Talk:English language/Archive 13

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Bad wording

In "History", how about replacing the word 'coalesced' with a more easily understood turn of phrase such as 'merged' or 'blended together'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.101.4.101 (talk) 16:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Under the subject of "Word Origins" the phrasing is awkward:

..."Latinate" (Latin-derived, either directly from Norman French or other Romance languages).

This incorrectly implies that no words come directly from Latin. (According to the article, about half of the Latinate words are from Latin, half are from Norman French, and a couple spare percent are from other Romance languages.) Or it implies, strangely, that Latin words coming through Norman French are somehow more "direct" than those coming from other Romance languages. I propose two possible reworkings to make the definition clearer. First:

..."Latinate" (Latin-derived, either directly, or from Romance languages, especially Norman French).

Or second:

..."Latinate" (derived directly from Latin or indirectly through Norman French or other Romance languages).

68.108.72.157 (talk) 16:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The Map of the Anglosphere

First of all who ever made this deserves a round of applause. But there is one problem. The Pacific Islands seem to be missing. Hawaii in particular is missing. Hawaii has over a million native English speakers after all. If someone could add it to the map that would be great. -- Tocino 23:06, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems that map is intended only for clicking on to take you to articles on English in various parts of the world. The "real" Anglosphere map is the one shown in the infobox, Image:Anglospeak.svg, which does show Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 23:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that the Uganda article is placed over Indonesia, so you know. 134.226.1.229 (talk) 17:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Word use

I'm not sure where to go with this question; hopefully someone here can help me. There is a discussion on the use of the word "pseudoscience". One view is that it is a widely known word that is used amongst the general population, and is always a neutral, correct word to describe a wide variety of scientific-related speculation on connections between new age or spiritual ideas and concepts.

The other view is that pseudoscience is not very well known or used by the general public; and in the scientific circles where it is sometimes used, is considered a pejorative term. I've had personal anecdotal information from both physicists and English professors that pseudoscience is indeed a pejorative when not used with the proper context, and that it should be used cautiously. Any opinions on this would be helpful, and any sources to back up either view would be a huge, huge help!! Dreadstar † 05:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Native speakers table

Shouldn't Jamaica be listed eighth instead of Singapore in the table for native speakers? Barney Hill (talk) 16:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It isn't clear whether native speakers of Jamaican Creole English should also be counted native speakers of English. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I found this a strange omissions reading the article as well. Jamaicans certainly have a distinctive dialect (ditto other Anglo-Caribbean), but I don't think anyone would question their status as English speakers. Even when mutual intelligibility is at it's breaking point English speakers (in my experience) are very broad and forgiving in what they consider 'English'. Moreover I think all English speakers, Jamaicans included, are able to 'neutralize' their dialect if the need arrises since written English is more or less standardized internationally (even if it's often far removed from the vernacular).

If we're going to employ the standard of 'common acceptance' then I think there's no question Jamaicans speak English and should be counted as such. -- stewacide (talk) 09:19, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I was startled to see that only 75% of the Australia population is listed as a native speaker of English. The reference quotes "English spoken at home". I have many Australian friends who are fluent and native speakers, but who don't speak English at home. One has to laugh at the precision of the figure, as well. Tim Richardson (talk) 07:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Use of the voiceless velar fricative

The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is also commonly used by South African English speakers. Source: Me and the thousands of other South African English speakers that I have ever heard. Roger (talk) 17:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Language with the most number of native and non-native speakers

This is the relevant sentence which I am proposing that we change (italics to be removed):

However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese Languages, depending on whether or not distinctions in the latter are classified as "languages" or "dialects."

The italicized part of the sentence states that there are more people (native and non-native combined) speaking the Chinese languages (mandarin + dialects) than there are English speakers. This proposition might be true when it comes to native speakers alone, but when it takes into account non-natives, it is factually false.

First, from the relevant publications listed in this article itself, there are approximately 1.6 to 1.8 billion English speakers in the world (native and non-native combined) - see here and here.

The first publication used to justify the italicized statement in question lists only 150 million secondary English speakers in the world - this is factually inaccurate as in China alone there are approximately 300 million secondary English speakers - see here and here.

