Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 May 25

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May 25

How old is the English langauge?

How old is the English langauge? Neptunekh2 (talk) 04:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

English language might have some info on its history. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:29, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

And History of the English language and Old English#History some more. The oldest version of English attested in writing comes from the 7th century AD, but English speakers arrived in Britain in the 5th century, which is probably as good a point as any for identifying the language as a distinct "English" language rather than a dialect of Proto-Anglo-Frisian or something. The trouble with saying how old any language is, is that with a few exceptions (like creoles and Nicaraguan Sign Language), languages don't have identifiable births. Rather, they've evolved from older versions in an unbroken continuum. English evolved from Proto-Germanic, which evolved from Proto-Indo-European, which evolved from something else, and so on. That's why in general it's pretty meaningless to say "Language X is older than language Y" unless you carefully define what exactly you mean by "older". —Angr (talk) 05:13, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

At least 20 years old, as I moved to America in 1991 and people were already speaking English there. 94.27.134.217 (talk) 18:19, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

2 Question about the English Language

1. Is the English Language the youngest/newest existing human oral language? 2. What percent the world's populations speaks English as a first language or second language or at least understand English? Thanks! Neptunekh2 (talk) 12:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

1. Yes and no - it probably changes as fast as many other languages. 2. As a first language, about 5.4% (375 million as a percentage of 6.92 billion). Estimates of the number who can speak the language range up to 1.8 billion or 26%. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:09, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

In terms of the age it depends how you define it. I believe that if you mean "how recently would the language be unintelligible to modern speakers" then it is among the youngest of languages, though normally Middle English and Old English are counted as English even though Middle English is difficult to follow and Old English needs to be learned as a separate language. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:20, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

1. Almost certainly not, although this may depend on your exact definition of language. Modern English is generally dated from the 16th century, whereas both Jamaican Patois and Afrikaans originated in the 17th century.

2. There is a table of statistics of people speaking English as a first or additional language in the English language] article. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:18, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

There are a number of constructed languages that are certainly younger than English. 130.88.134.224 (talk) 13:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

... such as this, since 1979. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:40, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Hawaiian Creole dates back to the late 19th century[1]. Another creole, Tok Pisin, is an official language of Papua New Guinea, and seems of similar age[2]. Because creoles arise from simpler pidgins that are not true languages, it's hard to be precise as to when they come into existence. Sheng arose in the 1970s but there is debate over whether it's really a language. Another possibility is Modern Hebrew, which was developed in the late 19th century and 20th century; this depends on whether you consider it distinct from ancient Hebrew. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:15, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

English dialects or accents in Northern Canada

Could someone please describe to me what the Canadian accent sounds like in Northern Canada specially Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut? Thanks! Neptunekh2 (talk) 12:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the best thing for you to do would be to look for videos on the Internet of people from those areas. You can look up the names of famous people from northern Canada on pages like Category:People from Yukon by occupation and then look for interviews of them on Youtube. Jordin Tootoo grew up in Nunavut, for example. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:38, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

People's accents in those areas vary. Inuit people from that region speak a version of Canadian English whose pronunciation is influenced by the phonology of the Inuit languages. Members of the First Nations may speak versions of Canadian English influenced by their various ancestral languages. White Canadians in these regions have come there mainly from other parts of Canada, and their accents will reflect their places of origin. Marco polo (talk) 20:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)