Talk:English language/Archive 15

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309 million native English speakers???

You've got to be kidding. If you add up the populations of the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland you get over 410 million!!!!! I know you are only counting native speakers, however, when counting up other languages it seems as though someone just added up the populations of all the countries where the particular language is spoken! Not everyone in Latin America speaks Spanish! Some speak Guarani, Quechua and Aymara. Not everyone in Germany, Austria and Switzerland speaks German either!!! Why do you only use native speakers for English??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 05:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The European countries are generally national states, where the nationality and the language are the same. However the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are multi-ethnic countries due to the immigration from all over the world. That's why it is difficult to count the number of first-language speakers in these countries.

Interesting. I was just about to point out that the 1.8 billion English speaker estimate (including non-native speakers) seemed a bit high and seemed to be citing an article that doesn't cite it's sources at all. I guess from this we can gather that there are around 1.5 billion non-native english speakers. And then if you go look at this interesting picture which shows knowledge of English as red and ignorance of English as blue (this map was compiled with data provided from the UN and covers censuses from years 1983-2003... you get a very different idea of the English dominance over the world... If you go to ethnologue.org and it estimates the total of all English speakers at some 8% (around 500 million) and only about 5% (around 300 million -- must be that 309 million you refer to) native, but it's about nine years out of date. Is there any current data from a reputable source to use for this data? I know it's probably impossible to get, but maybe there's a more reliable estimate. 75.171.157.101 (talk) 21:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Most of the grey is actually "no data", not 50%. The area with no data is easily greater than half a billion people, maybe closer to 1.5 billion (just south america is 400-500 million people). I don't think it is possible to be accurate when 25% is unknown. For that reason I think wikipedia should be promoting a "no reasonable estimate is possible", rather than some highly-variable estimate (1.8 billion, give or take 500 million — thats before you deal with whether to count japan, china, and india, where the blk of the people who are counted can't really speak it, but they can read and write it). — robbiemuffin ^{page talk} 04:14, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

85 million americans can't speak English? 15 million canadians? 6 million Australians? i think alot of these figure are dubious at best —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.87.70.232 (talk) 12:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

If we're really trying to guesstimate the global population of people with a functional knowlege of English, I'd propose that adding up the total literate populations of all countries where it is an official language (effectively the Commonwealth plus US and a few others). For example, I am South African and basically all South Africans with a high school education are capable of understanding at least basic english as it is a requirment for graduation. The same requirement also exists in countries such as India and Kenya. English is also offered as a second language in schools in other countries such as Germany and Japan. Locating and adding up these stats would however be difficult and I unfortunately don't have the time. Roger (talk) 18:02, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The statement "English is the first language for most people in the United States, Canada ..." is obviously exaggerated. I think that some concrete percentages would be meaningful in this case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.163.55.99 (talk) 09:51, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that concrete numbers would be helpful, I'm not sure how it is an exaggeration to state that English is the first language of most people in the United States. Funnyhat (talk) 05:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

For many people of Latin American, Italian, German, French, Polish or Chinese ancestry, English is not the first language, because they speak another language at home. Taking into account that the summed-up percentage of the named people is very high, the number of first-language English speakers has to be reduced accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.163.53.193 (talk) 09:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

US Census figures from 2000 (see Languages of the United States for the citations) are that about 215 million people in the U.S., about 82.1%, speak English at home. This does not necessarily mean that it's their native language (though for most of them of course it is), nor does it mean that the other 17.9% can't speak English, merely that it's not the language they speak at home. "What language do you speak at home?", while not completely unproblematic, is a considerably less slippery question that "What is your native language?" —Angr 10:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

You cant really count the population when it comes to working out how many people speak natively English, because most of the population in Englissh speaking countries will nativley speak other native languages. Even in England, a fifth of the population speaks another native language —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.192.246.56 (talk) 16:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

as of this generation a lot of people are not speaking the english language correctly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.2.31.77 (talk) 12:33, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

And some people write it without using correct capitalization. —teb728 t c 17:55, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

My "pet peeve" is people who don't/can't distinguish between "there", "their" and "they're". I @#$%^& HATE THAT!!!

