Sticker sold in Colorado demanding that immigrants speak English
The English-only movement, also known as the Official English movement, is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States. The United States has never had a legal policy proclaiming an official national language, although an executive order issued by president Donald Trump on March 1, 2025, declared English to be the official language of the United States. Historically, in various locations throughout the United States, there
have been various moves to promote or require the use of English, such
as in American Indian boarding schools.
Following American independence, other European languages continued to be spoken and taught in bilingual education, especially German and later also Spanish following the country's Southwest expansion. However, following a rise in nativism, support for the English-only movement began in 1907, under U.S. PresidentTheodore Roosevelt. Non-English languages increasingly began to be devalued as part of forced Anglophone assimilation and Americanization, fueled also by anti-German sentiment in the 1910s, and bilingual education had virtually been eliminated by the 1940s.
The English-only movement continues today. Studies prove high percentage in approval ratings. Republican candidates have supported this movement during elections. The English-only
movement has also received criticism and rejection within societies and
educational systems. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stated that English-only laws are inconsistent with both the First Amendment right to communicate with or petition the government, as well as free speech and the right to equality, because they bar government employees from providing non-English language assistance and services.
Early efforts
When the US Constitution
was ratified, a multitude of languages were spoken in the United States
other than English, including: German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian,
Portuguese, Greek, Yiddish, Arabic, and hundreds of indigenous American languages.
However, the elite idealized a country united by one language, shunning
non-Anglophones (as well as non-Whites and non-Protestants) from
society.
Disputes between citizens and immigrants over English have been
waged since the 1750s, when street signs were changed in Pennsylvania to
include both English and German languages to accommodate the many
German immigrants. The German–English debate continued until World War I
when international hostility resulted in the rejection of all things
German, including the prohibition of the German language and
German-language materials, particularly books.
In 1803, as a result of the Louisiana Purchase, the United States acquired French-speaking populations in Louisiana. As a condition to admittance to the Union,
Louisiana included in its constitution a provision, which was later
repealed, that required all official documents be published in the
language "in which the Constitution of the United States is written". Today, Louisiana has no law stating that English is the official language of the state.
An 1847 law authorized Anglo-French instruction in public schools in Louisiana. In 1849, the California constitution recognized Spanish language rights. French language rights were abolished after the American Civil War. In 1868, the Indian Peace Commission recommended English-only schooling for the Native Americans. In 1878–79, the California constitution was rewritten to state that "[a]ll laws of the State of California,
and all official writings, and the executive, legislative, and judicial
proceedings shall be conducted, preserved, and published in no other
than the English language."
In the late 1880s, Wisconsin and Illinois passed English-only instruction laws for both public and parochial schools (see Bennett Law).
In 1907, US PresidentTheodore Roosevelt
wrote, "We have room for but one language in this country, and that is
the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our
people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house."
During World War I, there was a widespread campaign against the use of the German language in the US; this included removing books in the German language from libraries. (A related action took place in South Australia as well with the Nomenclature Act of 1917. The legislation renamed 69 towns, suburbs, or areas that had German names.)
In 1923, a bill drafted by Congressman Washington J. McCormick
became the first proposed legislation regarding the United States'
national language that would have made "American" the national language
in order to differentiate American English from British English.
Support
U.S. English is an organization that advocates for Official English, founded in the 1980s by former United States Senator S. I. Hayakawa and John Tanton. ProEnglish is another group founded by Tanton that advocates Official English.
In 2018, a Rasmussen poll found that 81% of American adults
thought that English should be the official language of the United
States, while 12% did not. Another such poll found that, in 2021, 73% of Americans thought that
English should be the official language, and 18% disagreed.
Contemporary
In 1980, Dade County, Florida voters approved an "anti-bilingual ordinance". However, this was repealed by the county commission in 1993, after "racially orientated redistricting" led to a change in government.
In 1981, English was declared the official language in the commonwealth of Virginia.
In 1994, John Tanton and other former U.S. English associates founded ProEnglish specifically to defend Arizona's
English-only law. ProEnglish rejects the term "English-only movement"
and asks its supporters to refer to the movement instead as "Official
English".
The U.S. Senate voted on two separate changes to an immigration bill in May 2006. The amended bill recognized English as a "common and unifying language"
and gave contradictory instructions to government agencies on their
obligations for non-English publications.
In what was essentially a replay of the 2006 actions, on June 6,
2007 the US Senate again voted on two separate amendments to a
subsequent immigration reform bill that closely resembled the amendments
to the 2006 Senate bill. Ultimately, neither the 2006 nor 2007 immigration reform bill has become law.
On January 22, 2009, voters in Nashville, Tennessee rejected a proposal
under a referendum election to make "Nashville the largest city in the
United States to prohibit the government from using languages other than
English, with exceptions allowed for issues of health and safety." The
initiative failed by a vote of 57% to 43.
In March 2012, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was criticized by some Republican delegates from Puerto Rico
when he publicly took the position that Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking
territory, should be required to make English its primary language as a
condition of statehood.
In 2015 during a debate, then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said, "This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish."
On February 6, 2019, the 116th Congress introduced a bill in House establishing English as the official language of the United States. The House of Representatives
named it the English Language Unity Act of 2019. Within this bill,
there is a framework for implementation. They strive to enforce English
as the only language by testing it during the naturalization process. This bill has yet to be passed.
Another English Language Unity Act was introduced by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2025, which has also yet to be passed.
In 2023 then U.S. senator and current U.S. Vice President JD Vance introduced a bill that would have established English as the official language of the United States.
On March 1, 2025, President Donald Trump
issued an executive order titled "Designating English as the Official
Language of The United States" in which he stated "From the founding of
our Republic, English has been used as our national language. Our
Nation’s historic governing documents, including the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, have all been written in English. It
is therefore long past time that English is declared as the official
language of the United States. [...] Accordingly, this order designates
English as the official language of the United States."
Criticism
The modern English-only movement has met with rejection from the Linguistic Society of America,
which passed a resolution in 1986–87 opposing "'English only' measures
on the grounds that they are based on misconceptions about the role of a
common language in establishing political unity, and that they are
inconsistent with basic American traditions of linguistic tolerance."
