ENGLISH

English language

English is a Germanic Language of the Indo-European Family. It is the second most spoken language in the world. It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300 million who use English as a second language and a further 100 million use it as a foreign language. It is the language of science, aviation, computing, diplomacy, and tourism. It is listed as the official or co-official language of over 45 countries and is spoken extensively in other countries where it has no official status. 

Half of all business deals are conducted in English. Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English. Over 70% of all post / mail is written and addressed in English. Most international tourism and aviation is conducted in English. 

The history of the language can be traced back to the arrival of three Germanic tribes to the British Isles during the 5th Century AD. Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the North Sea from what is the present day Denmark and northern Germany. The inhabitants of Britain previously spoke a Celtic language. This was quickly displaced. Most of the Celtic speakers were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. One group migrated to the Brittany Coast of France where their descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton today. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. Their language was called Englisc from which the word, English derives. 

An Anglo-Saxon inscription dated between 450 and 480 AD is the oldest sample of the English language. 

During the next few centuries four dialects of English developed:

• Northumbrian in Northumbria, north of the Humber 
• Mercian in the Kingdom of Mercia
• West Saxon in the Kingdom of Wessex
• Kentish in Kent

During the 7th and 8th Centuries, Northumbria's culture and language dominated Britain. The Viking invasions of the 9th Century brought this domination to an end (along with the destruction of Mercia). Only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect became the official language of Britain. Written Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an alphabet called Runic, derived from the Scandinavian languages. The Latin Alphabet was brought over from Ireland by Christian missionaries. This has remained the writing system of English. 

At this time, the vocabulary of Old English consisted of an Anglo Saxon base with borrowed words from the Scandinavian languages (Danish and Norse) and Latin. Latin gave English words like street, kitchen, kettle, cup, cheese, wine, angel, bishop, martyr, candle. The Vikings added many Norse words: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them. Celtic words also survived mainly in place and river names (Devon, Dover, Kent, Trent, Severn, Avon, Thames).

In 1066 the Normans conquered Britain. French became the language of the Norman aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English.

Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison).

The Germanic form of plurals (house, housen; shoe, shoen) was eventually displaced by the French method of making plurals: adding an s (house, houses; shoe, shoes). Only a few words have retained their Germanic plurals: men, oxen, feet, teeth, children.

French also affected spelling so that the cw sound came to be written as qu (eg. cween became queen).

It wasn't till the 14th Century that English became dominant in Britain again. In 1399, King Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English. By the end of the 14th Century, the dialect of London had emerged as the standard dialect of what we now call Middle English. Chaucer wrote in this language.

Modern English began around the 16th Century and, like all languages, is still changing. One change occurred when the th of some verb forms became s (loveth, loves: hath, has). Auxillary verbs also changed (he is risen, he has risen).

The historical influence of language in the British Isles can best be seen in place names and their derivations.

Examples include ac (as in Acton, Oakwood) which is Anglo-Saxon for oak; by (as in Whitby) is Old Norse for farm or village; pwll (as in Liverpool) is Welsh for anchorage; baile (as in Balmoral) is Gaelic for farm or village; ceaster (as in Lancaster) is Latin for fort.

Since the 16th Century, because of the contact that the British had with many peoples from around the world, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, many words have entered the language either directly or indirectly. New words were created at an increasing rate. Shakespeare coined over 1600 words. This process has grown exponentially in the modern era. 

Borrowed words include names of animals (giraffe, tiger, zebra), clothing (pyjama, turban, shawl), food (spinach, chocolate, orange), scientific and mathematical terms (algebra, geography, species), drinks (tea, coffee, cider), religious terms (Jesus, Islam, nirvana), sports (checkmate, golf, billiards), vehicles (chariot, car, coach), music and art (piano, theatre, easel), weapons (pistol, trigger, rifle), political and military terms (commando, admiral, parliament), and astronomical names (Saturn, Leo, Uranus).

Languages that have contributed words to English include Latin, Greek, French, German, Arabic, Hindi (from India), Italian, Malay, Dutch, Farsi (from Iran and Afganistan), Nahuatl (the Aztec language), Sanskrit (from ancient India), Portuguese, Spanish, Tupi (from South America) and Ewe (from Africa).

The list of borrowed words is enormous. The vocabulary of English is the largest of any language.

Even with all these borrowings the heart of the language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old English. Only about 5000 or so words from this period have remained unchanged but they include the basic building blocks of the language: household words, parts of the body, common animals, natural elements, most pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs. Grafted onto this basic stock was a wealth of contributions to produce, what many people believe, is the richest of the world's languages.

Varieties of English

English is - like German or Chinese - a pluricentric language(1). This basically means, that there exists more than one version of standard English: British English and American English are well known. Canadian English, Australian English and New Zealandian English are important standard varieties as well.

Standard English

The official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be" defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to" dialect words or dialectisms(2). Local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Southeastern, Southwestern and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects.

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish. The main peculiarities concern syntax, and they are reflected in some form words.

English Urban Dialects

The most commonly cited cases in Britain are Cockney (London), Geordie (Newcastle), Scouse (Liverpool) and Glaswegian (Glasgow).

American English

The American variant of the English language differs from British English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary

British spelling         American spelling

cosy                           cozy

offence                       offense

practice                      practise

jewellery                    jewelry

travelling                    traveling

The existing cases of difference between the two variants are conveniently classified into:

Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in 'a cinema where you can see the film,without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorisls buy things staying in'the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'.

Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum(3), such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.

Cases where, the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. In England the derived meaning is 'the foot way at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.

Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train, ride in a boat are quite usual.

It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder expression of disapproval in England than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politician in England means 'someone in polities', and is derogatory(4) in the USA.

 Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, timetable which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations in American English is even more pronounced than in the British variant.

Communicative practices and linguistic patterns in rap and hip-hop

In the hip-hop world, New York and Los Angeles, gigantic sites of, Black oppression, become "Zoo York" and "Los Scandalous". Semantic inversion/flippin the script was an act of linguistic empowerment as Africans in America took an alien tongue and made it theirs; simultaneously, they created a communication system that became linguistically unintelligible to the oppressor, even though it was his language.

Canadian English

Canadian English is influenced both by British and American English but it also has some specific features of its own. Specifically Canadian words are called Canadianisms. They are not very frequent outside Canada, except shack 'a hut' and fathom out 'to explain'.

The distinctions that one must make in the Caribbean are distinctions among English and, in the case of Jamaica, Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. These varieties stretch from "Caribbean Standard" to the contact developments known variously as "Creoles", "patois", and "broken talk".

It may be useful to distinguish four types of West African English.

Pidgin(5) English

Pidgin English varieties of which can be found in coastal areas from Gambia to Equatorial Guinea Second, second-language English, Standard West African English,( Ghanaian and Nigerian English), francophone West African English

South African English vocabulary is characterized by semantic reformulation of English words with international currency and loans, many of which are from Afrikaans.

South Asian English

refers to several broad regional varieties such as Indian English, Lankan English, and Pakistani English. There are basically two sub-varieties within educated South Asian English; each providing a continuum from Pidgin English or broken English on the one hand to educated (or standard) south Asian English

Singapore-Malaysian English

representative examples of typical Singapore-Malaysian English expressions come from the background languages, especially from Malay and its pidginized(6) form.

ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

Today English is the native language of virtually all native-born Australians (except possibly for a few very young or very old Aboriginals).

English became established around the beginning of the 19th century. Australian English is therefore much more similar to the accents of present-day England than North American English, but enough time has passed to develop a distinctive accent different from any spoken in England.

General Features of English in Australia

• Australian English is remarkably homogenous(7)/uniform, no classic geographical dialects.
• early white Australians entered through a very small number of seaports and remained in contact by sea through these ports
• social (and linguistic) solidarity against Britain-based officials and administrators
• high mobility (i.e. lots of mixing) of the early Australian population
• three main social dialects: Broad, General and Cultivated Australian – main difference in vowel quality
• cultivated: very similar to RP (essentially Near-RP), minority accent, considered snobbish
• general: strong vowel shifts similar to southeastern England, middle class accent
• broad: strong rural and working-class accent with lengthened first elements of diphthongs
• all forms of Southern Hemisphere English share features of southeastern

New Zealand English was established in its essentials by the 1840s and is quite similar to Australian English, but also has some distinctly different features:

• only slightly younger than Australian English with similar settlement history
• geographically homogenous without pronounced regional characteristics (no difference between North and South Island; exception: southernmost provinces of South Island (Otago, Southland))
• rhotic(8) “Southland Burr” due to Scottish settlement history
• similar range of social dialects from Cultivated to General to Broad New Zealand English
• generally very similar to Australian English

Spanglish

The hybrid lingo known as Spanglish - the language of choice for a growing number of Hispanic-Americans who view the hyphen in their heritage as a metaphor for two coexisting worlds.

Famous linguist David Crystal puts it like this: "Experts on English these days are fond of the unexpected plural: We find books and articles talking about 'the English languages' or 'the new Englishes'. What they are emphasizing is the remarkable variety which can be observed in the way sounds, spellings, grammar and vocabulary are used within the English speaking world." (Crystal, The English language)
What sounds like linguistic hairsplitting actually has a reverberation into real life. Those varieties are not considered to be dialects, but are equally correct.
Therefore, American English spelling 'theater' and British English spelling 'theatre' are both acceptable in most contexts, even academic exams and legal agreements. However, beware of switching!

1. A pluricentric (поліцентрична) language is a language with several standard versions, both in spoken and in written forms. This situation usually arises when language and the national identity of its native speakers do not, or did not, coincide.
2. Dialectisms are linguistic peculiarities that are characteristic of territorial dialects and are interspersed in literary speech. They stand out in the flow of literary speech as deviations from the standard. Distinctions are made among phonetic dialectisms, the unusual use of prepositions, word-formation dialectisms, and lexical dialectisms.

3. Denotatum (позначуване слово) - the actual object referred to by a linguistic expression.

4. Derogatory (зневажливий) - expressive of low opinion; "derogatory comments"; "disparaging remarks about the new house"

5. Pidgin (гібридна мова) is a simplified form of speech that is usually a mixture of two or more languages, has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary, is used for communication between groups speaking different languages, and is not spoken as a first or native language. Also called contact language.

6. Pidginize to develop (a language) into a pidgin.

7. Homogenous/homogeneous (однорідний, гомогенний) - of the same or similar nature or kind.
8. Rhotic - denoting or speaking a dialect of English in which postvocalic rs are pronounced