Talk:English language/Archive 27

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Archive 27

Semi-protected edit request on 30 January 2020

On the English person pronouns chart the 3rd person singular of the dependent progressive is hers not her JoeMama1022 (talk) 03:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

The chart appears to be correct as is. See English pronouns, Possessive determiner#Forms. Outriggr (talk) 06:16, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 January 2020

Please add Category:Languages of Bangladesh]]

 Done - thanks for the request. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 10:15, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

"Historically?

Why does the infobox say that English was "historically" spoken in the British Isles? It is still spoken there. --2605:A000:1329:4826:14E8:F1E7:7884:D854 (talk) 01:03, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

In the following line it says worldwide. That includes the British Isles. "Historically" means that before the mass migrations to the New World, the English speech area was restricted to the British Isles. –Austronesier (talk) 10:34, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Not in English it doesn't. It implies it was spoken there in the past but not any longer. 'Initially' is a better choice of word here. Wiki-Ed (talk) 23:39, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

"Spoken English" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Spoken English. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:47, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

"Langue angloise" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Langue angloise. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 18:18, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

"Langue anglaise" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Langue anglaise. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 18:20, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

"Future of English" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Future of English. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:50, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

"Ænglish" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Ænglish. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:36, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 March 2020

i would like to update this. Kalee Mehra (talk) 16:50, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

 Not done. It's not clear what changes you want to make. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:06, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

"Most verbs have six inflectional forms."

I really don't think that's true. Most English verbs have 4 distinct inflectional forms (e.g. walk, walks, walked, walking), strong irregulars can have 5 distinct forms (e.g. see, sees, saw, seen, seeing), weak irregulars can have 3 (cut, cuts, cutting), paired modals have 2 (can, could; may, might; etc), unpaired modals have 1 (must), while the super-irregular verb "to be" has 8 (be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being). I strongly doubt that any modern English verb has exactly 6 inflectionally-distinct forms within the same paradigm (i.e. excluding variant forms which compete with each other for the same inflectional slot), much less "most" of them... AnonMoos (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Writing systems

Nothing at Hebraization of English gives any indication of how prevalent this is. My guess is that it's very uncommon - and even then, of far more interest to Hebrew than English speakers. - Snori (talk) 05:37, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

First few words

Should we begin this article with "English" or "The English language"? Bernspeed (talk) 16:11, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

"The English language is a West Germanic language" would be redundant. - BilCat (talk) 16:56, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Map

The map is wrong. English is not an official language in Malaysia. It is the de facto official language among the economic sector but it has no official status, and the Malaysian Constitution only recognises Malay as the only official language of the country. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.86.157.101 (talk) 05:58, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

"Ænglish" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Ænglish. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 May 4#Ænglish until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumyabrata ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:50, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

"Englische Sprache" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Englische Sprache. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 May 15#Englische Sprache until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. TheAwesomeHwyh 20:24, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 October 2020

Change - "It is estimated that there are over 2 billion speakers of English." To read - "It is estimated that, as of 2005, there are over 2 billion speakers of English." The source is now 15 years old. JamesWoods87 (talk) 11:13, 10 October 2020 (UTC) JamesWoods87 (talk) 11:13, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

 Done ɴᴋᴏɴ21 ❯❯❯ talk 16:17, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

References

Number of Synonyms

In the opening on the Vocabulary section, the article makes the claim that English contains more synonyms than any other language, but the article cited (Jambor 2007) makes no such claim and provides no such data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qi Chin (talk • contribs) 11:17, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 January 2021

Per MOS:ORDER, move {{good article}} from before the lead section to the end matter after {{authority control}}, but prior to categories. – 108.56.139.120 (talk) 23:32, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done Terasail^[✉] 00:23, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Example audio files

Having the example audio files for accents is quite nice! Is it possible we could get one for Singaporean English and Philippine English? Those sections stand out for not having anything. Also, we should find a better file for Australia if we can (someone notable, and better audio quality). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:18, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

King James Bible

“Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.“

The bit about the King James Bible doesn’t seem to be supported by the citation, unless I'm missing something. UnidentifiedHuman 07:36, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Vocabulary?

Hi, isn't the claim that "English is a rich language in terms of vocabulary" not so much wrong as not even wrong, i.e. meaningless? One might as well say that "English has a vocabulary".
I tried to look up the claim in the given ref (130, Jambor 2007, "English Language Imperialism ..."), but couldn't find the claim there, nor any use of terms like "vocabulary" or "synonym" in the sense of the claim in the article. Probably looked in the wrong place or wrong way, but ... the claim could possibly be unsourced.
Anyway; a lot of people confuse the number of words in any language with the number of them in dictionaries; yet such numbers are the sum of factors like time, money and scholarship - but not vocabulary.
Here's an article on some researchers cataloguing German words: https://www.welt.de/kultur/article167820246/Es-gibt-viel-mehr-deutsche-Woerter-als-wir-wussten.html .
Back in 2018, the count stood at ca. 23 million words actually used, and that was excluding i.e. the ca. 20 milllion terms for chemical compounds. But this is not to say that German has more words than English or any other language, merely that counting words is futile, like counting numbers to see which country has the highest number. T 84.208.86.134 (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

The Map

It appears Malta is missing as a country where English is the official but not majority languages. Thanks! SirPenguinMay (talk) 01:24, 2 April 2021 (UTC) <https://legislation.mt/eli/const/eng/pdf>

Semi-protected edit request on 2 May 2021

Saint Lucia should be blue in the first photo 69.80.22.185 (talk) 18:55, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

 Already done If you are referring to File:English language distribution.svg then from what I can see, it looks to be blue. (Although it is hard to tell which circle represents which specific area in the Caribbean). If this does need changing however it is an image which would need to be reuploaded at c:File:English language distribution.svg. Terasail^[✉] 21:25, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 July 2021 - To add the Scots language to the most closely related languages of English.

Change "English is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon" to "English is most closely related to Scots, Frisian, and Low Saxon" Blinharry (talk) 16:10, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:18, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Reliable sources:

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/sco https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/what-is-scots/

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. It's relation to Scots is covered in the article, but I don't believe it belongs in the lead, especially as Scots developed from old and middle english. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:38, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Number of Native English users

The number of 1st-language english speakers really needs to be updated now, and from time to time. the numbers have of course grown since 2006, it is well above 400 million. . by the last count I can find online, is around 520,000,000 people. I am not sure how to update that particular part of the page, the box at the top right of page, will someone please do it? Here is a link to show a much more recent count- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the-worlds-languages-in-7-maps-and-charts/ Meat Eating Orchid (talk) 09:30, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

alright bro so how about you update it instead of asking other people to do it man — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeaceLoverStephenTrue1111 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Yo brah, so how 'bout ya read what 'e rote more carephly? FillsHerTease (talk) 08:27, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

User edit-warring to remove singular they and derivatives from pronoun table

User:Local hero has been repeatedly removing singular they/them/their/theirs/themself/themselves from the pronoun table (example), claiming that they need to go because they aren't sourced in the table (despite the fact that the same is true for all the other pronouns in the table, and that this is a textbook example of the "General common knowledge" exception in WP:When to cite#When a source or citation may not be needed). Could someone please help me deal with them? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 20:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

These were added to the box by you. I reverted your edit because no sources were provided, nor was any explanation. This is certainly not general common knowledge as someone who was educated in an English-speaking country. Writing something like "they is" would certainly have been marked wrong in my English classes. So, again I request sources, or a consensus here if we proceed differently than the stable version of the article. --Local hero ^talk 21:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

No sourcing is needed for the fact that the usage exists, per Common Knowledge (Houston is normally warmer than Minneapolis in January...). However, plural forms to signify singulars is a marked usage -- has acquired more intensive marking lately -- and requires elaboration of that fact, of the reasons for the usage and its recent politicized upsurge, of the anomaly of singular referent (semantically 's/he'), but plural 3rd-person verb. Sources for the basics of the motivations for the usage are needed. -- Common sense, folks. Basic Applied Common Sense. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:44, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

"English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years."