The second publication used to justify the italicized statement in question merely states the number of people that speak different Chinese dialects - see page 16 - even then it does not justify the conclusion that there are more Chinese/dialect speakers than English speakers (the file lists less than a billion mandarin + dialect speakers).

Also, population of China: taken from the PRC wikipedia article - ~1.32 billion (see also the official Chinese population clock); total population of Overseas Chinese ~40 million - thus, even if we consider the total population of Chinese in the world (~1.4 billion), it is still far less than the amount of English speakers (1.6-1.8 billion).

Thus, the statement in the article that there are more people speaking the Chinese languages (mandarin + dialects) than there are English speakers (native + non-native), is factually inaccurate and misleading - it should be removed. R4ge (talk) 08:08, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

It is very possible that you are right but, with all due respect, this is original research (WP:OR and not appropriat in the article. I don't know how long you've been on Wikipedia and how well you know the concept of original research, but it pretty much covers exactly a situation such as this one. You have taken different parts from different articles and then arrived at your own conclusion. Once again, that is not to say that you may not be right, but let me point out just a few problems. In the English number, you've included a very high number of secondary speakers of English. To arrive at your number, you've used the population in countries with an English majority, not the number of English speakers. You will find millions in Canada, in South Africa and in many other countries who don't speak English despite living in a country where English is spoken. For China, you've applied an opposite measurement and limited your calculation only to China, disregarding that China has an exceptionally large diaspora all over the world, most of whom are probably able to speak English.

This is the reason Wikipedia discourages WP:OR. Our task is to fill in information from sources, not to take many different sources and start doing our own calculations. JdeJ (talk) 08:42, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. A few things...

1. To arrive at the total number of English speakers, I used numbers from this very article - I do not think that this article calculates the number of English speakers simply by the population of the countries - see the links above - the statistics clearly indicate the number of native and non-native speakers in each country.

2. With regards to China, I merely took into account the maximum possible number of mandarin + dialect speakers in the country - as you see, I simply used the numbers which are already used in the Wikipedia articles - also, if we are to use the second publication - it clearly says at page 16 that there are less than a billion Chinese who speak mandarin and its various dialects combined.

3. If what I'm doing is WP:OR, it is clear that this very statement which I'm trying to remove is WP:OR - it is only supported by one citation which is really on point, and the numbers used in that cited article are clearly outdated or outright wrong (as I've refuted in the various links above). R4ge (talk) 09:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

i want to improved my english language

hi im Renel Trinidad i want to learn how to speak & pronouns english. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.42.21.59 (talk) 15:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Map

The new map is totally stupid and way less accurate than the old one. Can someone explain Quebec in this map?Alphador (talk) 05:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes: Quebec isn't a country, it's a province of Canada. As the caption says, the map shows countries where English is a primary language in dark blue, and English is a primary language in Canada. The map does not show subnational divisions like provinces. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:16, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The map is absurd. How is this one any more accurate than the one with a dark blue South Africa and a grey Quebec? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alphador (talk • contribs) 10:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

See my explanation above: The map shows countries because showing anything smaller would be unmaintainable. South Africa is light blue because English is not the predominantly spoken language there. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 15:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The newest map is even stupider than the middle-age one! South Africa should 'DEFINATELY' be dark blue, as it is the native language there. And Quebec should not. 124.182.193.216 (talk) 10:37, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

English is only one of eleven official languages of South Africa (read this article). Mother-tongue English speakers (such as myself) are a very small minority. There is a map in the aforementioned article that shows that there is not even one municipality in the whole of South Africa with a majority of English speakers.

Quebec is not a country - it is just a province of Canada which as a whole is majority English speaking. If the map follows your sugestion where do we stop subdividing countries? It would for example be quite ridiculous to shade majority Spanish and majority English counties in the US light and dark blue. Roger (talk) 22:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"If the map follows your sugestion where do we stop subdividing countries?"