Question

I've recently noticed that english seems based on biblical mathematics 6s, 7s, and 911-13 (29s) CAN ANYONE find more information on this? webster is slow ta reply. :/ -git —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.80.8.2 (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

You can be pretty confident that the English language is not based on “Biblical mathematics”, or on sixes and sevens, and whatever. Rather, counting words in English tend to be decimal-based (corresponding to the typical number of fingers of a human). See Number names and Names of numbers in English, for example. --Mathew5000 (talk) 01:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

very very confused with the indian numbers

i am trying to edit the numbers for indians speakers.

total is 600 million

as a first language is 200 million

as a second language is 400 million

everybody in india speaks english. how else do u think we communicate??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.160.81.173 (talk) 01:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

What source are you using for these numbers? Although I don't doubt that most people from India speak English at least as a 2nd language, we need to cite reliable sources to make any changes to these figures. Kman543210 (talk) 01:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Rubbish! Anecdotal evidence indicates that some Indians do not speak or understand English to any useful degree. Any number of "Travel/Tourism in India" type television programmes, frequently show examples of Indian people unable to communicate effectively in English. Roger (talk) 18:27, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. While most, even virtually all, educated Indians speak English, there are of course millions upon millions of people in India who can't. —Angr 18:41, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Originates in England?

In other Wikipedia articles it says:

'Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon,[1] Englisc by its speakers) is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and southern Scotland between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century'

So doesn't that mean that both Scotland and England have been speaking 'English' for roughly the same time? I understand that Old English differs hugely from contemporary English and obviously there would have many different sounding dialects (Northumbrian, Kentish etc.)

There just seems to be some contradiction and unclarity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.217.137 (talk) 09:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The Old English spoken in southern Scotland evolved into the Scots language. As this article explains that is a dialect of English or a separate language, depending on one's definitions. —teb728 t c 22:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Seperate language? But English in Scotland and parts of Northern England originated from Northumbrian Old English so does that mean Northern English is a language also? Same words - 'cannae', 'aboot', 'aye' etc. And even grammatical tendancies - e.g - Classic Northumbrian English that you would hear in Scotland would be 'That ones' as opposed to 'Those ones' - English speakers in Scotland refered to themselves as 'Inglis' right up until about the 14th century, where they changed to 'Scots' to differentiate from their Southern cousins. I don't know, I just think it's a bit unclear - it's also a bit of a bold statement simply to say English originated in England, end of. So many words in today's English are from Scottish English dialects - pinky, cuddle etc.

Ah well, just my pennies worth. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.10.47 (talk) 01:26, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

English can also be considered as a German dialect because the English pronunciation of very many Germanic words is the same as in German dialects (home, alone, stone-house, louse, lice, mouse, mice, green, feel, fill, filler, miller, apple, pear, silver, end, rind, father, mother, is, kiss, fire, seen, bee, sing, a while, etc.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.102.26 (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The words "Germanic" and "German" are not exact synonyms. Roger (talk) 19:15, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

hindi now ranks above english in native speakers

the source in this article is from 1999, india is now the most populous nation in the world. hindi has more native speakers than english now according to the hindi wiki —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lamp23 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes according to the hindi wiki. p.s you spell English with acapttal letter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SJ3000 (talk • contribs) 18:07, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

And you spell Hindi with a capital letter too. Scroggie (talk) 19:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The syntax of German and Dutch is also significantly different from English, with different rules for setting up sentences (for example, German Ich habe noch nie in der Platz nichts gesehen, vs. Engli

Your German translation of the English sentence is mutually unintelligible for a German speaker. The translation could be something along the lines: Ich habe immer noch nichts auf dem Platz gesehen. It would increase your credibility when writing about languages to get at least the basics right. Oflossmann (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I fixed it to "Ich habe noch nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen". Thanks for the tip; I hadn't even realized that paragraph was there in this article! —Angr 21:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

In some cases the English syntax is like in archaic forms of German dialects (German: Singst du jeden Tag? English: Do you sing every day? German dialect: Tust du singa jeden Tag?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.82.157 (talk) 22:09, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Celtic Pronunciation

The Pronunciation of English, particularly in Britain, is simlar to that of the celtic languages most notably welsh. The individual letters or letter combinations may not be pronounced the same but the sound will be found in another letter or letter combination.

