greenwood. p. 62. ISBN 0-275-95228-2. http://books.google.com/?id=vyQDYqz2kFsC&pg=RA1-PA62&lpg=RA1-PA62&dq=%22puerto+rico%22+official+language+1993.
- ^ Languages Spoken in the US[dead link], National Virtual Translation Center, 2006.
- ^ "U.S. English, Inc". Us-english.org. http://www.us-english.org/inc/official/states.asp. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
- ^ "International Maritime Organisation". Imo.org. http://www.imo.org/Safety/index.asp?topic_id=357. Retrieved 21 April 2010. [dead link]
- ^ 2006 survey by Eurobarometer, in the Official EU languages website
- ^ "Microsoft Word – SPECIAL NOTE Europeans and languagesEN 20050922.doc" (PDF). http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_237.en.pdf. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
- ^ David Crystal (2000) Language Death, Preface; viii, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
- ^ a b Jambor, Paul Z. 'English Language Imperialism: Points of View', Journal of English as an International Language, April 2007 – Volume 1, pages 103–123 (Accessed in 2007)
- ^ Aitken, A. J. and McArthur, T. Eds. (1979) Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh,Chambers. p.87
- ^ Second Report submitted by the United Kingdom pursuant to article 25, paragraph 1 of the framework convention for the protection of national minorities[dead link]
- ^ Peter Trudgill, The Dialects of England 2nd edition, page 125, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002
- ^ "Official page of ASD Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group (STEMG)". http://www.asd-ste100.org/.
- ^ Cox, Felicity (2006). "Australian English Pronunciation into the 21st century" (PDF). Prospect 21: 3–21. Archived from the original on 24 July 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070724185054/http://www.shlrc.mq.edu.au/~felicity/Papers/Prospect_Erratum_v1.pdf. Retrieved 22 July 2007.
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, see entry "civilisation"
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, see entry "contract"
- ^ For the processes and triggers of English vocabulary changes cf. English and General Historical Lexicology (by Joachim Grzega and Marion Schöner)
- ^ Baugh, Cable, A History of the English Language Fifth Edition, 50.
- ^ "How many words are there in the English language?". Oxford Dictionaries Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/howmanywords. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
- ^ It went on to clarify,
Hence we exclude all words that had become obsolete by 1150 [the end of the Old English era]... Dialectal words and forms which occur since 1500 are not admitted, except when they continue the history of the word or sense once in general use, illustrate the history of a word, or have themselves a certain literary currency.
- ^ Sheidlower, Jesse (10 April 2006). "How many words are there in English?". http://www.slate.com/id/2139611/. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
- ^ Liberman, Mark (1 June 2010). "Laden on word counting". Language Log. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2363. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
- ^ Liberman, Mark (28 December 2006). "An apology to our readers". Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003976.html. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
- ^ Pullum, Geoffrey K. (8 December 2006). "Vocabulary size and penis length". Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003871.html. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
- ^ English language has doubled in size in the last century, Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, The Telegraph, December 16, 2010
- ^ Kister, Ken. "Dictionaries defined." Library Journal, 6/15/92, Vol. 117 Issue 11, p43, 4p, 2bw
- ^ Nation 2001, p. 265
- ^ "Old English Online". Utexas.edu. 20 February 2009. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/engol-0-X.html. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
- ^ "From Arabic to English", www.america.gov
- ^ Finkenstaedt, Thomas; Dieter Wolff (1973). Ordered profusion; studies in dictionaries and the English lexicon. C. Winter. ISBN 3-533-02253-6.
- ^ "Joseph M. Willams, Origins of the English Language". Amazon.com. p. [page needed]. ASIN 0029344700.
- ^ "Are". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=are. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
- ^ Abbott, M. (2000). Identifying reliable generalisations for spelling words: The importance of multilevel analysis. The Elementary School Journal 101(2), 233–245.
- ^ Moats, L. M. (2001). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Company.
- ^ Diane McGuinness, Why Our Children Can't Read (New York: Touchstone, 1997) pp. 156–169
- ^ Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). "Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages". Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 3–29.