The unfortunate limitless "more than" aside, what is "English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years" intended to mean? A reader can guess, but shouldn't have to. Why select 1400? And a literalist can legitimately claim that yes, as an Indo-European language, English has most definitely developed over the course of far more than 1,400 years. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 23:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Why stop reading with that sentence? "The earliest forms of English, a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century..." pretty much explains it. Historians disagree on exactly when Old English as we know it began to develop, hence the vague "more than 1,400 years". Before that period, it wasn't Old English, even to a literalist such as myself. BilCat (talk) 00:27, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Editors owe it to readers to be as clear and accurate as possible. You actually make the point well. Makes much more sense to delete the lead sentence, which is nonsensical as it stands, and just begin with actual information, i.e. the second sentence. True that the text is still left with a possible snare for the ingenuous in "earliest forms of English" without further elaboration, but an alert reader can easily grasp that the lects in question are West Germanic. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 06:59, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I disagree that it is nonsensical. You haven't made that case yet. This isn't Simple English Wikipedia, and we don't spoon-feed our readers. This paragraph summarizes the History section, including the first line. The further elaboration is in the History section, not the lead. BilCat (talk) 07:15, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh my. First, re "we don't spoon-feed our readers". Well, actually we must and we do. That's the gig. For the text to be successful, it has to be comprehensible to a general readership, a huge spread of the bell curve -- for the matter at hand very much including those with no experience whatsoever in historical linguistics, language evolution, etc. Producing clear and accurate text for a topic such as language is challenging in ways that producing text for, e.g. quantum theory, is not: our Aunt Molly brings no baggage to her brave attempt to make sense of quantum theory (other than "It's hard to understand."), but she and everyone use language constantly and come to the topic with all sorts of untenable preconceived notions that at the very least should not be encouraged (e.g. "Latin died"). As for "You haven't made that case yet", the case is made by the text itself. An undergraduate term paper beginning "English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years" would be off to an unfortunate start, not only for the red flag of unqualified "more than" stretching into infinity. A friendly "Would you like to reconsider that first sentence before I grade this?" would be a kind way for an instructor to offer a normally conscientious student the opportunity to rescue him/herself. If the student had been attentive during the term, s/he would likely identify the "problem(s)" immediately, and be glad to execute appropriate repairs on the spot. (I suppose I expected similar here. If so, It appears I was wrong.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:17, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

What is your proposed improvement? _signed, Willondon (talk) 21:44, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

As stated above: remove the first sentence of the paragraph. A slightly more ambitious repair would be re-writing the first sentence to state clearly whatever it was originally intended to mean, assuming that the resulting text is factual, and clear enough not to leave room for misunderstanding. Might not be easy to do that and also keep it succinct, though. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, I could remove the first sentence of the paragraph for you, if you'd like. Anything more ambitious, I would leave to you. _signed, Willondon (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Therein the rub. Anyone hoping to repair the first sentence must first decipher what it was intended to mean. So far no attempts to do that have come forth. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

It seems the only unsucessful attempts to decipher its meaning to have come forth are yours. _signed, Willondon (talk) 16:48, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Actually, that's unknown. No one has yet ventured to offer an explanation of its intended meaning. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:59, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about the attempts to have come forth. Of the two that have come forth, yours is the only one that was apparently unsuccessful. Of the attempts that haven't come forth, I assume most were successful and thus went unremarked. Or perhaps some were unsuccessful, and the reader was too embarrassed to comment. _signed, Willondon (talk) 21:17, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

"I thought we were talking about the attempts to have come forth." No attempts have come forth. Perhaps it's time to channel Graham Chapman as The Colonel -- "I’ve noticed a tendency for this programme to get rather silly" -- and leave unsuspecting readers free to interpret "English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years" as they please. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:50, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

We can be more specific, but again, I don't see the need to, hypothetical prescriptive-grammar college professors not withstanding. However, I will abide by consensus. BilCat (talk) 22:22, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing to do with grammar, prescriptive or descriptive. Accuracy and clarity are the issues. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

From what you've been saying, I think you mean precision, not accuracy. _signed, Willondon (talk) 00:20, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Accuracy in the first instance; precision can be worked in if it's available. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure this required 1068 words of debate. The simplest solution is to remove that first line because the second line of the paragraph explains the same point precisely. Or accurately at least. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:25, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Well done. I've added one little tweak for clarity. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:36, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 May 2022

Change In contrast to many other Germanic languages there is no major differences between word order in main and subordinate clauses.[211]

To In contrast to many other Germanic languages there are no major differences between word order in main and subordinate clauses.[211] 51.6.97.143 (talk) 11:35, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

 Done 💜  melecie  talk - 11:43, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

English is widely spoken in Europe - the map needs an update.

124.169.133.90 (talk) 08:24, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

The map shows only countries where English is either official or a major first language. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:24, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Non-Germanic Influence in English

"English is genealogically West Germanic, closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages; however its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of French (about 29% of modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%),"

I don't get it, aren't Low Saxon and Frisian (as well as all other surviving modern West Germanic) languages also distinctively influenced by French and Latin? I know modern German and Dutch, for sure, are heavily influenced by French and Latin and you can quite regularly see loanwords from these languages in these written languages. Also why are we still quoting this silly 29/29% figure for loanwords when that study was compiled in such a ridiculous way and included so many technical and rare synonyms that are rarely, if ever, used by the average English-speaker? Now it might not be quite AS heavy as in English, but Dutch and German certainly aren't THAT far off in terms of Latin and French influence. 2.99.93.88 (talk) 02:39, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Please provide reliable published sources that can be consulted for discussion, otherwise there's really nothing to be discussed here in way of improving the article. BilCat (talk) 04:46, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

The thing is most other language articles seem to be using Swadesh lists in order to measure their word origins. If you did this with English, of course, you have a Germanic language with a significant minority of Latin loanwords (much like German or Dutch with around 25% foreign loanwords, usually from Latin or largely Latin languages like French, it might be around 30-35% in English)

Because of course all Swadesh lists do is take a set amount of the most commonly used words (usually around 1000) in languages and trace their origins.

This article seems to be citing an amateur study from decades ago where a guy basically went through thousands of business letters (which would be more formal and corporate anyway, and contain far more French and Latin synonyms and loanwords, as would formal German and Dutch business letters) and tabulated the words people used and traced their origins?

How is that a reliable source? That's not how linguists assess vocabulary at all. 2.99.93.88 (talk) 16:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

This "study" also doesn't seem to have distinguished between French words that come from Frankish (and ultimately Proto-Germanic), and French words which come from Latin. Around 30% of Old French vocabulary was of Frankish origin, and likely slightly higher still was the Germanic influence in Norman Old French) even modern French is still around 15% Frankish in origin (despite attempts to purify it of Frankish influence).

Many of the most commonly used French loanwords in English actually have a Germanic origin through Frankish (flag, banner, abandon, merchant, banner, standard, forest, common etc. etc. etc.)

Having said that, I don't know if it takes into account words from Old English that were of Latin origin either (Old English was around 25% Latin loanwords itself).