Linguist Geoffrey Pullum, in an essay entitled "Here come the linguistic fascists", charges English First
with "hatred and suspicion of aliens and immigrants" and points out
that English is far from under threat in the United States, saying
"making English the official language of the United States of America is
about as urgently called for as making hotdogs the official food at baseball games." Rachele Lawton, applying critical discourse analysis, argues that English-only's rhetoric suggests that the "real motivation is discrimination and disenfranchisement."
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stated that English-only laws are inconsistent with both the First Amendment right to communicate with or petition the government, as well as free speech and the right to equality, because they bar government employees from providing non-English language assistance and services. On August 11, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13166,
"Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English
Proficiency." The Executive Order requires Federal agencies to examine
the services they provide, identify any need for services to those with limited English proficiency (LEP), and develop and implement a system to provide those services so LEP persons can have meaningful access to them.
While the judicial system has noted that state English-only laws
are largely symbolic and non-prohibitive, supervisors and managers often
interpret them to mean English is the mandatory language of daily life. In one instance, an elementary school bus driver prohibited students from speaking Spanish on their way to school after Colorado passed its legislation. In 2004 in Scottsdale,
a teacher claimed to be enforcing English immersion policies when she
allegedly slapped students for speaking Spanish in class. In 2005 in Kansas City,
a student was suspended for speaking Spanish in the school hallways.
The written discipline referral explaining the decision of the school to
suspend the student for one and a half days, noted: "This is not the
first time we have [asked the student] and others to not speak Spanish
at school."
One study both of laws requiring English as the language of
instruction and compulsory schooling laws during the Americanization
period (1910–1930) found that the policies moderately increased the
literacy of some foreign-born children but had no impact on immigrants'
eventual labor market outcomes or measures of social integration. The
authors concluded that the "very moderate impacts" of the laws were
probably because foreign languages were declining naturally, without the
help of English-only laws.
Current law
Map
of US official language status by state as of 2022. Blue: English
declared the official language; light-blue: English declared a
co-official language; gray: no official language specified.
No law has yet passed designating English the official language of the United States federal government; however, Executive Order 14224
declares English as official and is recognized by federal agencies. All
official documents in the U.S. are written in English, though some are
also published in other languages.
The expression speak white is used to order someone to speak English. With racial undertones, this imperativephraseme was mainly used during the 20th century against French-speaking Canadians. The insult was adopted in Quebec nationalist literature and notably served as the title of a famous poem written by Michèle Lalonde in 1968.
Historical usage of the expression
The first reported use of the expression speak white is claimed to date back to October 12, 1889. During debates in the House of Commons of Canada, anglophone MPs would have shouted "Speak White!" at francophone MP Henri Bourassa. However, according to Canadian anglophone journalist William Johnson, the first usage came later. Quebec francophone linguist Gabriel Martin concurs with this interpretation. According to him, the expression speak white is attested in Canada starting in the 1920s and its usage intensified during the 1944 conscription crisis:
During the Second World War, debates over mandatory military service deepened the divide between the country's two major linguistic communities. While anglophones were largely in favor of conscription, francophones generally opposed it. In this context the expression speak white became increasingly common in military circles, often hurled at those contemptuously referred to as zombies or frogs. In 1942, Quebec minister René Chaloult repeatedly denounced the presence of signs bearing the words Speak White in certain areas under Canadian naval control.
According to the linguist, testimonies from francophone Canadians reporting being told to speak white stretch into the 1980s, although the expression has become marginal in the 21st century.
On March 7, 2007, conservative journalist Larry Zolf wrote an article entitled "Speak White" published on the CBC News website, claiming that in his childhood in Winnipeg, Canadians would often shout "Speak white!" at his mother when she spoke to him in Yiddish. In the same article, Zolf criticized then Liberal Party candidate Stéphane Dion—who is francophone—by addressing the same "speak white" insult to Dion.
The expression speak white was common in Quebec literature in the period. For instance, it appears in the work of Yves Thériault in 1954 to denounce the dominance of English over Yiddish, and in Gaston Miron’s work in 1965 to highlight anglophone contempt toward francophones.
Speak White by Michèle Lalonde
The expression inspired Quebec poet Michèle Lalonde to write the committed poem Speak White in October 1968. It was first published in the magazine Socialisme
in December 1968 and publicly read during the Nuit de la poésie in
Montreal on March 27, 1970, which greatly contributed to its notoriety.
Written as a collective monologue, the poem denounces linguistic,
cultural, and economic domination between anglophones and francophones
in Quebec. The phrase speak white, used as the title and repeated
throughout the poem, symbolizes the linguistic, economic and
intellectual marginalization of francophones. The poem was published as a
poster-poem in 1974 by Éditions de l’Hexagone and has been translated,
adapted into film, and recorded. It also inspired reinterpretations,
including Marco Micone’s 1989 poem Speak What, which sparked controversy. Speak White is often cited as a representative work of Quebec’s linguistic and political history.
Contemporary views
In the 21st century, the legitimacy of the artistic and political use of speak white is framed as a controversial topic in a way to undermine historical and political claim of Quebec.
Anthropologist Emilie Nicolas, who studied Lalonde’s poem, argues
that using the "vocabulary of négritude to speak about francophones in
Canada" constitutes a "false equivalence" that trivializes slavery and
racism. Thus negating it's historical usage to qualify francophones. Journalist Pierre Dubuc finds Nicolas’s position "astonishing" and
"totally ahistorical," noting that "in the early 1960s, the
socio-economic conditions of Quebec workers resembled those of Black
Americans." Linguist Gabriel Martin emphasizes that Michèle Lalonde sought to
"highlight the fusion of linguistic contempt and racism underlying the
expression [speak white]."
English is either the official language, or one of the official languages, in 57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories, making it the most geographically widespread language in the world. In the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, it is the dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become the de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science, technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the Internet. Ethnologue estimated that there were over 1.4 billion speakers worldwide as of 2021.
Old English was one of several Ingvaeonic languages, which emerged from a dialect continuum spoken by West Germanic peoples during the 5th century in Frisia, on the coast of the North Sea. Old English emerged among the Ingvaeonic speakers on the British Isles following their migration there, while the other Ingvaeonic languages (Frisian and Old Low German) developed in parallel on the continent. Old English evolved into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian and Yola dialects of Ireland.