- ^ Professor Philip H K Seymour, University of Dundee, 2001. "Media centre". Spelling Society. http://www.spellingsociety.org/media/research.php. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
Bibliographic[link]
- Ammon, Ulrich (2006). Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-018418-4. http://books.google.com/?id=LMZm0w0k1c4C.
- Baugh, Albert C.; Thomas Cable (2002). A History of the English Language (5th ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28099-0.
- Bragg, Melvyn (2004). The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-710-0.
- Cercignani, Fausto, Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981.
- Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53032-6. http://books.google.com/?id=d6jPAKxTHRYC.
- Crystal, David (2003). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53033-4.
- Crystal, David (2004). The Stories of English. Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9752-4.
- Dunton-Downer, Leslie (2010). The English Is Coming!: How One Language Is Sweeping the World. New York: Touchstone Books. ISBN 978-1-4391-7665-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=NBK6FoHLgcEC&printsec=frontcover.
- Halliday, MAK (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0-340-55782-6.
- Hayford, Harrison; Howard P. Vincent (1954). Reader and Writer. Houghton Mifflin Company. "Internet Archive: Free Download: Reader And Writer". Archive.org. 10 March 2001. http://www.archive.org/details/readerandwriter030101mbp. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
- Howatt, Anthony (2004). A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-442185-6. http://books.google.com/?id=g2e7iw_F-ZcC.
- Kenyon, John Samuel and Knott, Thomas Albert, A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, G & C Merriam Company, Springfield, Mass, USA,1953.
- Mazrui, Alamin (1998). The Power of Babel: Language & Governance in the African Experience. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-85255-807-4. http://books.google.com/?id=6lQTPxdYx8kC.
- McArthur, T. (ed.) (1992). The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-214183-X.
- McCrum, Robert; Robert MacNeil, William Cran (1986). The Story of English (1st ed.). New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-80467-3.
- Nation, I.S.P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press. p. 477. ISBN 0-521-80498-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=sKqx8k8gYTkC.
- Plotkin, Vulf (2006). The Language System of English. BrownWalker Press. ISBN 1-58112-993-9.
- Robinson, Orrin (1992). Old English and Its Closest Relatives. Stanford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-8047-2221-8.
- Schneider, Edgar (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties Around the World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83140-7. http://books.google.com/?id=QIE6zGSd8okC.
- Wardhaugh, Ronald (2006). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-3559-X. http://books.google.com/?id=0J2VOzNYtKQC.
External links[link]
 |
Look up Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
 |
Wikiversity has learning materials about Topic:English Language |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: English language |
|
Look up English in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Media related to English language at Wikimedia Commons- 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
- Merriam-Webster's online dictionary
- Macquarie Dictionary Online
http://wn.com/English_language
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| Wisin & Yandel | |
|---|---|
| Enrique Iglesias and the duó performing at the Latin Grammy Awards. Enrique Iglesias and the duó performing at the Latin Grammy Awards. |
|
| Background information | |
| Born | December 19, 1978 (Wisin) January 14, 1977 (Yandel)[1] |
| Origin | Cayey, Puerto Rico |
| Genres | Reggaeton, hip hop, Latin pop |
| Years active | 1998 – present |
| Labels | WY, Machete |
| Associated acts | 50 Cent, Enrique Iglesias, Aventura, Akon, Jowell & Randy |
| Website | WisinYandelPR.com |
| Members | |
| Juan Luis Morera Luna (Wisin) Llandel Veguilla Malavé Salazar (Yandel)[1] |
|
Wisin & Yandel are a Puerto Rican reggaeton duo, consisting of Juan Luis Morera Luna (Wisin) and Llandel Veguilla Malavé (Yandel). They started their career in 1998 and have been together since, winning several awards during that time.[1]
Their biggest hits are "Rakata", "Llamé Pa' Verte (Bailando Sexy)", "Pam Pam", "Sexy Movimiento", "Pegao", "Síguelo", "Abusadora","Zun Zun Rompiendo Caderas","Gracias a Tí","Tu Olor". Wisin & Yandel have collaborated with internationally known artists such as R. Kelly on "Burn It Up", Paris Hilton on the reggaeton remix to her debut single "Stars Are Blind", Ja Rule on "Rakata (Remix)", Lenny Kravitz on "Breathe" (a promotional song for Absolut Vodka), Mexican Pop group RBD on "Lento (Yandel)", compatriots La Secta AllStar on "Llora Mi Corazón", Fat Joe on "Jangueo", Nelly Furtado on "Sexy Movimiento (Remix)", 50 Cent on "Mujeres In The Club", "No Dejemos Que Se Apague" and "Así Soy" along with G-Unit, Akon on "All Up 2 You" along with Aventura, Enrique Iglesias on "No Me Digas Que No" and "Gracias a Tí", Gloria Estefan on "No Llores (Remix)", T-Pain on "Imaginate", "No Dejemos Que Se Apague," and in a remix for "Reverse Cowgirl", and Jennifer Lopez on "Follow the Leader.
