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THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1. Current Status

Geographically the most widespread language on Earth is English, and it is

second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. English is thenational language of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New

Zealand. It is one of the two national languages of Canada. It is an official or

semiofficial language in many former and present British possessions such as South

Africa, India, and Hong Kong.

The existence of 1.9 billion speakers of English, including some 350 million

of native speakers, makes this language the largest global lingua franca in use in our

global village.

2. Classification

English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is, therefore,

related to most of the languages spoken in an area stretching from Iceland across

Europe to India. The language most closely resembling Modern English is Frisian,which is spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland. Icelandic, on the other hand, has

changed little in more than 1,000 years. It is the living language most closely

resembling Old English.

3. Inflection

German, Latin, Russian, Greek, French and Romanian are inflected languages.

This means that many words undergo changes of spelling - and often of pronunciation

- to mark changes in tense of verbs, gender of nouns, case or plurality of nouns, mood

of verbs, agreement of adjectives, and other distinctions. For example, the French

word for "beautiful" or "fine" is beau. When used to modify the plural noun arts, it

becomes beaux, as in the expression beaux-arts, meaning "fine arts." When used

before a vowel, it becomes bel, as in le bel age, an idiom for "youth." When used to

modify a noun of the feminine gender, it becomes belle, as in la belle dame, or

"beautiful lady."

English, on the other hand, is relatively uninflected. Adverbs, prepositions,

conjunctions, and interjections are invariable. They are spelled the same way no

matter how they are used. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs, however, are

inflected. Most English nouns show a plural by adding an s or an es: cow, cows; box,

boxes. Some nouns have what are called mutated, or changed, plurals: man, men;

woman, women; foot, feet; tooth, teeth;goose, geese; mouse, mice; louse, lice . A very

few nouns - for example, ox, oxen - have plurals ending in en. A few nouns remain

unchanged in the plural: deer, sheep, moose, andgrouse.Five of the seven personal pronouns have distinctive forms for subject or

object use: I, me; he, him; she, her; we, us; and they, them. And there are also

distinctive possessive pronouns: mine, his, hers, ours, theirs.

Verb forms, while inflected, are not as complicated as they are in Latin,

Greek, German or Romanian. The one English verb with the most forms is "to be"

(be, am, is, are, was, were, been, and being). Weak, or regular, verbs have only four

forms: talk, talks, talked, and talking, for example. Strong, or irregular, verbs have

five forms:sing, sings, sang, sung, andsinging. A few verbs that end in a tordhave

only three forms: cut, cuts, cutting. These verb inflections are in marked contrast to

Old English, in which ridan, or "ride," had 13 forms, and to Modern German, in

which reiten has 16.

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4. Flexibility

Along with a loss of inflection came a flexibility of use. Words that were once

distinguished as nouns or verbs by their inflections are now used both ways. It is

possible to "run a race" (noun usage) or "race someone to the corner" (verb usage).

It is also possible in English to use nouns as adjectives: automobile show,

state fair, hot dog stand. Pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs can also function asnouns. English adopts or adapts any word as needed to name a new object or describe

a new process.

5. Word Formation

New words have been frequently formed by adding a prefix or suffix, by

combining words, or by blending words. A prefix is attached to the front of a word:

sub + way, subway; over+ do, overdo. Sometimes a foreign prefix is added such as

the Greekmacro- ormicro-: macroeconomics, microbiology.

One of the most common suffixes is -er, which usually means someone who

engages in the act that the verb suggests: singer, player, seeker, writer. Other suffixes

also denote activity: actor, hatmaker, merchant, scientist.

Combining words to form new ones is common: cloverleaf, gentleman,dateline. Some words in combination alter their meanings slightly: already is not

quite the same as all ready, and a gentleman is not quite the same as a gentle

man. Blackbird is a specific kind of fowl, but black bird suggests a bird of a

particular color.

Blends of words fall into two categories - a coalescence or a telescoped word.

One of the most commonly used coalescent forms is smog, a blend of the words

smoke and fog. A telescoped form is motorcade, made by combining motor

with a remnant of cavalcade. In the same way a travel monologue becomes a

travelogue, and a cable telegram a cablegram.

6. Vocabulary

There are an estimated 750,000 words in the English language. Nearly half of

these are of Germanic (or Teutonic) origin, and nearly half from the Romance

languages (languages of Latin origin--such as French, Spanish, and Italian--or Latin

itself). There also have been generous borrowings from other languages, including

Greek, Dutch, Modern German, and Arabic.

Among the many words that come from the Germanic are the nouns father,

mother, brother, man, wife, ground, land, tree, grass, summer, and winter. Germanic-

based verbs include bring, come, get, hear, meet, see, sit, stand, and think.

From French have come such political terms as constitution, president,

parliament, congress, and representative. Also borrowed from French are city, place,

village, court, palace, manor, mansion, residence, domicile, cuisine, diner, cafe,liberty, veracity, carpenter, draper, haberdasher, mason, painter, plumber, and tailor.

Many terms relating to cooking, fashion, drama, winemaking, literature, art,

diplomacy, and ballet also come from France.

English has acquired many words from Spanish. Some of these have been

borrowed directly: cigar, armada, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, and tornado. Others

have come to Spanish from one of the Indian languages of the Americas: potato and

tomato, for example. Many Spanish words have come directly into the United States

from Latin America: canyon, lasso, mustang, pueblo, and rodeo.

Borrowings from Latin have been especially numerous. Many of these

represent combinations of Latin words: malnutrition, transfer, circumference,

supernatural, submarine, suburb, substantial, contemporary, multilingual,conjunction, compassion, and hundreds more.