English was isolated from other Germanic languages on the continent and diverged considerably in vocabulary, syntax, and phonology as a result. It is not mutually intelligible
with any continental Germanic language – though some, such as Dutch and
Frisian, show strong affinities with it, especially in its earlier
stages. English and Frisian were traditionally considered more closely related to one another
than they were to other West Germanic languages, but most modern
scholarship does not recognise a particular affinity between them. Though they exhibited similar sound changes not otherwise found around
the North Sea at that time, the specific changes appeared in English and
Frisian at different times – a pattern uncharacteristic for languages
sharing a unique phylogenetic ancestor.
Manuscript (written in uncial script) of Beowulf, an epic poem composed in Old English between 975 and 1025.The poem begins: Hƿæt ƿē Gārde / na ingēar dagum þēod cyninga / þrym ge frunon ... [Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes ...]
Old English was divided into two Anglian dialects (Mercian and Northumbrian) and two Saxon dialects (Kentish and West Saxon). Through the influence exerted by the kingdom of Wessex, and the educational reforms instated by King Alfred during the 9th century, the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety. The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon's Hymn, is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. During the earliest period of Old English, a few short inscriptions were made using a runic alphabet. By the 7th century, a Latin alphabet had been adopted. Written with half-uncialletterforms, it included the runic letters wynn⟨ƿ⟩ and thorn⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letters eth⟨ð⟩, and ash⟨æ>.
Old English is markedly different from Modern English, such that
21st-century English speakers are entirely unable to understand Old
English without special training. Its grammar was similar to that of
modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms, and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns (he, him, his) and has a few verb inflections (speak, speaks, speaking, spoke, spoken), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings.
Influence of Old Norse
Between the 8th and 11th centuries, the English spoken in some regions underwent significant changes due to contact with Old Norse, a North Germanic
language. Several waves of Norsemen colonising the northern British
Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English speakers in constant
contact with Old Norse. Norse influence was strongest in the
north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in the Danelaw surrounding York; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English. The centre of Norse influence was Lindsey, located in the Midlands.
After Lindsey was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity in 920,
English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse
influence that continues in all English varieties today is the third
person pronoun group beginning with th- (they, them, their) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h- (hie, him, hera).
Other Norse loanwords include give, get, sky, skirt, egg, and cake,
typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this
era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of
Old English, particularly northern ones.
Englischmen
þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron,
and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion
and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe
contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng,
harryng, and garryng grisbytting.
[Although,
from the beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern,
northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ...
Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and
then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and
some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating
gnashing.]
The Middle English period is often defined as beginning with the Norman Conquest in 1066. During the centuries that followed, English was heavily influenced by the form of Old French spoken by the new Norman ruling class that had migrated to England (known as Old Norman).
Over the following decades of contact, members of the middle and upper
classes, whether native English or Norman, became increasingly
bilingual. By 1150 at the latest, bilingual speakers represented a
majority of the English aristocracy, and monolingual French speakers were nearly non-existent. The French spoken by the Norman elite in England eventually developed into the Anglo-Norman language. The division between Old to Middle English can also be placed during the composition of the Ormulum (c. late 12th century), a work by the Augustinian canon Orrm which highlights blending of Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in the language for the first time.
As the lower classes, who represented the vast majority of the
population, remained monolingual English speakers, a primary influence
of Norman was as a lexical superstratum, introducing a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. For instance, the French word trône appears for the first time, from which the English word throne is derived. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system,
probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were
inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction
between nominative and accusative cases was lost except in personal
pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive
case was limited to indicating possession. The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible.
Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1400), and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
(1485). In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in
writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by
authors such as Chaucer. In the first translation of the entire Bible into English by John Wycliffe (1382), Matthew 8:20 reads: "Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis." Here the plural suffix -n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present.
Illustration of the Great Vowel Shift that affected long vowels in Early Modern English. After the highest vowels /i: u:/ broke into diphthongs /ai au/, each of the lower vowels gradually shifted up one level to compensate.
The period of Early Modern English, lasting between 1500 and 1700, was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift
(1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic
standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels
of Middle English. It was a chain shift, meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised, and close vowels were broken into diphthongs. For example, the word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot
is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in
spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and
it also explains why English vowel letters have very different
pronunciations from the same letters in other languages.
English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during the reign of Henry V. Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents, and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard, developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands. In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English.
Literature in early modern English includes the works of William Shakespeare and the 1611 King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters/knɡnsw/ in knight, gnat, and sword
were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern
reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent the
distinct characteristics of early modern English. Matthew 8:20 in the KJV reads: "The Foxes have holes and the birds of the ayre have nests." This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject–verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and the introduction of loanwords from French (ayre) and word replacements (bird, originally meaning 'nestling', which had replaced Old English fugol).
Spread of Modern English
By the late 18th century, the British Empire
had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance.
Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education
all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language.
English also facilitated worldwide international communication. English was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa,
Oceania, and many other regions. When they obtained political
independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple indigenous languages
opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the
political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one
indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century the growing economic and cultural influence of the
United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World
War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In 1951, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recommended to the International Chicago Convention that Aviation English be universally adopted for "international aeronautical radiotelephony communications." In 2001, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) developed a set of key phrases, named Standard Marine Communication Phrases
(SMCP), in English to be the recognised language supported by the
international maritime community for use at sea. In the 21st century,
English is more widely spoken and written than any other language in
history.
As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage
were published, and spread through official media such as public
education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language, which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language
to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English
that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain,
non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly
stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among
the middle classes.
In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now found only in pronouns, such as he and him, she and her, who and whom), and subject–verb–object word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support, have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word do
as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it was only
used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in -ing,
appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as "had
been being built" are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular
forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of politer).
British English is also undergoing change under the influence of
American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in
the media.
Secondary language: spoken as a second language by more than 20 per cent of the population, de facto working language of government, language of instruction in education, etc.