Contents |
Artistic careers[link]
On November 7, 2007 the duo published Wisin vs. Yandel: Los Extraterrestres. The album was received positively by the Puerto Rican media, with mainstream newspaper Primera Hora awarding it a score of 4 out of 5. Their style clearly differs from that of others and partially contains certain features of other music styles. It allows them to reach a large audience of any age and any skin color.[2] The publication focused their review on the fusion of styles found in the album, claiming that the production continued the "musical evolution" found in its predecessors.[2] Following the release of Los Extraterrestres the duo commenced an international promotional tour.[3] After organizing concerts throughout Latin America and Europe, Wisin & Yandel noted that they would like to expand their markets to Africa and Australia.[3] Wisin & Yandel participated in the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Viña del Mar Festival.[4] The tickets for the event sold out, which the duo described as an "real honor".[4] On June 2, 2008, Wisin and Yandel began a tour to promote Wisin vs. Yandel: Los Extraterrestres, Otra Dimensión, visiting several radio stations in Puerto Rico.[5]
The duo made a guest appearance in an album titled "Caribbean Connection" released on June 24, 2008. The production included participation by other Latin American artists including Daddy Yankee, Don Omar and Hector "El Father" along Jamaican musicians including Inner Circle, Bounty Killer, Elephant Man and Wayne Wonder.[6] Wisin & Yandel took part in the 2008 edition of New York City's Puerto Rican Day Parade, organized on June 8, 2008.[7] In the event they received a warm reception.[7] After arriving from New York the duo traveled to Puerto Rico, wherе they filmed a commercial as part of a campaign against drunken driving.[7] On June 12, 2008, they would travel to Los Angeles, where they would attend the BMI Latin Awards, in which they received a nomination for "Writer of the Year".[7] Wisin & Yandel won four awards in the Premios Juventud 2008 ceremony.[8] On July 19, 2008, the duo made a presentation before a sold-out crowd in Venezuela.[9] The duet were selected to perform in "KQ Live Concert" on September 27, 2008, organized by KQ 105 FM, the event included several renowned artists from Puerto Rico and other Latin American locations.[10] On August 12, 2008, the duo received a recognition by Cayey's mayor,Rolando Ortiz Velázquez. In the activity, they were named "Ambassadors from Cayey to the world", in a patronal celebration that was dedicated to the duo.[11] On April 24, 2009, Wisin & Yandel received the Latin Rhythm Album of the Year, Duo Or Group Latin Billboard Music Award for Los Extraterresres.[12] Besides this recognition, the duo also received nominations for Ahora Es and Síguelo in the Tropical Airplay Song of the Year, Duo Or Group and Latin Rhythm Airplay Song of the Year, Duo Or Group categories. On October 15, 2009, Wisin & Yandel won the Premio MTV Latinoamérica for "Artist of the Year" and "Video of the Year".[13]
On April 30, 2012, the duo announced that they will tour with Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias and American artist Jennifer Lopez.