I feel like the article could elaborate more on this complex nature of language borrowing in European languages, since there is a common, erroneous perception that English is not a Germanic language due to many loanwords from other languages. 2.99.93.88 (talk) 16:16, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Shouldn't be too difficult to add a bit of text that relaxes the hold that lexicon has on people who don't really understand how language works. Direct attention to structural components that actually characterize the language type -- morphology, syntax. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 03:39, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the sentence is okay (maybe we could change the percentages to something more vague like "almost a third" or "over a quarter" or "between a third and a quarter"). It describes the situation perfectly well, is clear that the French and Latin influence is in the number of vocabulary words, saying nothing of frequency of use, and when we get down to it, the discussion above is confusing West Germanic and Germanic. That is a problem because English did derive from West Germanic but many of those most frequent Germanic words in the language now come from Norse influence, which is North Germanic.

The one change I would like is to change "closest" back to "closely". I tried that change before, but it was changed back. I understand why we want to say English is closest to Frisian, but the concept of closest language is all so debatable. In a summary in the lead, I think it is enough that we single out Frisian and Low Saxon as the closely related West Germanic languages. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:07, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Cumbersome Lead

The lead is showing signs of bloat as it keeps getting small additions. I am going to make some bold edits to the first paragraph now, but pre-empting queries as to why by opening this talk section.

1. I am removing lead discussion about where the Angles came from (too much detail).
2. Removing the bit about England being named for the area they migrated too as that is not quite right and needs a lot of unpacking (but consider, at least , that the Scottish lowlands also saw such migration).
3. The bit about closest languages is a fraught and debatable topic. I am avoiding it with new wording. Scots is English too, in the Old English period at least.

I may prune other parts soon (will see how this one goes first). Something I noticed in doing the edit is inconsistent referencing style. An editor has been inserting shorter footnotes (sfn) into the document that has not used these in the past. Do we have a view on the best reference style going forward? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Not sfn, certainly. Cite-bandits should be strongly discouraged. Johnbod (talk) 14:01, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I took a look at the referencing to see how big an issue it would be to sort it out, and noticed it is not as easy as I had supposed. There are over 300 sfn references in the page, and a lot more than <ref> style. Clearly someone had changed the whole page at some point so I took a look at page history and found some very significant activity in March-May 2015. All sfn references were converted between March and April of that year. The activity appears to have been to prepare the article for GA status. So I may have mis-stated above. It may be there is already an archived consensus for sfn. I will leave that alone for now. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

So looking at the second paragraph of the lead, my thoughts are that there is repetition with the first paragraph. We are again told of the West Germanic root, and Norse influence. That was already mentioned in the first paragraph. I don't like "mutated" and think "influenced" by Norse would be better. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:22, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

L2 Speakers

As per Ethnologue, 2022 Edition, English now has over a billion L2 speakers , someone please update the article accordingly. Bodhiupasaka (talk) 20:29, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

a complement clause such as I saw him leave, where the main verb is to see, which is in a preterite form, and leave is in the infinitive

Seems unkind to tell naive readers that on the one hand saw is the preterite of to see, while leave is in the infinitive. I.e. the "bare infinitive" actually is the infinitive. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:31, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

"29% of modern English words"

Does anyone know where the statistics about dialects of France/French being (about 29% of modern English words) and Latin influences (also about 29%) are ultimately coming from? I realize the same statistics appear on Foreign-language influences in English, which contains a cute lil pie chart. But that page also fails to cite sources. The chart itself cites a deadlink from AskOxford. List of English words of French origin gives 45% (also citing a deadlink). I like the idea of having percentages, but can we have some citations? Wolfdog (talk) 14:11, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Good point, Wolfdog. Enthusiasm or lack thereof for percentages aside, has anyone serious ever really calculated the % of "modern English words" taken in from Old Norman, Old French or more recent French? A lexicon is not finite. A calculation, if not couched overtly as an approximate estimation (based on what?), would have parameters, limitations, along the lines of "x% of the [y number] most frequent words used in Modern English", along with identification of the corpus, such as print of various registers, oral recordings, etc. The results can be simplified -- espérons-le with minimal distortion -- for Wikipedia purposes, but the reference(s) should be here. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:43, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Highly incorrect map for english mandatory subject - Democratic People's Republic of Korea/source needed

Well, I am korean and there is no way in hell that english is mandatory in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The map does not seem to have any source. Are you sure that english is mandatory in North Korea, China, and all of the countries that are in blue? Jishiboka1 (talk) 02:52, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The source is a publication from the University of Winnepeg. It has a map, and clicking on DPRK provides: "Year of primary source: 2016. Mandatory grades: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11" The article describes "blue" countries as "where English is a mandatory element of the national education policy concerning public education". Poking around the site, I found a table of links to their sources. Unfortunately they are kept in a dropbox which requires a login to access. They do give an email address if you have difficulty reading the files, though. _signed, Willondon (talk) 03:33, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 28 May 2023

Sample text section should use blockquote markup instead of description lists. See WP:DLIST and WP:BLOCKQUOTE. 93.72.49.123 (talk) 22:42, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

 Done Actualcpscm (talk) 07:05, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

American spellings

Why can’t this page have American spellings Theobegley2013 (talk) 20:36, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Theobegley2013, please see WP:ENGVAR. -- Hoary (talk) 22:34, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

The earliest versions of this article used British English. --00:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Dialects vs languages

Wouldn't you guys consider Central American and Carribean languages to be their own language, rather than a dialect? Take for example, Jamaican. I believe this language falls under dialects in this article, but it is considered its own language. I probably sound like an idiot, but please take this into consideration. Von Speck (talk) 21:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I sense some confusion between Jamaican English and Jamaican creole, which are two separate things, both mentioned in the article. (see the topic below, as well) _signed, Willondon (talk) 17:08, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Why did the lede get gimped?

Seriously look how much more informative it was a few months ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_language&oldid=1150213565 Somarain (talk) 22:47, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

@Somarain: A lot of that went into the History section, as the lead section was becoming overcrowded. Wolfdog (talk) 11:55, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Overcrowded how? We have no problem with the Battle of Gettysburg having a long lede because it's important. Why is it so important that the international language has the same length as Togo and Icelandic? Somarain (talk) 01:16, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Is the UDHR sample really necessary?

If someone is reading an entire article written in English about English, do they really need a two-sentence sample of the English language? Doesn't this entire article serve as a "sample" due to being written in English? It's almost like it's pretending not to be written in English when it obviously is. Eightos (talk) 02:38, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree that that's ridiculous. Can be deleted unless someone has some compelling reason we can't think of. Wolfdog (talk) 13:03, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done _signed, Willondon (talk) 14:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Guyana and Jamaica

Guyana and Jamaica are both English speaking - quite so. Local creole are also decidedly English dialects which rely heavily on old English - and far easier to understand than, say, Cockney. English is the native tongue and official language in Guyana and Jamaica of books, press, tv and government. To state otherwise is to demand that native English speakers fit some artificially and quite possibly racist rule regarding geographic place or 'acceptable' dialect. For a long time the French Academy rejected Quebecois as French. Wikipedia shouldn't be committing a similar error here in separating "lesser" people from recognition of speaking their own claimed native language. 208.59.107.13 (talk) 16:44, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't see where the article runs afoul of this advice. Guyana is not mentioned. Jamaica is mentioned a number of times: (1) the infobox list of dialects, including "Jamaican", "American", "British"; (2) where it is described as an "outer circle country" that has a "much smaller proportion [than other groups in the model] of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government"; (3) where it says "The most prominent varieties are Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole." Perhaps you are conflating what the article says about Jamaican creole, and the Jamaican flavour of English. _signed, Willondon (talk) 17:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Not mentioning Guyana - the only native English speaking nation in South America - is a vast encyclopedic oversight by any measure. And Jamaican creole is a dialect somewhat distinguished by not using the “th” sound and not pronouncing the “h” sound in the beginning of a Standard English word. It is English and written as so in all of the local daily newspapers. By what standard do we discriminate against Guyana and Jamaica in denying them of their own domestic claims of English as their native language?