As of 2016, 400 million people spoke English as their first language, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a second language. English is the largest language by number of speakers, spoken by communities on every continent. Estimates of second language and foreign-language speakers vary greatly depending on how proficiency is defined, from 470 million to more than 1 billion. In 2003, David Crystal estimated that non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of three-to-one.
Three circles model
Braj Kachru has categorised countries into the Three Circles of English
model, according to how the language historically spread in each
country, how it is acquired by the populace, and the range of uses it
has there – with a country's classification able to change over time.
"Inner-circle" countries have large communities of native English
speakers; these include the United Kingdom, the United States,
Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks
English – and South Africa, where a significant minority speaks English.
The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending
order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), South Africa (4.8 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from
their parents; citizens with other first languages, as well as incoming
immigrants, learn English to communicate in local English-speaking
neighbourhoods and workplaces. Inner-circle countries are the base from which English spreads to other regions of the world.
"Outer-circle" countries – such as the Philippines, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Nigeria –
have much smaller proportions of native English speakers, but use of
English as a second language in education, government, or domestic
business is significant, and its use for instruction in schools and
official government operations is routine. These countries have millions of native speakers on dialect continua, which range from English-based creole languages
to standard varieties of English used in inner-circle countries. They
have many more speakers who acquire English as they grow up through
day-to-day use and exposure to English-language broadcasting, especially
if they attend schools where English is the language of instruction.
Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to
English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar,
by the other languages spoken by those learners – with most including
words rarely used by native speakers in inner-circle countries, as well
as grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties.
"Expanding-circle" countries are where English is taught as a foreign language –
though the character of English as a first, second, or foreign language
in a given country is often debatable, and may change over time. For example, in countries like the Netherlands, an overwhelming majority of the population can speak English, and it is often used in higher education and to communicate with foreigners.
Pluricentric English
English is a pluricentric language, which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language. Spoken English, including English used in broadcasting, generally
follows national pronunciation standards that are established by custom
rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually
identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through
their accents, but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English.
The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by the
consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any
oversight by any government or international organisation.
American listeners readily understand most British broadcasting,
and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting.
Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes,
television programmes, and films from many parts of the English-speaking world. Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both
formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and
use both technical and non-technical registers.
The settlement history of the English-speaking inner circle
countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koiné forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The majority of immigrants to the United States without British
ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the
United States population are monolingual English speakers.
Australia has no official languages at the federal or state level.
In Canada, English and French share an official status at the federal level. English has official or co-official status in six provinces and three
territories, while three provinces have none and Quebec's only official
language is French.
English is the official second language of Ireland, while Irish is the first.
The United Kingdom does not have an official language. In Wales and Northern Ireland, English is co-official alongside Welsh and Irish respectively. Neither Scotland nor England have an official language.
In the United States, English was designated the official language of the country by Executive Order 14224 in 2025. English has additional official or co-official status at the state level in 32 states, and all 5 territories; 18 states and the District of Columbia have no official language.
Modern English is sometimes described as the first global lingua franca, or as the first world language. English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper
publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications,
scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and
diplomacy. Parity with French as a language of diplomacy had been achieved by Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919. By the time the United Nations was founded at the end of World War II, English had become pre-eminent; it is one of six official languages of the United Nations. and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations. Many other worldwide international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee,
specify English as a working language or official language of the
organisation. Many regional international organisations, such as the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) use English as their sole working language, despite most members
not being countries with a majority of native English speakers. While
the EU allows member states to designate any of the national languages
as an official language of the Union, in practice English is the main
working language of EU organisations. English serves as the basis for the required controlled natural languagesSeaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring and aviation.
English is the most frequently taught foreign language in the world. Most people learning English do so for practical reasons, as opposed to ideological reasons. In EU countries, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in
19 of the 25 member states where it is not an official language (that
is, the countries other than Ireland and Malta).
In a 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a
member of the EU), 38 per cent of the EU respondents outside the
countries where English is an official language said they could speak
English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next
most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most
widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in
conversation by 12 per cent of respondents. The global influence of English has led to concerns about language death, and to claims of linguistic imperialism, and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however, the
number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the
world believe that English provides them with better employment
opportunities and increased quality of life.
Working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine and computing. Though it formerly had parity with French and German in scientific research, English now dominates the field. Its importance in scientific publishing is such that over 80 per cent of scientific journal articles indexed by Chemical Abstracts
in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 per cent of all articles in
natural science publications by 1996, and 82 per cent of articles in
humanities publications by 1995.
As decolonisation proceeded throughout the British Empire in the
1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather
continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language
policies. For example, English is one of the official languages of India. Many
Indians have shifted from associating the language with colonialism to
associating it with economic progress. English is widely used in media and literature, with India being the
third-largest publisher of English-language books in the world, after
the US and UK. However, less than 5 per cent of the population speak English fluently,
with the country's native English speakers numbering in the low
hundreds of thousands. In 2004, David Crystal claimed India had the largest population of people able to speak or understand English in the world, though most scholars estimate the US remains home to a larger English-speaking population. Many English speakers in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon"
language community that unites Africans from different countries. Regarding its future development, it is considered most likely that English will continue to function as a koiné language, with a standard form that unifies speakers around the world.
Phonology
English phonology and phonetics
differ from one dialect to another, usually without interfering with
mutual communication. Phonological variation affects the inventory of phonemes (speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes. This overview mainly describes Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA), the standard varieties of the United Kingdom and the United States respectively.
Consonants
Most English dialects share the same 24consonant phonemes (or 26, if marginal /x/ and glottal stop /ʔ/ are included). The consonant inventory shown below is valid for California English, and for RP.
For pairs of obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives) such as /pb/, /tʃdʒ/, and /sz/, the first is fortis (strong) and the second is lenis (weak). Fortis obstruents, such as /ptʃs/ are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as /bdʒz/, and are always voiceless. Lenis consonants are partly voiced at the beginning and end of utterances, and fully voiced between vowels. Fortis stops such as /p/ have additional articulatory or acoustic features in most dialects: they are aspirated[pʰ] when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and often unreleased[p̚] or pre-glottalised [ʔp] at the end of a syllable. In a single-syllable word, a vowel before a fortis stop is shortened: e.g. nip has a noticeably shorter vowel (phonetically, not phonemically) than nib[nɪˑb̥] (see below).