Artistic appearances[link]
Wisin & Yandel have collaborated with many artists in the American music industry in genres such as hip hop, pop, latin pop, R&B, and rock with artists such as Ricky Martin, Aventura, David Bisbal, Gloria Estefan, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Nelly Furtado, Fat Joe, R. Kelly, Eve, G-Unit, Enrique Iglesias, Jennifer Lopez, T-Pain, Akon, 50 Cent, Ivy Queen and Sean Kingston.
Los Lideres clothing line[link]
In November 2011, Wisin & Yandel launched the "Los Lideres" clothing line in association with Marc Ecko, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Marc Eckō Enterprises.[14] The collection is inspired by Wisin & Yandel's personal style and high-energy performances. The collection includes a selection of denim jeans, vests, military inspired jackets, t-shirts, headphones and jewelry.[14]
Personal life[link]
Wisin married Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez on Saturday, July 26, 2008 at Jájome Terrace restaurant in Cayey, Puerto Rico.[1] The couple have two children, their daughter Yelena and son Dylan.[1]
Discography[link]
Main articles: Wisin & Yandel discography and Wisin & Yandel videography
- Scroto albums
- 2002: De Otra Manera
- 2003: Mi vida... My Life
- 2005: Pa'l Mundo
- 2006: Los Vaqueros
- 2007: Los Extraterrestres
- 2009: La Revolucion
- 2011: Los Vaqueros: El Regreso
- 2012: Los Lideres
References[link]
- ^ a b c d e Wisin & Yandel Biography
- ^ a b "Así" (in Spanish). CD Rankea'o: Otro acierto de Wisin & Yandel. Puerto Rico: Primera Hora. 2007-11-24. p. 44.
- ^ a b Leyra E. González Pérez (2008-06-08). "Flash" (in Spanish). Sin pausa. Puerto Rico.
- ^ a b Cristina Fernández and Patricia Vargas (2008-02-24). "Flash!" (in Spanish). Viña del Mar: Entre llegadas y cumpleaños. Puerto Rico: El Nuevo Día. p. 92.
- ^ Frances Tirado (2008-06-02). "Wisin & Yandel sin perder el contacto" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. http://www.primerahora.com/noticia/musica/espectaculosasi/wisin_&_yandel_sin_perder_el_contacto/196278. Retrieved 2008-06-04. [dead link]
- ^ "Se juntan los "mostros"" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. 2008-06-03. http://www.primerahora.com/noticia/musica/espectaculos_asi/se_juntan_los_mostros/196370. Retrieved 2008-06-04. [dead link]
- ^ a b c d Leyra E. González Pérez (2008-06-09). "Flash" (in Spanish). Tú eres mío. Puerto Rico: El Nuevo Día.
- ^ "Lucen los boricuas en Premios Juventud" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. 2008-07-19. http://www.primerahora.com/noticia/musica/espectaculos_asi/lucen_los_boricuas_en_premios_juventud/212145. Retrieved 2008-07-22. [dead link]
- ^ "Llenan con su "flow" a Venezuela" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. 2008-07-21. http://www.primerahora.com/noticia/musica/espectaculos_asi/llenan_con_su_flow_a_venezuela/212339. Retrieved 2008-07-22. [dead link]
- ^ Aixa Sepúlveda Morales (2008-08-05). "Mezcla de géneros en una sola tarima" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. http://www.primerahora.com/noticia/musica/espectaculos_asi/mezcla_de_generos_en_una_sola_tarima/216805. Retrieved 2008-08-11. [dead link]
- ^ ""Embajadores" de los cayeyanos Wisin & Yandel" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. 2008-08-15. http://www.primerahora.com/noticia/musica/espectaculos_asi/embajadores_de_los_cayeyanos_wisin_&_yandel/219817. Retrieved 2008-08-17. [dead link]
- ^ "Brillan los boricuas" (in Spanish). El Vocero. 2009-04-25. http://vocero.com/noticia-20178-brillan_los_boricuas.html. Retrieved 2009-04-25. [dead link]
- ^ "Residente le tira con to' a Fortuño" (in Spanish). Primera Hora. 2009-10-15. http://www.primerahora.com/diario/noticia/tv/espectaculosasi/residente_le_tira_con_to_a_fortuno/338199. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
- ^ a b Marc Ecko and Wisin & Yandel Debut "Los Lideres" Men's Clothing
External links[link]
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- For other uses of the title The Grid, see Grid (disambiguation).