When they're too small to be visible on the map. Québec is not that small and must be coloured differently. Aaker (talk) 18:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

No matter how ardently some Quebecois might wish it were so, Quebec is not currently a sovereign nation state. The day it gains independence from Canada it will qualify to have a lighter shade of blue on the map, but not before then. Roger (talk) 20:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Do the majority in Québec speak English natively? Why should the province be coloured dark blue if they don't speak English? Do you think it's correct to colour whole Canada French-speaking too? I really don't understand why it would be wrong to include subdivisions to make the map more correct. Aaker (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The map includes countries where ONE of the languages is English. A similar map for French-speaking countries would include the whole of Canada but lighter colours as French doesn't make a majority language in Canada. The map doesn't show provinces, states, etc. but countries--Atitarev (talk) 23:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

And not just any one of the languages, but (in dark blue) the predominant language. English is the predominant language in the entire country of Canada, so the entire country of Canada is dark blue. If we were to add subdivisions to the map, then not only would Quebec become light blue, but so would Nunavut. And if we make province-level subdivisions, why not smaller ones? Shall we color Apache County, Arizona light blue since the predominant language there is Navajo? Shall we put a light blue dot over Kiryas Joel, New York since the predominant language in that village is Yiddish? Where would it end? The map will become unmaintainable, illegible, and overly politically charged if we start showing divisions smaller than countries. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 23:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

"English is the predominant language in the entire country of Canada" No, it's not the predominant language in Francophone and Inuit-speaking parts. "Where would it end?" Answer: When the subdivisions are too small to be visible on the map. Hence the map will not be unmaintainable, illegible or politically charged. Aaker (talk) 22:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I meant, English is the predominant language in the country of Canada as a whole. And since the map is an infinitely scalable SVG, there's nothing too small to be visible on the map. Coloring Quebec differently from the rest of Canada will open the map up to coloring every street in New York City where English does not predominate differently from the rest of the U.S. It's a ridiculous proposal. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, colouring every street in NYC is a ridiculous proposal, but as far as I know, nobody has made such a proposal. Quebec and North Brooklyn is not the same thing. But I get your point, you think the map would lack consistency. I have to disagree though, I think large clearly visible areas/subdivisions where the population should not be coloured as if they were. It's not a ridiculous proposal! Aaker (talk) 14:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The trouble is that this is an "all or nothing" situation. If you do it for one country you have to do it for all. I don't envy the person who has to figure out which shade of blue to use for e.g. the states of India. Very few countries have provinces/states that are large enough to be usable in this map. There are bound to be some countries where the necessary data simply does not exist. American(US) exceptionalism is already a sore enough point for many WP users - do we now really have to be confronted with Canadian/Quebecois exceptionalism too? Ultimately the bottom line for me is that the title of the map uses the word "countries" rather than "provinces/states/regions" Roger (talk) 18:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why this must be an "all or nothing" situation. If we do it for one country we do not have to do it for all. Why not? - You gave the answer: "Very few countries have provinces/states that are large enough to be usable in this map". We have to be confronted with Quebecois exceptionalism as long as Quebec is an exception. It's true that Quebec is not a country but languages do not follow the same borders as states. Aaker (talk) 19:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The borders of Quebec (and the other provinces/territories) are no less 'imprecise' / 'misleading' than the borders of Canada as a whole: I would guess that geographically-speaking most of Quebec has a non-native-french-majority, and of course there are huge swaths of the other provinces and territories where English isn't the majority native language. Canada, like most countries, has is a complex mixture of languages.

...point being every 'artificial' boundary (national, provincial, municipal...) is an imperfect compromise, but unless you have the data and drive to gradiate the whole globe we're stuck with the borders of the most appropriate unit of analysis, in this case countries (given the scale of the map and the desire for uniformity). -- stewacide (talk) 09:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Canada is far from an exception in this context. In fact I can think of only one English speaking country that has no non-English mother tongue population. Not even the UK qualifies. All English speaking countries except for the Falkland Islands are in fact multilingual. I repeat my previous assertion: This is a map of Countries, Quebec is not a country. I really think it is time you (Aaker) drop this issue, you have not convinced even one other editor here of the merits of your argument. You are flogging a dead horse. Roger (talk) 18:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it's time to drop the issue because no new arguments are coming. If convincing other editors is the criterion of what's right and wrong, we can have a vote about it. But I cannot understand how such a vote would make any claim more or less correct. I'm afraid this issue will return quite often as long as Quebec is wrongly coloured, and you'll have to go through this debate every time. Aaker (talk) 18:48, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