Fortis stops: pin[pʰɪn]; spin[spɪn]; happy[ˈhæpi]; nip[nɪp̚] or [nɪʔp]
In RP, the lateral approximant /l/ has two main allophones (pronunciation variants): the clear or plain [l], as in light, and the dark or velarised[ɫ], as in full. GA has dark l in most cases.
Clear l: RP light[laɪt]
Dark l: RP and GA full[fʊɫ], GA light[ɫaɪt]
All sonorants (liquids /l,r/ and nasals /m,n,ŋ/) devoice when following a voiceless obstruent, and they are syllabic when following a consonant at the end of a word.
Voiceless sonorants: clay[kl̥eɪ̯]; snow RP [sn̥əʊ̯], GA [sn̥oʊ̯]
The pronunciation of vowels varies a great deal between dialects and
is one of the most detectable aspects of a speaker's accent. The
accompanying table below lists the vowel phonemes in RP and GA, with example words from lexical sets. The vowels are represented with symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet; those given for RP are standard in British dictionaries and other publications.
In RP, vowel length is phonemic; long vowels are marked with a triangular colon ⟨ː⟩ in the table above, such as the vowel of need[niːd] as opposed to bid[bɪd]. In GA, vowel length is non-distinctive.
In both RP and GA, vowels are phonetically shortened before fortis consonants in the same syllable, like /ttʃf/, but not before lenis consonants like /ddʒv/ or in open syllables: thus, the vowels of rich[rɪtʃ], neat[nit], and safe[seɪ̯f] are noticeably shorter than the vowels of ridge[rɪˑdʒ], need[niˑd], and save[seˑɪ̯v], and the vowel of light[laɪ̯t] is shorter than that of lie[laˑɪ̯].
Because lenis consonants are frequently voiceless at the end of a
syllable, vowel length is an important cue as to whether the following
consonant is lenis or fortis.
The vowel /ə/ only occurs in unstressed syllables and is more open in quality in stem-final positions. Some dialects do not contrast /ɪ/ and /ə/ in unstressed positions, such that rabbit and abbot rhyme and Lenin and Lennon are homophonous, a dialectal feature called the weak vowel merger. GA /ɜr/ and /ər/ are realised as an r-coloured vowel[ɚ], as in further[ˈfɚðɚ] (phonemically /ˈfɜrðər/), which in RP is realised as [ˈfəːðə] (phonemically /ˈfɜːðə/).
Phonotactics
An English syllable includes a syllable nucleus consisting of a vowel
sound. Syllable onset and coda (start and end) are optional. A syllable
can start with up to three consonant sounds, as in sprint/sprɪnt/, and end with up to five, as in (for some dialects) angsts/aŋksts/. This gives an English syllable a structure of (CCC)V(CCCCC) – where C represents a consonant and V a vowel. The word strengths/strɛŋθs/
is thus close to the most complex syllable possible in English. The
consonants that may appear together in onsets or codas are restricted,
as is the order in which they may appear. Onsets can only have four
types of consonant clusters: a stop and approximant, as in play; a voiceless fricative and approximant, as in fly or sly; s and a voiceless stop, as in stay; and s, a voiceless stop, and an approximant, as in string. Clusters of nasal and stop are only allowed in codas. Clusters of obstruents always agree in voicing, and clusters of sibilants and of plosives with the same point of articulation are prohibited. Several consonants have limited distributions: /h/ can only occur in syllable-initial position, and /ŋ/ only in syllable-final position.
Stress plays an important role in English. Certain syllables
are stressed, while others are unstressed. Stress is a combination of
duration, intensity, vowel quality, and sometimes changes in pitch.
Stressed syllables are pronounced longer and louder than unstressed
syllables, and vowels in unstressed syllables are frequently reduced while vowels in stressed syllables are not.
Stress in English is phonemic,
gaining freedom and dynamicity once lost in Proto-Germanic through a
majority of borrowings from non-Germanic languages. For instance, the
word contract is stressed on the first syllable (/ˈkɒntrækt/KON-trakt) when used as a noun, but on the last syllable (/kənˈtrækt/kən-TRAKT) for most meanings (for example, "reduce in size") when used as a verb. Here stress is connected to vowel reduction: in the noun "contract" the first syllable is stressed and has the unreduced vowel /ɒ/, but in the verb "contract" the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to /ə/.
Stress is also used to distinguish between words and phrases, so that a
compound word receives a single stress unit, but the corresponding
phrase has two: e.g. "a burnout" (/ˈbɜːrnaʊt/) versus "to burn out" (/ˈbɜːrnˈaʊt/), and "a hotdog" (/ˈhɒtdɒɡ/) versus "a hot dog" (/ˈhɒtˈdɒɡ/).
In terms of rhythm, English is generally described as a stress-timed language, meaning that the amount of time between stressed syllables tends to be equal. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer, but unstressed syllables
(syllables between stresses) are shortened. Vowels in unstressed
syllables are shortened as well, and vowel shortening causes changes in vowel quality: vowel reduction.
Regional variation
Phonological features in Standard English varieties
Varieties of English vary the most in pronunciation of vowels. The
best-known national varieties used as standards for education in
non-English-speaking countries are British (BrE) and American (AmE).
Countries such as Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa have their own standard varieties which are less often used as standards for education internationally.
English has undergone many historical sound changes, some of them affecting all varieties, and others affecting only a few. Most standard varieties are affected by the Great Vowel Shift,
which changed the pronunciation of long vowels, but a few dialects have
slightly different results. In North America, a number of chain shifts
such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Canadian Shift have produced very different vowel landscapes in some regional accents.