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2010) |
| The Grid | |
|---|---|
| Origin | England |
| Genres | House Techno Ambient house |
| Years active | 1988–1996 2003–present |
| Labels | East West, Virgin, Deconstruction, Some Bizzare |
| Associated acts | Soft Cell, Chris Braide |
| Members | |
| Richard Norris David Ball |
|
| Past members | |
| Sacha Rebecca Souter (singer/vocals) | |
The Grid are an English electronic dance group, consisting of Richard Norris and David Ball (formerly of Soft Cell),[1] with guest contributions from other musicians. They are best known for the hits "Swamp Thing", "Crystal Clear", "Rollercoaster", "Floatation", and "Cybernetic" (with Robert Fripp and Phil Manzanera).
Contents |
Band members[link]
- Richard Norris (born 23 June 1965, London) - keyboards
- David Ball (born 3 May 1959, Blackpool, Lancashire) - keyboards
- Sacha Rebecca Souter (musician) (born 26 November 1963, Cockerton, County Durham) - Vocals
Biography[link]
The Grid formed in 1988 and had their first success with debut single, "Floatation", released on East West Records in 1990. They went on to release a string of ten UK hit singles and four albums,[1] and toured the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia. The group's 1994 album Evolver reached #14 in the UK Albums Chart.[1] The lead single from this album, "Swamp Thing", featuring elaborate banjo lines played by Roger Dinsdale. "Swamp Thing" proved to be a commercial success in the UK, Europe and Australia, reaching #3 in the UK[1] and Australia and selling a total of one million copies.[citation needed]
In 1996, Norris and Ball agreed to a hiatus period in order pursue individual music interests. Norris formed the Droyds, which went on to remix tracks by musicians including Armand Van Helden and Siobhan Fahey, and wrote the official biography of Paul Oakenfold (published in 2007): Ball reformed Soft Cell with Marc Almond, and also wrote music scores for films.[citation needed] Norris has since formed the psychedelic duo, Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, with DJ Erol Alkan, and has released a number of solo records and remixes under the name The Time and Space Machine.
The duo reunited in 2005, initially playing two gigs under the name GDM with female singer Misty Woods, before writing and recording new material as the Grid. A single, "Put Your Hands Together", was released in 2007 and an album, Doppelgänger, followed in 2008. Both were released on the Some Bizzare label. The album featured vocals by the British musician, Chris Braide.
Discography[link]
Albums[link]
| Year | Album | UK Albums Chart[1] | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Electric Head | - | East West Records |
| 1992 | 456 | - | Virgin Records |
| 1994 | Evolver [2] | 14 | Deconstruction Records |
| 1995 | Music for Dancing | 67 | Deconstruction Records |
| 2008 | Doppelgänger | - | Some Bizzare Records |
Singles[link]
| Year | Single | UK Singles Chart[1] |
|---|---|---|
| 1989 | "On the Grid" (promo only) | - |
| 1989 | "Intergalactica" (promo only) | - |
| 1990 | "Floatation" | 60 |
| 1990 | "A Beat Called Love" | 64 |
| 1990 | "Origins of Dance" | - |
| 1991 | "Boom!" | - |
| 1992 | "Figure of 8" | 50 |
| 1992 | "Heartbeat" | 72 |
| 1993 | "Crystal Clear" | 27 |
| 1993 | "Texas Cowboys" | 21 |
| 1993 | "Swamp Thing" | 3 |
| 1994 | "Rollercoaster" | 19 |
| 1994 | "Texas Cowboys" (re-issue) | 17 |
| 1995 | "Diablo" | 32 |
| 2006 | "Slammer" / "Slinker" (promo only) | - |
| 2007 | "Put Your Hands Together" | - |
References[link]
- ^ a b c d e f Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 236. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
- ^ Chartstats.com
External links[link]
http://wn.com/The_Grid
Related pages:
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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grid
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