We might add some clarity to the map by, instead of using a 50% threshold (with an indeterminate floor), colouring the countries by % of native English speakers. To guess, I'd think the UK/Ireland would be +90%, the US +80%, Canada +60%? etc. -- stewacide (talk) 20:19, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Scots

Some of the statements about Scots in this article are somewhat confusing, inaccurate or could be better phrased. Let's look at what it currently says:

Apart from such English-lexified creole languages such as Tok Pisin, Scots (spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland) is not a Gaelic language, but is part of the Anglic family of languages, having developed from early northern Middle English. It is Scots' indefinite status as a language or a group of dialects of English which complicates definitely calling it the closest language to English.

Scots developed — largely independently — from the same origins, but following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from English causing dialectalisation. Whether it is now a separate language or a dialect of English better described as Scottish English is in dispute. The pronunciation, grammar and lexis of the traditional forms differ, sometimes substantially, from other varieties of English.

The first thing to say is that whether something is considered a language or dialect has little to do with the language variety itself, and far more to do with political, historical and cultural factors (or, as Max Weinreich is said to have succinctly put it, "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy"). So the first statement ("...which complicates definitely calling it the closest language to English") could apply to any number of language varieties. I have heard people say "American" should be considered a separate language (or, as George Bernhard Shaw supposedly put it, "England and America are two countries separated by the same language"). So I would suggest changing the first section to something more neutral, e.g.: "Scots (spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland) is not a Gaelic language, but is part of the Anglic family of languages, having developed from early northern Middle English. As such, it may be considered the language most closely related to English. However, its status as a language is in dispute (see main article on Scots)."

As for the second passage, the most popular view among scholars of Scots (J Derrick McClure, Jack Aitken, Ronald Macaulay, Jane Stuart-Smith, Fiona Douglas...) is that today Scots and Standard Scottish English are best treated as two separate varieties with a continuum between them. Thus, any given speaker's utterances may be located somewhere on this continuum. People who are speaking something closer to the "Scots end" of the continuum may be regarded as speaking Scots, whereas those at the other end can be said to be speaking (Scottish) English. This section too, should be rephrased. (A minor point: if we are using the terms pronunciation and grammar, we should probably use vocabulary rather than lexis. Otherwise, it should be phonology, syntax and lexis. --Junglehungry (talk) 08:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Word origins improvement proposal

Add additional languages origins sample. Why are Dutch and French privileged? For me it's easier to learn new word, when I know it origin. For example amok is malay word and I know story about this one. Of course on wiktionary I can check that amok is malay, but I can't list malay words in english language. Offtopic - maybe a mindmap of languages, how words are loaned between languages (it is not simply dictionary-translator!!!), it could be great tool for polyglots. It could unify wiki in some sense.

83.4.191.22 (talk) 17:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)Lifiarz

Probably because more than 90% of the English vocabulary is of Germanic or Latin root. Aaker (talk) 22:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

query of statistical information

The number of native English speakers in Australia according to the 2006 census was 15,581,334. However, 1,127,760 people did not state their language. I personally find the table to be slanted because many native(taking the word here too mean birth.) English speakers in Australia may speak several languages at home. Personally I know of many who speak English as well as another language at home despite one of their native languages being English. Can some one look into providing statistics that more accurately depict the number in countries where English is spoken. http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/... Dbmoodb (talk) 01:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Tanzania

There has been a discussion over whether to consider English as a de facto official language of Tanzania- See Talk:Tanzania

This article and Tanzania contradict each other so I am using contradict-other as a template. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Whatever is decided, please avoid using the oxymoron "de facto official language". —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:18, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Look, you guys work it out yourselves, without a huge orange display at the top of the article that will distract almost every reader. I'm removing it. Tony (talk) 13:23, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistent figures

Under "Geographical distribution" it says, "Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language", and, "United States (215 million)". That would give 57% to the Americans.