Both Guyana and Jamacia should be listed in this article under the heading, "Countries and territories where English is the native language of the majority. 208.59.107.13 (talk) 18:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

There are a few lists linked to (one in "See also"), but none currently in the article (or encyclopedia) specifically list where English is "the native language of the majority". The Jamaican Patois article says "Jamaican Creole exists in gradations between more conservative creole forms that are not significantly mutually intelligible with English, and forms virtually identical to Standard English." So where I read this article as referring to two distinct things (Jamaican Patois, and Jamaican English), that article seems to be describing a continuum. Bottom line, I don't see where there is any discrimination or denying going on here. _signed, Willondon (talk) 19:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Guyana is not mentioned. Not mentioning Guyana - the only native English speaking nation in South America - is a vast encyclopedic oversight by any measure. Neither Jamaica nor Guyana are recognized as nations that are native language English speakers. Why? 208.59.107.13 (talk) 23:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Very good question: where's Guyana in the article? No answer forthcoming, it seems. Perhaps the first step, given the elaboration of Kachru's three circles model, would be to establish where Guyana fits in that classification. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:40, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Source updates for vocab section

The source that is used to confirm the number of English words is described as a 1989 Oxford English Dictionary, and links to an archived page. This needs to be updated. Also, I think that the English vocabulary's famous designation as the largest in the world should be addressed here. Norabur (talk) 02:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Although I've heard of this designation in pop culture, do we have an actual credible source/study that supports the claim? Wolfdog (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 May 2024

Change "United States of America" to "United States" 4.39.220.106 (talk) 18:13, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

 Done _signed, Willondon (talk) 18:19, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

British English

No mention of MLE or estruary English? MLE in particular is spreading to many cities in England. Definitely worth a mention. Bigbotnot2 (talk) 20:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Questionable examples of Norse influence

"Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent."

How is "give" a Norse loanword, when it is common all over the West Germanic languages? (Dutch and Low German "geven", High German "geben" etc.) "skirt" (with a shifted meaning) can also be found in German "Schürze", probably stemming from Middle Low German schörte, from Old Saxon skurtia!

"cake" is "Kuchen" in German.

Granted, some originally used West Germanic words might have been given up and later re-introduced via Norse words of the same etymology...94.219.14.131 (talk) 02:41, 14 July 2024 (UTC).

Pretty easily:

• skirt and shirt are cognate doublets, but are of Norse and Anglo-Saxon origin respectively.
• give displaced its Anglo-Saxon doublet, which fell out of use as yiven during the Middle English period

And so on. Remsense诉 02:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistent figures

The lead section mentions >2 billion total speakers, whereas the infobox states that there are less than 1.5 billion. Sure, there are countless organizations publishing figures, each with their own way of estimating and different definitions of someone being able to speak English. However, I think the figures presented in the lead section and infobox should at least be the same, perhaps - if necessary - with a note or link to a subsection in which it is explained why there are such large ranges in estimates. Maxeto0910 (talk) 23:20, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

While the scholars with the 2 billion figure are recognizable to me, it's clear they were not really rigorous in the journal cited. I've switched the lead figure to Ethnologue. Remsense ‥ 论 00:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Instrumental case

The reference to the instrumental case being lost in the Middle English period is surely wrong. This case was largely lost already in Old English. Does the author mean the dative? 86.190.145.222 (talk) 20:14, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 October 2024

Hello. In Quebec, French is the sole official language. English is not official, and has no status in that province. Kindly update the map and shade Quebec a very light blue, and not the current blue it is. Thanks 2605:8D80:502:A954:7880:F88:64E7:930A (talk) 23:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

 Not done English is an administrative language in Quebec, which is also included in the map. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:09, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Indonesia as working language

Despite malaysia and brunei has some sort of english language as usage to working language, then why indonesian not included in the list of working language using english? @Thebiguglyalien 182.253.250.252 (talk) 03:50, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

If you want to make a change to the article, you'll need a reliable source verifying the change you want to make. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:00, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

External link

Will the following link be accepted: Free English Grammar and Vocabulary Lessons? תיל"ם (talk) 04:40, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

This is not appropriate to include. This article's main goal is describing English and explaining characteristics about it, not teaching the language. The external links currently on the article are for giving more information describing English that cannot be included in the text of the article (namely, archives of sound recordings). IndigoManedWolf (talk) 05:31, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

the link that you put in is

reasonable, But i think that you need more information next to it to show what you ment in more detail. 2A00:23C8:9C80:FE01:8E2A:85FF:FEB7:AC4D (talk) 06:09, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

It is not true that “the majority of English vocabulary derives from Romance languages”.

Latin is not a Romance language. According to this article, only 28% of English vocabulary is of Romance origin. And I’m very skeptical about that claim as well, considering how much of French is Germanic in origin.

Also, I think much more needs to be done to emphasize how Germanic English is, considering how misleading those statements about the Italic loanwords are. They may be in the dictionary, but they’re not in common use.

To say that “much of English's most basic vocabulary remains identifiably Germanic, as well as aspects of its grammar and phonology” is a huge understatement. As far as I’m aware, absolutely no aspects of its grammar or phonology aren’t Germanic. As a matter of fact, in some aspects of its phonology (like /w/ and /th/), English is much closer to Proto-Germanic than most other Germanic languages.

Really, I think it should say that *all* of the basic and most-used words are Germanic in origin, and that *every* aspect of its grammar and phonology is as well.

The way this article is written gives undue weight to the Italic loanwords and makes it seem like some words that are almost never used but exist in a dictionary that the vast majority of the native speakers of the language will never read and wouldn’t even know how to pronounce, or words that were also loaned into *every* Germanic language, not only English, have made English some kind of hybrid anomaly. And that’s really not the case. It’s very misleading.

Also, you don’t see other non-Italic languages with the majority of their vocabulary made up of Italic loanwords, like Albanian, having undue emphasis given to that fact by having it in the heading of their articles. 2600:100A:B1CD:CDC1:189A:4B36:6A05:2BC9 (talk) 04:28, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Latin is a romance language. I dont know how you could be so wrong about something so basic 2607:D600:995F:CA00:4D39:A27F:9EAF:6E5B (talk) 09:56, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

"Latin is a romance language" may astonish some, but it's actually stimulus for an interesting quibble, as can be illustrated by specialists who (try to) prompt students to think and understand with observations such as "Spanish [Picard... Logudorese...] is Latin, only later" or "Latin is a dead language, but it never died". -- As for the main thrust of this section, "I dont know how you could be so wrong about something so basic" makes the point nicely that English lexicon is solidly Germanic at its core, while also lexical grafts of Latin(ate)/Romance origin can be totally nativized. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:31, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

That seems like a mystification allowed to prevent a slightly pedantic stumbling block. I've changed this. Remsense ‥ 论 22:12, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Exactly, as of today it says "While Latin and the Romance languages are thus the source for a majority of its lexicon taken as a whole, English grammar and phonology retain a family resemblance with the Germanic languages, and most of its basic everyday vocabulary remains Germanic in origin." I think this part should say that there is a heavy bias towards the 1/3 Germanic words in English, including a percentage of 75-85% of basic English vocabulary is Germanic in origin, and academic speech is more like 60-75%, some percentages to show that the majority of English words in speech are Germanic and emphasizing this lean towards Germanic words, the current writing is not enough for the facts presenting above this part showing only 1/3rd of the total words in English are Germanic, there needs to be more emphasis on this huge disparity in how common words are relative to their amount in the language. 2601:602:D201:6F90:EC66:4E4F:B119:30C (talk) 00:29, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

It's worth a reminder that the lead is a summary of the article body; while I agree this is likely a more precise articulation of the facts, we need a cited statement of this in the article body before we then summarize it in the lead. Remsense ‥ 论 00:42, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I sorted my response into Germanic and Romance words as evidence of this, ridding of the names of languages and groups (such as Germanic, Romance, English as it is normal to loan the names of languages and unfair to count as normal words) and wrote 1/3rd as one third, 75-85 60-75 as words as well as that is how they are spoken.