Some dialects have fewer or more consonant phonemes and phones than the standard varieties. Some conservative varieties like Scottish English have a voiceless[ʍ] sound in whine that contrasts with the voiced [w] in wine, but most other dialects pronounce both words with voiced [w], a dialect feature called wine–whine merger. The voiceless velar fricative sound /x/ is found in Scottish English, which distinguishes loch/lɔx/ from lock/lɔk/. Accents like Cockney with "h-dropping" lack the glottal fricative /h/, and dialects with th-stopping and th-fronting like African-American Vernacular and Estuary English do not have the dental fricatives /θ,ð/, but replace them with dental or alveolar stops /t,d/ or labiodental fricatives /f,v/.[173][174] Other changes affecting the phonology of local varieties are processes such as yod-dropping, yod-coalescence, and reduction of consonant clusters.[175][page needed]
GA and RP vary in their pronunciation of historical /r/ after a vowel at the end of a syllable (in the syllable coda). GA is a rhotic dialect, meaning that it pronounces /r/ at the end of a syllable, but RP is non-rhotic, meaning that it loses /r/ in that position. English dialects are classified as rhotic or non-rhotic depending on whether they elide /r/ like RP or keep it like GA.
There is complex dialectal variation in words with the open front and open back vowels/æɑːɒɔː/. These four vowels are only distinguished in RP, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In GA, these vowels merge to three /æɑɔ/, and in Canadian English, they merge to two /æɑ/.
Grammar
Typical for an Indo-European language, English grammar follows accusativemorphosyntactic alignment. Unlike other Indo-European languages, English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system in favour of analytic constructions. Only the personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class.
English distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns,
adjectives, adverbs, determiners (including articles), prepositions, and
conjunctions. Some analyses add pronouns as a class separate from
nouns, and subdivide conjunctions into subordinators and coordinators, and add the class of interjections. English also has a rich set of auxiliary verbs, such as have and do, expressing the categories of mood and aspect. Questions are marked by do-support, wh-movement (fronting of question words beginning with wh-) and word order inversion with some verbs.
Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in English, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs speak / spoke and foot / feet) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as love / loved, hand / hands). Vestiges of the case and gender system are found in the pronoun system (he / him, who / whom); similarly, traces of more complex verb conjugation are seen in the inflection of the copula verb to be.
The seven word classes are exemplified in this sample sentence:
Det.
Noun
Prep.
Det.
Noun
Conj.
Det.
Adj.
Noun
Verb
Advb.
Conj.
Det.
Noun
Verb
The
chairman
of
the
committee
and
the
loquacious
politician
clashed
violently
when
the
meeting
started.
Nouns and noun phrases
English nouns
are only inflected for number and possession. New nouns can be formed
through derivation or compounding. They are semantically divided into proper nouns (names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically into count nouns and mass nouns.
Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the plural suffix -s,
but a few nouns have irregular plural forms. Mass nouns can only be
pluralised through the use of a count noun classifier, e.g. "one loaf of
bread", "two loaves of bread".
Possession can be expressed either by the possessive enclitic -s (also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the preposition of. Historically the -s possessive has been used for animate nouns, whereas the of possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -s also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from a singular noun with an apostrophe. If the noun is plural formed with -s the apostrophe follows the -s.
Possessive constructions:
With -s: "The woman's husband's child"
With of: "The child of the husband of the woman"
Nouns can form noun phrases
(NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on
them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives. Noun phrases can be short, such as the man, composed only of a determiner and a noun. They can also include modifiers such as adjectives (e.g. red, tall, all) and specifiers such as determiners (e.g. the, that). But they can also tie together several nouns into a single long NP, using conjunctions such as and, or prepositions such as with,
e.g. "the tall man with the long red trousers and his skinny wife with
the spectacles" (this NP uses conjunctions, prepositions, specifiers,
and modifiers). Regardless of length, an NP functions as a syntactic
unit. For example, the possessive enclitic can, in cases which do not lead to
ambiguity, follow the entire noun phrase, as in "The President of
India's wife", where the enclitic follows India and not President.
The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms of definiteness, where the marks a definite noun and a or an
marks an indefinite one. A definite noun is assumed by the speaker to
be already known by the interlocutor, whereas an indefinite noun is not
specified as being previously known. Quantifiers, which include one, many, some and all, are used to specify the noun in terms of quantity or number. The noun must agree with the number of the determiner, e.g. one man (sg.) but all men (pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.
Adjectives
English adjectives are words such as good, big, interesting, and Canadian that most typically modify nouns, denoting characteristics of their referents (e.g. "a red car"). As modifiers, they come before the nouns they modify and after determiners. English adjectives also function as predicative complements (e.g. "the child is happy").
In Modern English, adjectives are not inflected so as to agree
in form with the noun they modify, as in most other Indo-European
languages. For example, in the phrases "the slender boy", and "many
slender girls", the adjective slender does not change form to agree with either the number or gender of the noun.
Some adjectives are inflected for degree of comparison, with the positive degree unmarked, the suffix -er marking the comparative, and -est
marking the superlative: "a small boy", "the boy is smaller than the
girl", "that boy is the smallest". Some adjectives have irregular suppletive comparative and superlative forms, such as good, better, and best. Other adjectives have comparatives formed by periphrastic constructions, with the adverb more marking the comparative, and most marking the superlative: happier or more happy, the happiest or most happy. There is some variation among speakers regarding which adjectives use
inflected or periphrastic comparison, and some studies have shown a
tendency for the periphrastic forms to become more common at the expense
of the inflected form.
Determiners
English determiners are words such as the, each, many, some, and which, occurring most typically in noun phrases before the head nouns and any modifiers and marking the noun phrase as definite or indefinite. They often agree with the noun in number. They do not typically inflect for degree of comparison.
Pronouns, case, and person
English pronouns
conserve many traits of case and gender inflection. The personal
pronouns retain a difference between subjective and objective case in
most persons (I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them) as well as an animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishing it
from the three sets of animate third person singular pronouns) and an
optional gender distinction in the animate third person singular
(distinguishing between feminine she/her, epicenethey/them, and masculine he/him. The subjective case corresponds to the Old English nominative case, and the objective case is used in the sense both of the previous accusative case (for a patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and of the Old English dative case (for a recipient or indirect object of a transitive verb). The subjective is used when the pronoun is the subject of a finite clause, otherwise the objective is used. While grammarians such as Henry Sweet and Otto Jespersen noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Latin-based system, some contemporary grammars, including The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, retain traditional nominative and accusative labels for the cases.
Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the
dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as in my chair), while the independent form can stand alone as if it were a noun (e.g. "the chair is mine"). Grammatical person in English no longer distinguishes between formal
and informal pronouns of address, with the second person singular
familiar pronoun thou that previously existed in the language having fallen almost entirely out of use by the 18th century.