Then there's a pie graph labeled, "Distribution of native English speakers by country (Crystal 1997)", which gives 67% to the Americans. That's quite a difference. --RenniePet (talk) 08:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Given that you're taking numbers from three different sources, this difference doesn't surprise me too much. The biggest difference is in the total number of native speakers: Crystal gives 337 million, versus 375 million from Curtis. Curtis's figure seems quite high to me, based on the figures for different countries given in our article, but I haven't read his book. -- Avenue (talk) 13:44, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

England Flag

For some reason people have been reverting the England flag I inserted at the top of the page? Why do people object to the flag of the country where the language originates? --Camaeron (talk) 15:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I wish flags were completely banned from Wikipedia. I feel bad vibrations whenever I see certain flags. And it does say somewhere that Wikipedia is "not a place to show patriotism or national pride" - one man's pride may well be another man's aversion. --RenniePet (talk) 15:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, people may have different reasons. My reasoning is rather different from RenniePet and I have no wish to see flags banned. What I do like is a certain degree of similarity between related articles. We have one article on almost every language in the world, quite long articles on at least the top 200 languages. At present, they all follow the same outline. Now, for some languages it's not a big deal to add a flag but that's not the case for many others. Did Korean originate in North Korea or South Korea? And Portuguese originated in contemporary Spain, but using the flag of Spain would of course be a bit strange. German originated in the area that today is Germany, but the current German flag is a recent creation and not necessarily representative for the language. These are just a few of the many controversies I foresee if we change the template of language articles to include flags. For that reason, I would suggest keeping them out. JdeJ (talk) 15:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Whilst I agree that wikipedia is not a place to show patriotism or national pride I do think the England flag would be appropriate here. In my opinion all language pages should include an appropriate flag. Germany could use their old flag and the other pages can decide on their own. Its not really our problem after all is it? I only comment in areas I am informed about (can speak) which in this case would be German, English, Scots and French... --Camaeron (talk) 15:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The fact that other language articles don't display the flag of the language's country of origin is perhaps not particularly relevant, but the reason other language articles don't do so, and the reason there's a lot of resistance to adding the flag of England here is relevant. And the reason, quite simply, is that the flag is a symbol of the country, not the language. The fact that English "originated in" England (which is only true for a rather idiosyncratic definition of "originate in") is not actually a particularly relevant or interesting fact about the English language. Nowadays only a small portion of English speakers even live in England, but even for language like Japanese where the vast majority of speakers do live in the language's country of origin, plastering a big Japanese flag across the top of the article Japanese language just wouldn't be appropriate, again because it's a symbol of the country, not the language. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Besides, any living language is an amalgamation of the usage of all of its speakers. I think most recordings of spoken English originated in the US; why not the US flag? That may soon be eclipsed by the country with the most English speakers, India; why not that flag? That in turn may soon be eclipsed by the country with most population, China; why not the PRC flag? Anyway, why the English flag instead of the British Flag? England, as opposed to GB, has barely any meaning on a global scale. Outside of Commonwealth Games - type events like the Rugby World Cups, its international presence is near negligible. Many people even in English-speaking nations recognize the colours of the Union Jack but not Saint George's Cross. There's a good reason the Olympic Games use the one British flag. If we really want to nitpick and use a flag to show the language's origins, shouldn't we use the flags of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians? English was preceded by Celtic in England, so it's not even the original language of England or English language. National flags are great because they express meaning, independent from language, but unless you want to put up the flag of every national and first-order subnational entity where English is official or co-official, no flag should be used. Even if you did want to do so, the highest-order administrative division applicable would be preferable and its placing should be in a sidebar or section, not plastered so large right at the top. Seeing as English is official throughout GB, a GB flag carries more weight in the first place, so representing a subnational entity like in the English flag is merely divisive. Nice try, though. :)--Thecurran (talk) 21:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, English is not the official language of the UK - see List of countries where English is an official language, among other sources. --Junglehungry (talk) 18:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The Government of the United kingdom has a habbit of making already adopted symbols and languages seeming official One of the very few official things in the national athem and isn't that rather rubbish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.107.142.240 (talk) 11:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)