"as of today it says While and the are thus the for a of its taken as a whole and a with the and most of its everyday in I think this should say that there is a heavy towards the one third words in a seventy fix to eighty five of of is in and speech is more like sixty to seventy five some to show that the of words in speech are and this lean towards words, the writing is not enough for the above this showing only one third of the words in are there needs to be more on this huge in how words are to their in the

Exactly languages source majority lexicon grammar phonology retain family resemblance languages basic vocabulary remains origin part bias including percentage basic vocabulary origin academic percentages majority emphasizing current facts presenting part total emphasis disparity common relative amount language"

there are 150 words in my response, 113 are Germanic, that's 75% Germanic words and we are talking about an advanced subject which isn't basic speech. 2601:602:D201:6F90:EC66:4E4F:B119:30C (talk) 00:43, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

It may also be worth mentioning in the article that function words contribute a huge amount to English speech having a Germanic majority of words as my sorting shows many of those words are function words and not content words while all the romance words are content words. 2601:602:D201:6F90:EC66:4E4F:B119:30C (talk) 00:46, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

There are some basic words but most (90%) is not basic. 2A00:23C8:9C80:FE01:8E2A:85FF:FEB7:AC4D (talk) 06:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

to add on to that, 10% is basic. 2A00:23C8:9C80:FE01:8E2A:85FF:FEB7:AC4D (talk) 05:35, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Again, the source you're getting this from would be nice if you want to make changes as expediently as possible. Remsense ‥ 论 16:32, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Edit notice

I think it would be worth a shot to add an edit notice for this talk page, given many comments are posted here that seem to be from people learning English who are trying to practice or ask questions about it.

Draft editnotice

It may seem a totally spurious endeavor, but I'm actually a bit curious if it would save some people some time. Remsense ‥ 论 00:51, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd guess the fishing thing was just someone being a joker. This edit notice seems worth trying. I have this on my watchlist and I expect others do as well. It would be nice to 1) cut down on the spurious talk posts, and 2) make it less likely that on-topic comments and suggestions get overlooked or missed in the noise. CAVincent (talk) 04:43, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

As I'm sure others are aware, there are numerous other "general vocabulary" articles that see similar misdirected traffic on talk—perhaps if it helps here, it could help elsewhere, but we have to show the big banner to logged-in editors too, so I'm conflicted. Remsense ‥ 论 04:50, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Now I'm thinking—surely in cases like these it would be possible to assign a CSS class specific to "noisecatching" edit notices that would simply be set to hidden by default for logged in users. Remsense ‥ 论 04:57, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't support the proposed notice, but I agree that something is wanted to reduce the large number of "stray edits". The style sheet implementation is interesting, and I look forward to more discussion. _signed, Willondon (talk) 00:08, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I had truthfully already put it there; if you would prefer I yank it I can do so. Remsense ‥ 论 00:31, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to leave it there as improvements are made. I was going to make a few edits, but decided not to go through the request procedure just yet. (1) I wasn't sure what the strike-throughs were for. (2) I would change "to discuss changes to the English language article" to "to discuss changes to the article about the English language". For someone learning the language, "English language article" is likely to be understood as an article written in English. I think the phrasing I suggest makes it more clear that there is an article on "English language", and this is what the talk page is about. My two cents. _signed, Willondon (talk) 20:15, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Much appreciated, to be clear.

1. The strikethroughs are attempting to square the circle of communicating to editors that presently have nearly no familiarity with English as much as possible. My thought was beginning learners might recognize bits like "practice" and "ask question" without getting through a sentence and actually be encouraged to post.
2. This is clearly better, thank you.

Remsense ‥ 论 20:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed this is improved phrasing. Fair point that the notice would need to be clear specifically to people with limited understanding of English. CAVincent (talk) 05:43, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Just circled back to this: 13-day-long gaps between incidents are the exception rather than the rule, so if the rate stays low I'm nearly willing to declare the notice a good idea on my part? Remsense ‥ 论 06:40, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 April 2025

It was confirmed that English is both a Latin langauge with thousands of words derived from Latin and also a West German language. To not include the Latin content is grossly misleading re the information on wiki about the origins of the English language!! 2A00:23C7:E735:3700:80DA:78B5:B4C3:795D (talk) 11:18, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Day Creature (talk) 17:32, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

English "originated" in early medieval England

English is a West Germanic language that originated in early medieval England and has since evolved into a global lingua franca.

Originated is not false in a certain sense, but many years of teaching both historical linguistics and what might be called language history have taught me to expect that the more naive (about language in general, language evolution, etc.) the audience, the easier they can be misled -- in this instance, to conceptualize actual origin, genesis. Subsequent text in the article clarifies, but developed or emerged or similar should help to deflect the possible misconception at the outset. // Further in the sentence, evolved is a bit odd as language evolution is normally understood; a simple statement "has since become a global lingua franca" is true, simple and clear. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 17:29, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

So... how about:

English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a global lingua franca. Wolfdog (talk) 17:33, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks good to me! Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:01, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Huge inconsistency concerning the intro

I noticed that the fact, that English is closest related to Low Saxon and Frisian, is only mentioned in the very last sentence of the intro. Given that the intro shall be a summary of the whole article, this fact should be mentioned at the very beginning, because the classification and related languages is the very first paragraph. Overall, the intro gives the impression, that it tries to avoid mentioning that English is related to German and Dutch. While everybody knows, that Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and French are related, and that Polish, Czech, Russian and Serbocroatian are related, we all know that there circulates great confusion about the classification of English, also due to many YouTube videos. Normally, intros of languages follow this pattern: "English is the most spoken Germanic language. Together with German and Dutch, it belongs to the West Germanic branch, and is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon." This would be the most normal first sentence of an article concerning the English language. The second thing which is apparently avoided, is mentioning that English ultimately derives its name from the Angeln peninsula in Germany, the cradle of the Anglo-Saxon world, because the Angles are named after this region. I think, all of this is deliberately avoided, because many English-speakers, especially British ones, don't like the fact, that practically everything in their country is somehow related to Germany. Given now that fact, that the classifcation is the first paragraph, the intro should be changed accordingly. Ephesos21 (talk) 02:46, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The classification and related languages is the first section of the article. Therefore, the related languages have to be mentioned at the very beginning of the intro, because the intro is supposed to be a summary of the article, but in the right order. Hence i suggest to change the first sentences to:

English is the most spoken Germanic language, and alongside German, Dutch and Afrikaans, it belongs to the West Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots, and is next-most closely related to Low Saxon and Frisian. English originated in early medieval England, and has since evolved into a global lingua franca. The ultimate namesake of the language is the Angeln Peninsula, from which the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain, derive their name. English is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers.