Both the second and third persons share pronouns between the plural and singular:
Plural and singular are always identical (you, your, yours) in the second person (except in the reflexive form: yourself/yourselves) in most dialects. Some dialects have introduced innovative second person plural pronouns, such as y'all (found in Southern American English and African-American Vernacular English), youse (found in Australian English), or ye (in Hiberno-English).
In the third person, the they/them series of pronouns (they, them, their, theirs, themselves) are used in both plural and singular, and are the only pronouns available for the plural. In the singular, the they/them series (sometimes with the addition of the singular-specific reflexive form themself) serve as a gender-neutral set of pronouns. These pronouns are becoming more accepted, especially as part of LGBTQ culture.
Pronouns are used to refer to entities deictically or anaphorically.
A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it
relative to the speech situation – for example, the pronoun I identifies the speaker, and the pronoun you, the addressee. Anaphoric pronouns such as that
refer back to an entity already mentioned or assumed by the speaker to
be known by the audience, for example in the sentence "I already told
you that". The reflexive pronouns are used when the oblique argument is
identical to the subject of a phrase (e.g. "he sent it to himself" or
"she braced herself for impact").
Prepositions
Prepositional phrases (PP) are phrases composed of a preposition and
one or more nouns, e.g. "with the dog", "for my friend", "to school",
"in England". English prepositions
have a wide range of uses – including describing movement, place, and
other relations between entities, as well as functions that are
syntactic in nature, like introducing complement clauses and oblique
arguments of verbs. For example, in the phrase "I gave it to him", the preposition to marks the indirect object of the verb to give.
Traditionally words were only considered prepositions if they governed
the case of the noun they preceded, for example causing the pronouns to
use the objective rather than subjective form, "with her", "to me", "for
us". But some contemporary grammars no longer consider government of
case to be the defining feature of the class of prepositions, rather
defining prepositions as words that can function as the heads of
prepositional phrases.
Verbs and verb phrases
English verbs are inflected for tense and aspect and marked for agreement with a third person present singular subject. Only the copula verb to be is still inflected for agreement with the plural and first and second person subjects. Auxiliary verbs such as have and be are paired with verbs in the infinitive, past, or progressive forms. They form complex
tenses, aspects, and moods. Auxiliary verbs differ from other verbs in
that they can be followed by the negation, and in that they can occur as
the first constituent in a question sentence.
Most verbs have six inflectional forms. The primary forms are a
plain present, a third person singular present, and a preterite (past)
form. The secondary forms are a plain form used for the infinitive, a
gerund-participle and a past participle. The verb to be – which among other uses in English functions as the primary auxiliary verb indicating the imperfective aspect (e.g. "I am going"), as well as the copula –
is the only verb to retain some of its original conjugation, and takes
different inflectional forms depending on the subject. The first person
present form is am, the third person singular form is is, and the form are is used in the second person singular and all three plurals. The only verb past participle is been and its gerund-participle is being.
English inflectional forms
Inflection
Strong
Regular
Plain present
take
love
3rd person sg. present
takes
loves
Preterite
took
loved
Plain (infinitive)
take
love
Gerund–participle
taking
loving
Past participle
taken
loved
Tense, aspect, and mood
English has two primary tenses, past (preterite) and non-past. The
preterite is inflected by using the preterite form of the verb, which
for the regular verbs includes the suffix -ed, and for the strong verbs either the suffix -t or a change in the stem vowel. The non-past form is unmarked except in the third person singular, which takes the suffix -s.
Present
Preterite
First person
I run
I ran
Second person
You run
You ran
Third person
John runs
John ran
English does not have future verb forms. The future tense is expressed periphrastically with one of the auxiliary verbs will or shall. Many varieties also use a near future constructed with the phrasal verb "be going to" (going-to future).
Future
First person
"I will run"
Second person
"You will run"
Third person
"John will run"
Further aspectual distinctions are shown by auxiliary verbs, primarily have and be,
which show the contrast between a perfect and non-perfect past tense
("I have run" vs. "I was running"), and compound tenses such as
preterite perfect ("I had been running") and present perfect ("I have
been running").
For the expression of mood, English uses a number of modal auxiliaries, such as can, may, will, shall and the past tense forms could, might, would, should. There are also subjunctive and imperative moods, both based on the plain form of the verb (i.e. without the third person singular -s), for use in subordinate clauses (e.g. subjunctive: "It is important that he run every day"; imperative Run!).
An infinitive form, that uses the plain form of the verb and the preposition to,
is used for verbal clauses that are syntactically subordinate to a
finite verbal clause. Finite verbal clauses are those that are formed
around a verb in the present or preterite form. In clauses with
auxiliary verbs, they are the finite verbs and the main verb is treated
as a subordinate clause. For example, "he has to go" where only the auxiliary verb have is inflected for time and the main verb to go is in the infinitive, or in a complement clause such as "I saw him leave", where the main verb is see, which is in a preterite form, and leave is in the infinitive.
Phrasal verbs
English also makes frequent use of constructions traditionally called phrasal verbs,
verb phrases that are made up of a verb root and a preposition or
particle that follows the verb. The phrase then functions as a single
predicate. In terms of intonation the preposition is fused to the verb,
but in writing it is written as a separate word. Examples of phrasal
verbs are "to get up", "to ask out", "to get together", and "to put up
with". The phrasal verb frequently has a highly idiomatic
meaning that is more specialised and restricted than what can be simply
extrapolated from the combination of verb and preposition complement
(e.g. lay off meaning terminate someone's employment). Some grammarians do not consider this type of construction to form a
syntactic constituent and hence refrain from using the term "phrasal
verb". Instead, they consider the construction simply to be a verb with a
prepositional phrase as its syntactic complement, e.g. "he woke up in
the morning" and "he ran up in the mountains" are syntactically
equivalent.
Adverbs
The function of adverbs is to modify the action or event described by
the verb by providing additional information about the manner in which
it occurs. Many English adverbs are derived from adjectives by appending the suffix -ly. For example, in the phrase "the woman walked quickly", the adverb quickly is derived from the adjective quick. Some commonly used adjectives have irregular adverbial forms, such as good, which has the adverbial form well.
