LINGUISTICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

(A) Some basic linguistic terms: Language, Indo-European languages, LangueParole, Tongue, Lingua Franca, Dialect, Slang, Jargon, Register, and Idiolect.
(B) Classical and Modern Languages
(C) The English Language: Current Status; History; Classification; Characteristics
(Inflection, Flexibility, and Vocabulary); Varieties of English.
(A) Some basic linguistic terms:
Language: 1. The way human beings communicate using words, whether written or
spoken. 2. It is also used for the particular system of communication prevailing in a
specific country, nation, or community.
Indo-European languages: family of European and Asian languages: a family of
languages conventionally divided into the following branches: Balto-Slavonic, Germanic,
Italic, Indo-Iranian, Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Anatolian, and Tocharian. This
language family, now spoken from India to Western Europe, includes many modern
languages, for example, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, and Urdu.
Langue: the system of language.
Parole: real-world language.
Tongue: the particular language used by a specific country, nation, or community.
Lingua Franca: a language or mixture of languages used for communication by people
who speak different first languages.
Dialect: the specific way a language is used in a particular area of a country or among
those in a particular part of a community when this is distinct in some way from the
language spoken generally in that nation or community.
Slang: the words, expressions, and turns of phrase used by a particular group of people,
especially when these are considered nonstandard.
Jargon: the words associated with a particular specialized activity or group or used in a
particular situation, especially in order to suggest that they are technical or difficult for an
ordinary person to understand.
Register: language of a type that is used in particular social situations or when
communicating with a particular set of people (e.g.: formal, informal).
Idiolect: the particular language or speech habits of an individual.
(B) Classical and Modern Languages: Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Classical
Chinese; languages currently spoken in the world (e.g.: Modern Greek).
(C) English
1. Current Status
National language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New
Zealand (500 million).
One of the two national languages of Canada.
Asia: English as a second language in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Nepal, and Bhutan.

 Africa: English is an official language in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland,

Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, and Kenya, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria,
Ghana, and Liberia.
The largest global lingua franca in use in our global village (billions of
speakers).
2. History
Celtic: Celts
Latin: Romans (1st century BC); conversion to Christianity in the 6th and 7th
centuries AD.
Germanic dialects (5th century AD): Germanic tribes: Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
Norse (8th century): Vikings.
Norman French (1066): The Norman Conquest.
Old English (or Anglo-Saxon): Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish
dialects spoken from 449 to 1100 AD.
Middle English: from about 1100 to 1450 AD. The Statute of Pleadings (1362)
made English instead of French the official language of Parliament and the courts.
Modern English
3. Classification
As a Germanic language, English belongs to the Indo-European family of
languages.
4. Characteristics:
4.1.
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.
English 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, and grouse.
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). Regular verbs have only four forms: talk, talks,
talked, and talking, for example. Irregular verbs have five forms: sing, sings, sang,
sung, and singing. A few verbs that end in a t or d have 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.
4.2.

Flexibility
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 as nouns.

4.3.
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.
Germanic: the nouns father, mother, brother, man, wife, ground, land, tree, grass,
summer, and winter.
French: constitution, president, parliament, congress, and representative; city, place,
village, court, palace, residence, domicile, cuisine, liberty, veracity.
Spanish: cigar, armada, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, and tornado.
Latin: malnutrition, transfer, circumference, supernatural, submarine, suburb,
substantial, contemporary, multilingual, conjunction, compassion.
Greek: alphabet, geometry, geology, photography, psychology, psychiatry, pathology,
biology, philosophy, telephone, logistics, and metamorphosis.
Arabic: alcohol, alchemy, algebra, almanac, arsenal, assassin, cipher, elixir, mosque,
sugar, syrup, and zero.
coffee (Turkish); gull (Cornish); flannel (Welsh); clan, and plaid (Gaelic and Irish);
mammoth, soviet, and vodka (Russian); robot (Czech); paprika (Hungarian); jungle,
thug, shampoo, 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).
5. Varieties of English
British English, American English, Australian and New Zealand English.
Asia: English as spoken in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and
Bhutan.
Africa: English as spoken in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Malawi, Uganda, and Kenya, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia.
General English and English for Special Purposes (e.g.: English for Academic
Purposes; English for Medicine; English for MBA).