These sentences also include the only three big languages English is closely related to, as well as the Angeln peninsula. Those three languages are also the only ones English is closely related to, which are not in the course of supersedence, like Frisian or Low Saxon. Ephesos21 (talk) 03:42, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't see the prioritization of the lead as "hiding" anything—it's doing what all good leads do and balancing the contents of the article, and to whatever extent is feasible frontloading the very most important information for readers. I'll be blunt here—that Frisian and Low Saxon are mentioned at all in the lead is a generous appraisal of their relevance for most readers. Remsense ‥ 论 10:32, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying that it would be best not to mention ANY related language? And is the intro supposed to be a summary of the article in the right order or not? So IF Frisian and Low Saxon are mentioned, it would have to be at least in the right place or not? Two of the most essential things are not mentioned in the intro - related languages and the ultimate namesake. Understanding what the word English really originally meant, or what the root word of which the designation stems from originally meant, means dealing with the etymology of Angeln. Just like with hamburgers - there is no ham on hamburgers - because the ultimate root of hamburger is Hamburg and the "burg" component means "castle", while i don't know what the "ham" part means, but that's why there is no ham. To say that English derives its name from the Angles, ok, but they in turn also derive their name from somewhere and it's the ultimate root which is the most important one to understand the real original meaning. It's interesting that even the endless story of the Romance vocabulary origins is dealt with in the intro but you don't find it necessary to talk about the closely related languages. It seems to me that the first sentence:

"English is the most spoken Germanic language, and alongside German, Dutch and Afrikaans, it belongs to the West Germanic branch."

is not desired in the introduction because of: a) .....Germanic language -> are we related to Germany?? b) .... alongside German -> are we related to Germany?? c) .... to the West Germanic branch -> are we related to Germany??

Also the Angeln part may be undesired because it's in Germany (coincidentally Saxony is also in Germany and the term Anglo-Saxon has therefore an all-German root). Ephesos21 (talk) 13:01, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying that it would be best not to mention ANY related language?

No, I'm saying mention of Frisian and Old Saxon is seemingly borderline in a balanced summary of the article's contents, which is what an article lead attempts to be.

And is the intro supposed to be a summary of the article in the right order or not?

No, it doesn't necessarily need to be "in order". The ideal way to structure and order four broad-concept paragraphs doesn't necessarily map to the ideal way to structure and order the sections of a 10k-word encyclopedia article. Remsense ‥ 论 13:04, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Still, the first four sentences should be changed to:

"English is the most spoken Germanic language, and alongside German, Dutch and Afrikaans, it belongs to the West Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots, and is next-most closely related to Low Saxon and Frisian. English originated in early medieval England, and has since evolved into a global lingua franca. The ultimate namesake of the language is the Angeln Peninsula, from which the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain, derive their name."

Because there is no reason not to mention the closely related languages. It's actually the most logical thing, and we all know that there IS great confusion about which languages English is actually closely related to. There is the French myth and the North Germanic myth haunting everywhere. And secondly, because Angeln is the ultimate namesake and not the Angles. There is seemingly enough space for the sentence:

"The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain after its Roman occupiers left."

The "after the Roman occupiers left" part can be replaced with the Angeln part, because the ultimate root seems to be more important than mentioning that the Angles only came when the Romans had left. It's also strange that the introduction even has space for the percentages of the vocabulary origins, but there's allegedly no space for the closely related languages. The vocabulary origins have undue weight in the intro, much of the article deals with the English dialects, and those are not mentioned in the intro at all. Ephesos21 (talk) 13:27, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

No, I don't think so, for the reasons I've said. Remsense ‥ 论 13:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Could you quickly explain, why the fact that the Angles settled in Britain after the Romans had left, is more important in a sentence dealing with the name origin of the word "English", than that Angeln is the ultimate namesake of the word? Ephesos21 (talk) 13:33, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Because the direct origin suffices in a brief summary. Remsense ‥ 论 13:37, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

One question: which of the following two sentences - both of which consist of 22 words - gives more infos about the name origin, or asked in a different way, is it more appropriate to mention Angeln or the leaving of Britain by the Romans in a sentence about the name origin of the word "English"?

Via the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain, the language ultimately derives its name from the Angeln peninsula.

The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain after its Roman occupiers left. Ephesos21 (talk) 13:51, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

The latter, because it's important anchoring context in the history of Britain for readers, and likewise for the linguistic situation given the departure of the Romans means that of Latin also. Remsense ‥ 论 13:53, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

But this is a sentence about the word origin. How on earth could the leaving of the Romans be more important than the ultimate namesake in a sentence that is supposed to give info about the name origins? Ephesos21 (talk) 13:57, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

It's a sentence about the origins of the language, including its name. Remsense ‥ 论 13:59, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

No the sentence:

"The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain after its Roman occupiers left."

clearly is only about the namesake. And what does the disappearance of Latin have to do with the name origin? Ephesos21 (talk) 14:02, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

The sentence is about what it contains, and it's a perfectly coherent sentence providing a detail both about the name origin and the historical context of the language origin itself. Not sure what to tell you at this point—maybe you're overthinking things and need to take a break from scrutinizing these sentences for a bit. Remsense ‥ 论 14:04, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

I notice that you are trying by all means to keep Anglia out of the introduction. Your arguments are not convincing at all. The article is not about England but about the language, and this specific sentence IS about the namesake, and you're trying to prevent this very namesake Angeln from being included in the intro. The leaving of the Romans can be dealt with in the intro of England. It would also be possible to include both the Romans thing AND Angeln in one sentence of course. But i know exactly what you're gonna say then (too long and stuff) because your only aim seems to be keeping Angeln out. So, what do you say about including both the Romans and Angeln in one sentence? Ephesos21 (talk) 14:15, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Shrug. I patiently explained my reasons to you, and that it becomes my fixation on omitting a piece of relative trivia from a summary of a summary rather than your fixation on including it is pretty ridiculous. Mazeltov. Remsense ‥ 论 14:20, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

The ultimate namesake can never be trivia in a sentence dealing with a word's origins. On the other hand, a random historical fact about England, which is not connected to the namesake at all, becomes trivia in this case. If the namesake were at least partially influenced by Latin, there would at least be some sense in establishing a connection to the Romans, but not even that is the case. You don't want Angeln, the true namesake of the English language and England, to appear in the intro. And your arguments are all obsolete. Ephesos21 (talk) 14:29, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Sure it can. Remsense ‥ 论 14:30, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, you said you explained it patiently, but still i didn't understand. What was the exact reason again for not expanding the introduction by just a few words, and thus including the original name origin? Is it because Angeln is in Germany? After all, it's only about a few words. Few words but great gain of knowledge. And can someone really think that it's uninteresting what "English" really ultimately means? Is it not one of the most essential facts? What does the word mean, and which languages are related. Most essential but both absent. Ephesos21 (talk) 14:50, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Most etymologies don't (or shouldn't) go back to the earliest reconstructed protolanguage. We stated what is indeed the only namesake for "English". In turn, the namesake for the Angles is their peninsula of origin. It's quite concretely a tangent, and one that is superfluous in the lead, and maybe even in the body. Remsense ‥ 论 15:02, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

But if we only know that the Angles are the namesake, we will never know what the word English means. The fact that England takes its name from the Angles gives no insight into the meaning of the name at all. The etymology of Angeln of course is the interesting thing here. And "eng" means narrow in German. I read somewhere, that it has something to do with the narrowness of the Schlei estuary south of Angeln. Ephesos21 (talk) 15:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