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Borrowings from Greek are heavy in the sciences and technology. In addition

to macro- and micro-, often-used prefixes include poly- and tele-. Among the well-

known English words from Greek are alphabet, geometry, geology, photography,

psychology, psychiatry, pathology, biology, philosophy, telephone, logistics, and

metamorphosis.

Arabic words have usually come into English by way of another Europeanlanguage, especially Spanish. Arabic was spoken in Spain during the period of the

Muslim domination. Among the common English words that have come from Arabic

are: alcohol, alchemy, algebra, alkali, almanac, arsenal, assassin, cipher, elixir,

mosque, naphtha, sugar, syrup, zenith, andzero.

Common words borrowed from other languages are: coffee (Turkish); gull

(Cornish); flannel (Welsh); brogue, blarney, shamrock, clan, and plaid (Gaelic and

Irish); mammoth, soviet, and vodka (Russian); robot (Czech); paprika (Hungarian);

jungle, thug, shampoo, dungarees, loot, pajamas, and polo (Hindi); paradise, lilac,

bazaar, caravan, chess, shawl, and khaki (Persian); marmalade, flamingo, and

veranda (Portuguese); ketchup, bamboo, and orangutan (Malay); taboo and tattoo

(Polynesian); and ukulele (Hawaiian). Other words from native languages includehammock, hurricane, tobacco, and maize (Caribbean) and voodoo and chimpanzee

(African).

7. Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and their physiological production and

acoustic qualities. It deals with the configurations of the vocal tract used to produce

speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), the acoustic properties of speech sounds

(acoustic phonetics), and the manner of combining sounds so as to make syllables,

words, and sentences (linguistic phonetics).

British Received Pronunciation (RP), by definition, the usual speech of

educated people living in London and southeastern England, and the American Inland

Northern pronunciation are two of the many forms of standard speech.

7.1. The English Speech Sounds

This list contains the principal sounds of standard British English (the

pronunciation associated with southern England which is often called Received

Pronunciation).

Symbols for the sounds are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet

(IPA). The IPA scheme is similar to that employed by Oxford Dictionaries.

Consonants:

IPA Examples IPA Examples

get,go chip, chin

jam,judge Scots loch

sing, ring thin, thick

then, this she,ship

pleasure, vision yet, use, beauty

Short Vowels:

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cat, bad, trap bed, net, dress

about, comma kit, bid, hymn

happy, glorious hot, odd, wash

dug, run, strut book, put, foot

Long Vowels:


cart, arm hair, dare, various

her, nurse meet, see, fleece

port, saw boot, too

Diphthongs/Triphthongs:


bite, my, price br ow, howfate, day goat, show, no

pier, near boil, choice, boy

tour, poor square, fair

sour fire

Other Symbols:

IPA Purpose

Precedes the syllable which has the primary stress

Precedes a syllable which has a secondary stress

( ) Surround an optional sound

Other means to phonemic differentiation in English, apart from the

pronunciation of distinct vowels and consonants, are stress, pitch, and juncture. Stress

is the sound difference achieved by pronouncing one syllable more forcefully than

another, for example, the difference between record (noun) and record (verb). Pitch

is, for example, the difference between the pronunciation ofJohn andJohn? Juncture

or transition of words causes such differences in sound as that created by the

pronunciation ofblackbird(one word) and black bird(two words).

7.2. StressFour degrees of stress may be differentiated: primary, secondary, tertiary, and

weak, which may be indicated, respectively, by acute ( ), circumflex ( ), and grave

( ` ) accent marks and by the underline ( _ ). Thus, Tll m the trth (the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth) may be contrasted with Tll m the trth (whatever you

may tell other people); blck brd (any bird black in color) may be contrasted with

blckbrd (that particular bird Turdus merula). The verbs permt and recrd

(henceforth only primary stresses are marked) may be contrasted with their

corresponding nounsprmitand rcord. A feeling for antepenultimate (third syllable

from the end) primary stress, revealed in such five-syllable words as equanmity,

longitdinal, notorety, opportnity, parsimnious, pertincity, and vegetrian, causes

stress to shift when extra syllables are added, as in histrical, a derivative ofhstoryand theatriclity, a derivative ofthetrical. Vowel qualities are also changed here and

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in such word groups as priod, peridical, periodcity; phtograph, photgraphy,

photogrphical. French stress may be sustained in many borrowed words; e.g.,

bizrre, critque, durss, hotl, prestge, and technque._

7.3. Pitch

Pitch, or musical tone, determined by the rate of vibration of the vocal cords,

may be level, falling, rising, or fallingrising. In counting one, two, three, four, onenaturally gives level pitch to each of these cardinal numerals. But if a person says, I

want two, not one, he naturally gives two falling pitch and one fallingrising. In the

question One? rising pitch is used. Word tone is called pitch, and sentence tone is

referred to as intonation. The end-of-sentence cadence is important for meaning, and

it therefore varies least. Three main end-of-sentence intonations can be distinguished:

falling, rising, and fallingrising. Falling intonation is used in completed statements,

direct commands, and sometimes in general questions unanswerable by yes or no;

e.g..:I have nothing to add.Keep to the right. Who told you that? Rising intonation is

frequently used in open-ended statements made with some reservation, in polite

requests, and in particular questions answerable byyes orno:I have nothing more to

say at the moment.Let me know how you get on.Are you sure? The third type of end-of-sentence intonation, first falling and then rising pitch, is used in sentences that

imply concessions or contrasts: Some people do like them (but others do not).Don't

say I didn't warn you (because that is just what I'm now doing).

7.4. Juncture

The transition from one given phoneme to another may be of two kinds: an

open transition (symbolized by /+/ ), which implies a slight, hardly perceptible pause

such as we find at the boundary of two words or between two meaningful parts of a

compound word, and a close transition (unmarked) which represents the usual manner

in which phonemes are joined together within a word.

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