Could this please be added to show the celtic conections. --SJ3000 (talk) 20:55, 10 September 2008 (GMT)

Do you have a source for this claim? —Angr 04:17, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they are called ears and lodgic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SJ3000 (talk • contribs) 18:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me re-phrase the question. Do you have a published, reliable source for the claim? —Angr 19:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thats what they said to Einstein--SJ3000 (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know who you think said that to Einstein. He didn't seem to have trouble getting published, but then he never tried to post anything to Wikipedia. If he had posted original research here, indeed it would have been rejected as a violation of a core policy. —teb728 t c 18:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

To the original poster - where is the sound in English that is designated in Welsh by ll ? ðarkuncoll 18:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I am Irish and having missed learning Irish in school, I find it impossible to pick up. The word for book, for instance "Liber", well thats the word for book in Francais and Latin (and others), right? WRONG. That word is pronounced "laowuera" (depending where you live) and it follows on from there. BUT, this guy is right about Welsh Celtic. As a prime example try the en.wiki article Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which, if I recall, is pronounced in perfectly understandable english tones all the way, and is the longest name of a town in the UK or the world, or something, since forever ago (albeit in a Welsh accent 89.204.240.36 (talk) 03:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Please bear in mind if listening to the ogg on that Llyanfair page for the pronunciation, it only starts halfway through. 89.204.240.36 (talk) 03:47, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

ENGVAR

This article contains a mixture of -ise and -ize words. We need to make it consistent - but which should it be? Roger (talk) 06:54, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

This is a case where WP:ENGVAR calls for following the oldest version of the page. I've gone through the history of the page and am astonished at how long this article managed to be free of any spellings that were either distinctively British or distinctively American. As far as I can tell, the first edit that introduced a country-specific spelling was this one from July 2003, which added the American spellings "encyclopedia" and "neutralize". That would suggest this article should use consistently American spellings. (Regardless of the fact that I myself have just reverted someone else's change from a British to American spelling – I did that before I had researched the page history.) —Angr 09:11, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Angr that it should be whatever the original, or in this case, oldest version was. I have dial up, so I shall trust that your research is correct. On a side note, the article name that was changed and reverted back is actually spelt with the American spelling International organization. I have seen piping in these instances to prevent redirects if the British spelling was chosen (international organisation), but I'm not sure if it's policy to pipe rather than allow it to automatically redirect. I know that there may also be those who insist that the English language has strong national ties with the United Kingdom and should be the British spelling, but I would say that's rubbish; no one country owns the language. Kman543210 (talk) 09:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

In general, there's no reason to pipe out a redirect. If International organisation redirects to International organization, there's no reason to write [[international organization|international organisation]]; it's just a waste of space in the edit box. Let the redirect do its job. And I also agree that this article cannot plausibly be claimed to have strong national ties with the UK and not with the U.S. —Angr 14:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok then US English it is! I really wish en.wikipedia could get a tag that one can add to articles to cleary identify the variety, like so: "ENGVAR:AUS", "ENGVAR:UK", etc. I don't know how to go about it at all, or where to propose it but may I suggest here that someone who does know how these things are done takes up the issue in the correct forum. Roger (talk) 14:29, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Some pages do have tags on their talk pages, but not very many. I'm not sure what the names of the relevant templates are, though, or even where to look to find them. —Angr 14:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this article at least would deserve some effort to use geographically neutral spelling where possible. If the article made it as far as 2003 devoid of any geographical bias perhaps it could continue to do so. As far as 'ise' vs 'ize' the article could use the geographically neutral OED 'ize' for that particular case.Zebulin (talk) 05:01, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

“Idiomatic″ Section

The table in the “Idiomatic″ section is weird: first two columns are exactly the same. Should we make them into a single column or put some words there with different forms for Activity and Actor(s)? melikamp (talk) 23:22, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Order bugbear

I know it's petty nationalism, but in the phonology section shouldn't RP symbols precede Yankee-doodle ones? I know that RP has no claim to historical primacy, but since it has come to represent English as spoken in England (rightly or wrongly), it would be better if it were at least placed first here. The language isn't called English because it was started off in ***New*** England, after all.

I understand that the English Wikipedia has a policy of sorts that articles about general topics be in any English variant, articles involving the UK be in British English, those involving the US in American English, etc. English may be the global language now, but I hope that England does still have some special status in regards to its own language, and that this article, above all other regions, involves England. Clearly other English variants must be discussed - but in an appropriate order. As much as we like him, we can't let Uncle Sam usurp EVERYTHING, after all.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.241.83.99 (talk) 21:50, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not seeing anywhere where RP forms are cited after American English forms. And no, England doesn't have any special status in this article. —Angr 21:58, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I don't know the IPA symbols completely, so I can't tell which ones are first. I believe that 41.241.83.99 is referring to the tables in the Phonology section where some of the IPA symbols have two different ones (ɝ/ɜː). Yes, I agree with you that it seems a little petty, and I would recommend that you avoid wording such as Yankee-doodle and Uncle Sam on the talk page which could be taken as pejorative. That being said, the order of the IPA symbols doesn't matter to me, although I can't see any justification for changing them. Kman543210 (talk) 22:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)