There's quite literally a link to Angles (tribe) provided, where their namesake is given. Indeed, many but not all will never know why who skim this article and don't click—and that's correct, because it's not that important for readers of this article. You seem unfortunately to have very little regard for how to best balance the article, which itself balances what sources say and deemphasizes what they tend not to say, so I might leave it here unless there's something more concrete than your personally favored trivia I can speak in terms of. Remsense ‥ 论 15:15, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

That's your opinion and doesn't have to be right. Secondly, the Frisian and Low Saxon thing. You said, the intro doesn't have to be in "the right order", but is there a plausible reason why the related languages appear at the very end rather than at the beginning? Or is the reason, that you consider mentioning these languages ​​so superfluous that they should be glad they're even appearing at all? In general, it would indeed be better if the introduction followed the same order as the main part of the article. Ephesos21 (talk) 15:24, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

It's based in what sources say and don't say when discussing the origin. Many stop at the tribe. I quite enjoy etymology and lexicography personally, and moreover I personally feel knowledge of those things is important for people to have (those are my actual personal opinions) but that has nothing to do with what best serves a general readership, which is a balanced survey of our sources. That's what we're required to provide. Remsense ‥ 论 15:26, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes but what about the Low Saxon and Frisian thing now. It should be at the beginning. It think, that what people are most interested in, are actually the closely related languages. All the YouTube videos are about how languages are related... "yes and the Spanish feel so close to the Italians bla bla" and "Romanian is also related to Italian and Spanish although everyone forgets it bla bla..." These are the things people are talking about and interested in the most when dealing with languages. But somehow you manage it to prevent German, Dutch and Afrikaans from being mentioned in the intro. The following is completely unknown by the majority of people: that English is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, two languages that are in the course of supersedence, and that German, Dutch and Afrikaans are the only larger languages it is closely related to, and at sometime, will be the only ones. This is what people are really interested in. And they think it's closest to French or Danish, we all know it. Your argument to not include those languages is apparently undue weight and that the intro wouldn't be a proper summary of the article anymore if they were included. At the same time, the dialects are not mentioned at all, and is the grammar even mentioned? A large part of the article is about the dialects, but this doesn't bother you at all. And for what there is also enough space in the intro, are the exact percentages regarding the vocabulary origin - clearly too much detail for the intro. One must therefore realize that you are only using your arguments to avert what you don't like. Ephesos21 (talk) 03:05, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Australian and New Zealand

Possibly an urban myth, but the story goes that the Australian and New Zealand accents crystallised into their current form very quickly - in a matter of decades - following the introduction of mandatory schooling for children.

Might also be worth mentioning the 'Oh Naur!' transformation of the goat vowel as being a thing. 203.13.3.93 (talk) 05:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Is this article written in British English because that is where the English language originated?

I’m seeing British English for this article. Is it because it’s where the English language originated, or is it because a British person created this article? Dotsenter21 (talk) 22:31, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Because that's the variety it was first written in, per MOS:RETAIN. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 22:39, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

UAE

The map omits the United Arab Emirates as a country with English as an official language. 76.171.54.253 (talk) 17:32, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

That article says otherwise. —Tamfang (talk) 19:10, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

"English language." listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect English language. has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 August 27 § English language. until a consensus is reached. ArthananWarcraft (talk) 18:58, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Article review

It has been a little bit since this article was last reviewed, so I took a look and noticed the following:

• There are lots of uncited statements in the article, including entire paragraphs.
• At over 14,000 words, some sections of this article have too much information, making the article WP:TOOBIG. Should some of this information be spun out, summarised more effectively, or removed?

Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 18:01, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Right! I'm committing myself to this one. Anyone else? Remsense 🌈 论 18:02, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I've no expertise in language or grammar, but I am happy to look for some missing citations. I think we could go for GAR when some work has been done, as GAR is just added pressure at this stage. Tony Holkham (Talk) 18:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

@Tony Holkham: If editors are working on an article, I won't send it to GAR. Z1720 (talk) 18:37, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I'll definitely be starting work on it—this is one of the article I'd like to think I won't allow to be delisted. Remsense 🌈 论 18:39, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Oh, @Sdkb, I assume you're still interested in that spoken version also—though I know barnstars are a bit pricy these days. That might be a good capstone for me to try once I get this article to where I want it. Remsense 🌈 论 21:07, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, at this point I think the spoken articles project needs to do some soul-searching around whether AI voices have made it obsolete before I could recommend adding more articles to it. Sdkb ^talk 05:15, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Haha, I thought about that a few minutes after I sent this reply. Happy for those who benefit from it, but alas. Remsense 🌈 论 05:16, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Can I poll any editors with interest in the ongoing work as to where they think the article is at? There's still a few apparently uncited passages left—while I'm most interested what the perception is of the article's length and the proportionality of its coverage after the slimming down I've done. Remsense 🌈 论 07:16, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720 could I ask for your brief reappraisal in specific? Remsense 🌈 论 22:09, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

• @Remsense: Sorry for the late response. I added citation needed tags to the article. I think some sections can still be reduced: typically, I recommend that sections have 2-4 paragraphs. Sections that are longer should consider moving information to the daughter article and summarising the information more effectively. Z1720 (talk) 14:14, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the rule of thumb for section length, and the concrete boxes to further tick off here! Helps a ton. Also, thanks generally for the work you do in ensuring our GAC and FAC are live, operative criteria. Remsense 🌈 论 14:37, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 12 October 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. WP:RMEC WP:SNOW ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 05:41, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

---

• English language → English
• English → English (disambiguation)English (disambiguation)

– Clear primary topic, according to WikiNav this page gets 74% of the outgoing pageviews of the English dab page (English people comes second with 13%, but "English" isn't an appropriate title there anyway per WP:NOUN, and other entries are negligible). WP:NCLANG says articles on languages can be titled with the bare name of the variety where this is unambiguous (e.g. Bokmål) or where it is unquestionably the primary topic for the name (e.g. Arabic, Kannada, Serbo-Croatian). Similar to the recent move of "Swahili language" to "Swahili", where there are ~100 million speakers compared to an ethnic population of ~2 million , there are 1.5 billion speakers of English and an ethnic population of 37 million (+~60 million in the diaspora). Proposed title is also more concise. Ultimately the language is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. Kowal2701 (talk) 19:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Notified WP:LANGUAGE, WP:ENGLAND, and WP:UK. Kowal2701 (talk) 19:09, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Support, just obvious. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. There's enough incoherence already in titles of specific language articles. X language is accurately descriptive for both "major" language articles (Spanish language, French language, German language...) and "minor" (Wolof language, Arapaho language, Gamilaraay language...). The economy gained by deleting language is minimal, and introduces possible confusion where accuracy is desirable. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. No primary topic here, in no way does the proposed move improve clarity. 162 etc. (talk) 23:11, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose - Honestly, this is just a dumb suggestion. It isn't even worth pointing to policy and guidelines for something so obviously dumb. CAVincent (talk) 02:21, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Well that's just rude... Anne drew (talk · contribs) 02:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  Agreeing with Anne drew. Wolfdog (talk) 05:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Apologizing for my rudeness. My opposition stands but should have been expressed more politely. CAVincent (talk) 10:07, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

1. Views of English that probably correspond to a click towards the language article 3,010 (30.3%)
2. Clicks from English to something that we can't identify (anonymized) 1,590 (16.0%)
3. Views of English that probably correspond to a click towards other identifiable articles 1,083 (10.9%)
4. Views of English that can't be assumed to correspond to any outgoing clicks 4,257 (42.8%)

• I don't think WikiNav output is as determinative as it looks. Here's a pie chart to the right that interprets the exact same data (Clickstreams and Page views from August), but without relegating filtered clicks and clicks that don't have a matching outgoing click to the dustbin as WikiNav happens to do.

