THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1. Current Status
Geographically the most widespread language on Earth is English, and it is
second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. English is the
national language of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New
Zealand. It is one of the two national languages of Canada. It is an official or
semiofficial language in many former and present British possessions such as South
Africa, India, and Hong Kong.
The existence of 1.9 billion speakers of English, including some 350 million
of native speakers, makes this language the largest global lingua franca in use in our
global village.
2. Classification
English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is, therefore,
related to most of the languages spoken in an area stretching from Iceland across
Europe to India. The language most closely resembling Modern English is Frisian,
which is spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland. Icelandic, on the other hand, has
changed little in more than 1,000 years. It is the living language most closely
resembling Old English.
3. 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. For example, the French
word for "beautiful" or "fine" is beau. When used to modify the plural noun arts, it
becomes beaux, as in the expression beaux-arts, meaning "fine arts." When used
before a vowel, it becomes bel, as in le bel age, an idiom for "youth." When used to
modify a noun of the feminine gender, it becomes belle, as in la belle dame, or
"beautiful lady."
English, on the other hand, 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). Weak, or regular, verbs have only four
forms: talk, talks, talked, and talking, for example. Strong, or 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.

1
 4. Flexibility
Along with a loss of inflection came a flexibility of use. Words that were once
distinguished as nouns or verbs by their inflections are now used both ways. 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. English adopts or adapts any word as needed to name a new object or describe
a new process.
5. Word Formation
New words have been frequently formed by adding a prefix or suffix, by
combining words, or by blending words. A prefix is attached to the front of a word:
sub + way, subway; over + do, overdo. Sometimes a foreign prefix is added such as
the Greek macro- or micro-: macroeconomics, microbiology.
One of the most common suffixes is -er, which usually means someone who
engages in the act that the verb suggests: singer, player, seeker, writer. Other suffixes
also denote activity: actor, hatmaker, merchant, scientist.
Combining words to form new ones is common: cloverleaf, gentleman,
dateline. Some words in combination alter their meanings slightly: “already” is not
quite the same as “all ready”, and a “gentleman” is not quite the same as a “gentle
man”. “Blackbird” is a specific kind of fowl, but “black bird” suggests a bird of a
particular color.
Blends of words fall into two categories - a coalescence or a telescoped word.
One of the most commonly used coalescent forms is “smog”, a blend of the words
“smoke” and “fog”. A telescoped form is “motorcade”, made by combining “motor”
with a remnant of “cavalcade”. In the same way a “travel monologue” becomes a
“travelogue”, and a “cable telegram” a “cablegram”.
6. 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.
Among the many words that come from the Germanic are the nouns father,
mother, brother, man, wife, ground, land, tree, grass, summer, and winter. Germanic-
based verbs include bring, come, get, hear, meet, see, sit, stand, and think.
From French have come such political terms as constitution, president,
parliament, congress, and representative. Also borrowed from French are city, place,
village, court, palace, manor, mansion, residence, domicile, cuisine, diner, cafe,
liberty, veracity, carpenter, draper, haberdasher, mason, painter, plumber, and tailor.
Many terms relating to cooking, fashion, drama, winemaking, literature, art,
diplomacy, and ballet also come from France.
English has acquired many words from Spanish. Some of these have been
borrowed directly: cigar, armada, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, and tornado. Others
have come to Spanish from one of the Indian languages of the Americas: potato and
tomato, for example. Many Spanish words have come directly into the United States
from Latin America: canyon, lasso, mustang, pueblo, and rodeo.
Borrowings from Latin have been especially numerous. Many of these
represent combinations of Latin words: malnutrition, transfer, circumference,
supernatural, submarine, suburb, substantial, contemporary, multilingual,
conjunction, compassion, and hundreds more.

2
 Borrowings from Greek are heavy in the sciences and technology. In addition
to macro- and micro-, often-used prefixes include poly- and tele-. Among the well-
known English words from Greek are alphabet, geometry, geology, photography,
psychology, psychiatry, pathology, biology, philosophy, telephone, logistics, and
metamorphosis.
Arabic words have usually come into English by way of another European
language, especially Spanish. Arabic was spoken in Spain during the period of the
Muslim domination. Among the common English words that have come from Arabic
are: alcohol, alchemy, algebra, alkali, almanac, arsenal, assassin, cipher, elixir,
mosque, naphtha, sugar, syrup, zenith, and zero.
Common words borrowed from other languages are: coffee (Turkish); gull
(Cornish); flannel (Welsh); brogue, blarney, shamrock, clan, and plaid (Gaelic and
Irish); mammoth, soviet, and vodka (Russian); robot (Czech); paprika (Hungarian);
jungle, thug, shampoo, dungarees, 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); and ukulele (Hawaiian). Other words from native languages include
hammock, hurricane, tobacco, and maize (Caribbean) and voodoo and chimpanzee
(African).
7. Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and their physiological production and
acoustic qualities. It deals with the configurations of the vocal tract used to produce
speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), the acoustic properties of speech sounds
(acoustic phonetics), and the manner of combining sounds so as to make syllables,
words, and sentences (linguistic phonetics).
British Received Pronunciation (RP), by definition, the usual speech of
educated people living in London and southeastern England, and the American Inland
Northern pronunciation are two of the many forms of standard speech.
7.1. The English Speech Sounds
This list contains the principal sounds of standard British English (the
pronunciation associated with southern England which is often called Received
Pronunciation).
Symbols for the sounds are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA). The IPA scheme is similar to that employed by Oxford Dictionaries.
Consonants:

IPA Examples IPA Examples

get, go chip, chin
jam, judge Scots loch
sing, ring thin, thick
then, this she, ship
pleasure, vision yet, use, beauty

Short Vowels:

3
IPA Examples IPA Examples
cat, bad, trap bed, net, dress
about, comma kit, bid, hymn
happy, glorious hot, odd, wash
dug, run, strut book, put, foot
Long Vowels:
IPA Examples IPA Examples
cart, arm hair, dare, various
her, nurse meet, see, fleece
port, saw boot, too
Diphthongs/Triphthongs:
IPA Examples IPA Examples
bite, my, price brow, how
fate, day goat, show, no
pier, near boil, choice, boy
tour, poor square, fair
sour fire
Other Symbols:
IPA Purpose
Precedes the syllable which has the primary stress
Precedes a syllable which has a secondary stress
() Surround an optional sound

Other means to phonemic differentiation in English, apart from the

pronunciation of distinct vowels and consonants, are stress, pitch, and juncture. Stress
is the sound difference achieved by pronouncing one syllable more forcefully than
another, for example, the difference between record (noun) and record (verb). Pitch
is, for example, the difference between the pronunciation of John and John? Juncture
or transition of words causes such differences in sound as that created by the
pronunciation of blackbird (one word) and black bird (two words).
7.2. Stress
Four degrees of stress may be differentiated: primary, secondary, tertiary, and
weak, which may be indicated, respectively, by acute ( ´ ), circumflex ( ˆ ), and grave
( ` ) accent marks and by the underline ( _ ). Thus, Têll mè the trúth (the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth) may be contrasted with Têll mé the trûth (whatever you
may tell other people); bláck bîrd (any bird black in color) may be contrasted with
bláckbìrd (that particular bird Turdus merula). The verbs permít and recórd
(henceforth only primary stresses are marked) may be contrasted with their
corresponding nouns pérmit and récord. A feeling for antepenultimate (third syllable
from the end) primary stress, revealed in such five-syllable words as equanímity,
longitúdinal, notoríety, opportúnity, parsimónious, pertinácity, and vegetárian, causes
stress to shift when extra syllables are added, as in histórical, a derivative of hístory
and theatricálity, a derivative of theátrical. Vowel qualities are also changed here and

4
in such word groups as périod, periódical, periodícity; phótograph, photógraphy,
photográphical. French stress may be sustained in many borrowed words; e.g.,
bizárre, critíque, duréss, hotél, prestíge, and techníque._
7.3. Pitch
Pitch, or musical tone, determined by the rate of vibration of the vocal cords,
may be level, falling, rising, or falling–rising. In counting one, two, three, four, one
naturally gives level pitch to each of these cardinal numerals. But if a person says, I
want two, not one, he naturally gives two falling pitch and one falling–rising. In the
question One? rising pitch is used. Word tone is called pitch, and sentence tone is
referred to as intonation. The end-of-sentence cadence is important for meaning, and
it therefore varies least. Three main end-of-sentence intonations can be distinguished:
falling, rising, and falling–rising. Falling intonation is used in completed statements,
direct commands, and sometimes in general questions unanswerable by yes or no;
e.g..: I have nothing to add. Keep to the right. Who told you that? Rising intonation is
frequently used in open-ended statements made with some reservation, in polite
requests, and in particular questions answerable by yes or no: I have nothing more to
say at the moment. Let me know how you get on. Are you sure? The third type of end-
of-sentence intonation, first falling and then rising pitch, is used in sentences that
imply concessions or contrasts: Some people do like them (but others do not). Don't
say I didn't warn you (because that is just what I'm now doing).
7.4. Juncture
The transition from one given phoneme to another may be of two kinds: an
open transition (symbolized by /+/ ), which implies a slight, hardly perceptible pause
such as we find at the boundary of two words or between two meaningful parts of a
compound word, and a close transition (unmarked) which represents the usual manner
in which phonemes are joined together within a word.