I think the anonymization should be more pronounced with the more rare sources and destinations, less so with the largest known topics. So I don't think we should assume that most of the filtered clicks here are to the language. At the same time, even if we do somehow magically assume that, even that literally all the filtered clicks were going towards the language, the combination of these two is still less than half the overall volume of incoming views.

We often see some amount of views that don't correspond to outgoing clicks. However, the idea that around a half of all views would be readers who look up English intending to visit the language topic, and then see this simple list and then somehow miss the very first link to the language article - seems like a big stretch. I'm not sure we have an issue with navigation here that needs to be addressed. --Joy (talk) 10:13, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose, this is in direct contradiction of what WP:NCLANG says and beancounting speakers vs "ethnic population" (whatever the hell that means in this context - do Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians etc. with English ancestry count towards this "ethnic population?") is not a sensible way of determining primary topic. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:21, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  NCLANG says Where a common name exists in English for both a people and their language, it is most often the case that neither is the primary topic. A title based on that term, with explicit disambiguation, is preferred for both articles, as with Chinese people and Chinese language. Unlike where "German" as a noun refers to both language and people, "English" isn't the common name for English people because our article titles are nouns and it's not used as a noun but an adjective (except in rare cases of "the English"). The beancounting was an attempt to illustrate how the language outstrips the ethnic group in terms of importance and educational value as a global lingua franca Kowal2701 (talk) 15:49, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  This is simply not true. Many well-meaning newish editors will link English where the people (or some iteration of the nation-state) is what was intended. Moving this page will make finding and fixing such errors much more difficult. older ≠ wiser 16:41, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  It's also not true that "English" is not used to refer to the people. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 23:32, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per Barefoot through the chollas. "Arabic" and "Serbo-Croatian" are examples of specifically linguistic terms. Given WP:THE and the fact that English people can be referred to as 'the English', I do not think WP:NOUN applies the way the nom says. Srnec (talk) 15:46, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Srnec and because that just does not make the encyclopaedia better. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:50, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose, this move is based on faulty assumptions and will make disambiguating erroneous links more difficult. older ≠ wiser 16:42, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  • Oppose, It is easier to keep it the way it is than to merge it. If it ain't broke do not fix it.

  Freedom759 (talk) 23:32, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per Barefoot through the chollas, Srnec, and Bkonrad (older ≠ wiser). --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 23:35, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose English language and English people are separate subjects, neither of which should have their articles titled simply English. Nor should any of the topics at the disambigulation page. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:36, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per the various reasons mentioned above. "English" by itself being a disambiguation page is fine as is since it can refer to widely different topics. Like the natives of England, people of English ethnicity/ancestry around the world, English culture, etc. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 05:33, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

  I would only really actually oppose if we changed German to German language and so forth with similar language pages Since German and German language are also 2 separate things similar to how English And the English Language are 2 separate things Freedom759 (talk) 20:53, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

  Unless its like that already Freedom759 (talk) 20:59, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

  German is a disambiguation page and German language is the article about the language, same as the status quo with English. That's the normal naming convention for languages. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 21:04, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Spelling of "percent"

In Special:Diff/1287719185, because of the {{use British English}} template in the article's source and the {{British English}} templates in the edit notice and this talk page, I had intended to get the article to use British English. However, my edit was reverted in Special:Diff/1287722404 possibly because of how @CAVincent understood my comment, when I had intended to make the changes listed in the British English templates for this article. One of the changes made was changing to the British spelling of "percent", "per cent". I am curious as to why the article's prose uses "percent" and not "per cent". According to Wiktionary, per cent is Commonwealth English. Commonwealth English includes British English as a variety, but not the other way around. Z. Patterson (talk) 09:05, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

This is actually an interesting question: Which national variety of the English language should Wikipedia's article on English language use? I'm strongly inclined to say that should be American English, for the reason that it is the most widely used variety. I can't see any good reason for this article to use British English, other than that it has had a tag for a long time. I would also argue that the article should have dates as MDY for the same reason. (That said, I hadn't been thinking of the British English tag when I made my revert, and I would be fine with reintroducing your changes pending a discussion to not use British English. I just tried self-reverting, but it failed due to subsequent changes.) CAVincent (talk) 13:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Firstly, does an article have to specify at all which English it should use? Secondly, if it does, I would prefer British, because of where the language originated, not where it is most widely used. Thirdly, just for fun, many British people used MDY, not so long ago (in my living memory, at least). But let's not have a storm in a teacup. Tony Holkham (Talk) 14:02, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

So would I. I would think that British English would apply for these reasons. Z. Patterson (talk) 16:13, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Current British English is no more the original form than current American English; all of the major contemporary national varieties of English descend from Early Modern English. So, no, preferring British "because of where the language originated" is not a compelling argument. That said, MOS:Retain IS a compelling argument, though I haven't checked the article history to see what that would favor. CAVincent (talk) CAVincent (talk) 05:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

MOS:Retain explains why the existing variety should be retained - i.e. British English. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:17, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Did we clearly indicate which form of the word I should use? Just double-checking so I don't gratuitously do America all over the article, it's percent right? Remsense 🌈 论 11:43, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

MOS:PERCENT says BrE indicates "per cent". So does American and British English spelling differences. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 06:37, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Right, this was one of those cases I wasn't clear on, where a form might be accepted if not the most commonly used within a given English variety. Thanks! Remsense 🌈 论 14:51, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

As a compromise, I like to spell it per​cent with U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE, so that it breaks across lines. 😜 —Tamfang (talk) 05:00, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Tweaks to meaning, some of them erroneous

@PuppyMonkey, please ask here first before making further edits to this article that change the meaning of prose cited to a reliable source. It is not clear you check what the cited source says or doesn't say when you make these kinds of edits, and that means you sometimes make errors when you're effectively citing either your own knowledge or possibly just another Wikipedia article (see WP:CIRCULAR) and adding claims the cited sources no longer verify.

Given your restatement in the edit summary, most recently you simply misunderstood what the passage about Latin script adoption said to begin with. I ask you in the strongest possible terms given how many of your edits are substantive changes to cited prose in our most important articles, that you make an effort to follow those sources when you do so. If you cannot access sources, you cannot decide they are wrong or decide you knew what they probably said instead. Remsense 🌈 论 20:50, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I'll do my best, @Remsense. PuppyMonkey (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Non-native English reading by Spanish native speaker 001.ogg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:36, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Classification and History

There are two unclear statements regarding the area of ​​distribution of the dialects from which Old English developed. The first statement restricts it to Frisia, the second extends it to Lower Saxony and Southern Jutland as well.

"Old English was one of several Ingvaeonic languages, which emerged from a dialect continuum spoken by West Germanic peoples during the 5th century in Frisia, on the coast of the North Sea."

"Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, sometimes identified as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic, that were originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes."

It may need to be adjusted, but I'm not familiar with this topic. ~2025-40420-16 (talk) 18:38, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Strange quirk in labels on map of English-speaking regions

I have found a strange quirk in the map of regions where English is the majority and/or official language, specifically with the labels for the colour codes. Viewing the article in my web browser (Brave 1.85.116 on MacOS 15.7.2), it appears correctly. However, viewing it in Apple’s Dictionary.app (2.3.0, on the same Mac), the colours are swapped. I am baffled. LincMad (talk) 19:53, 14 December 2025 (UTC)