Syntax
In the English sentence "The cat sat on the mat", the subject is the cat (a noun phrase), the verb is sat, and on the mat is a prepositional phrase composed of a noun phrase the mat, headed by the preposition on.
Modern English syntax is moderately analytic. It has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.
Basic constituent order
English has moved from the Germanic verb-second (V2) word order to being almost exclusively subject–verb–object (SVO). The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates
clusters of two or more verbs at the centre of the sentence, such as "he
had been hoping to try opening it".
In most sentences, English only marks grammatical relations through word order. The subject constituent precedes the verb and the object constituent
follows it. The grammatical roles of each constituent are marked only by
the position relative to the verb:
S
V
O
The dog
bites
the man
The man
bites
the dog
An exception is found in sentences where one of the constituents is a
pronoun, in which case it is doubly marked, both by word order and by
case inflection, where the subject pronoun precedes the verb and takes
the subjective case form, and the object pronoun follows the verb and
takes the objective case form. The example below demonstrates this double marking in a sentence where
both object and subject are represented with a third person singular
masculine pronoun:
S
V
O
He
hit
him
Indirect objects
(IO) of ditransitive verbs can be placed either as the first object in a
double object construction (S V IO O), such as "I gave Jane the book" or in a prepositional phrase, such as "I gave the book to Jane".
English sentences may be composed of one or more clauses, that may in
turn be composed of one or more phrases (e.g. noun phrases, verb
phrases, prepositional phrases). A clause is built around a verb and
includes its constituents, such as any noun or prepositional phrases.
Within a sentence, there is always at least one main clause (or matrix
clause) whereas other clauses are subordinate to a main clause.
Subordinate clauses may function as arguments of the verb in the main
clause. For example, in the phrase "I think (that) you are lying", the
main clause is headed by the verb think, the subject is I, but the object of the phrase is the subordinate clause "(that) you are lying". The subordinating conjunction that shows that the clause that follows is a subordinate clause, but it is often omitted. Relative clauses
are clauses that function as a modifier or specifier to some
constituent in the main clause: For example, in the sentence "I saw the
letter that you received today", the relative clause "that you received
today" specifies the meaning of the word letter, the object of the main clause. Relative clauses can be introduced by the pronouns who, whose, whom, and which as well as by that (which can also be omitted). In contrast to many other Germanic languages there are no major differences between word order in main and subordinate clauses.
Auxiliary verb constructions
English auxiliary verbs
are relied upon for many functions, including the expression of tense,
aspect, and mood. Auxiliary verbs form main clauses, and the main verbs
function as heads of a subordinate clause of the auxiliary verb. For
example, in the sentence "the dog did not find its bone", the clause
"find its bone" is the complement of the negated verb did not. Subject–auxiliary inversion is used in many constructions, including focus, negation, and interrogative constructions.
The verb do can be used as an auxiliary even in simple
declarative sentences, where it usually serves to add emphasis, as in "I
did shut the fridge." However, in the negated and inverted clauses
referred to above, it is used because the rules of English syntax permit
these constructions only when an auxiliary is present. Modern English
does not allow the addition of the negating adverb not to an ordinary finite lexical verb, as in *"I know not" – it can only be added to an auxiliary (or copular) verb, hence if there is no other auxiliary present when negation is required, the auxiliary do
is used, to produce a form like "I do not (don't) know." The same
applies in clauses requiring inversion, including most questions –
inversion must involve the subject and an auxiliary verb, so it is not
possible to say *"Know you him?"; grammatical rules require "Do you know
him?"
Negation is done with the adverb not, which precedes the main verb and follows an auxiliary verb. A contracted form of not -n't can be used as an enclitic attaching to auxiliary verbs and to the copula verb to be. Just as with questions, many negative constructions require the negation to occur with do-support,
thus in Modern English "I don't know him" is the correct answer to the
question "Do you know him?", but not *"I know him not", although this
construction may be found in older English.
Passive constructions also use auxiliary verbs. A passive
construction rephrases an active construction in such a way that the
object of the active phrase becomes the subject of the passive phrase,
and the subject of the active phrase is either omitted or demoted to a
role as an oblique argument introduced in a prepositional phrase. They
are formed by using the past participle either with the auxiliary verb to be or to get, although not all varieties of English allow the use of passives with get. For example, putting the sentence "she sees him" into the passive becomes "he is seen (by her)", or "he gets seen (by her)".
Questions
Both yes/no questions and wh-questions in English are mostly formed using subject–auxiliary inversion ("Am I going tomorrow?", "Where can we eat?"), which may require do-support ("Do you like her?", "Where did he go?"). In most cases, interrogative words (or wh-words) – which include who, what, when, where, why, and how – appear in a fronted position. For example, in the question "What did you see?", the word what appears as the first constituent despite being the grammatical object of the sentence. When the wh-word is the subject or forms part of the subject, no inversion occurs (e.g. "Who saw the cat?"). Prepositional phrases
can also be fronted when they are the questions theme (e.g. "To whose
house did you go last night?"). The personal interrogative pronoun who is the only interrogative pronoun to still show inflection for case, with the variant whom serving as the objective case form, although this form may be going out of use in many contexts.
Discourse level syntax
While English is a subject-prominent language, at the discourse level it tends to use a topic–comment
structure, where the known information (topic) precedes the new
information (comment). Because of the strict SVO syntax, the topic of a
sentence generally has to be the grammatical subject of the sentence. In
cases where the topic is not the grammatical subject of the sentence,
it is often promoted to subject position through syntactic means. One
way of doing this is through a passive construction, "the girl was stung
by the bee". Another way is through a cleft sentence where the main clause is demoted to be a complement clause of a copula sentence with a dummy subject such as it or there, e.g. "it was the girl that the bee stung", "there was a girl who was stung by a bee". Dummy subjects are also used in constructions where there is no
grammatical subject such as with impersonal verbs (e.g. "it is raining")
or in existential clauses ("there are many cars on the street").
Through the use of these complex sentence constructions with
informationally vacuous subjects, English is able to maintain both a
topic–comment sentence structure and a SVO syntax.
Focus constructions
emphasise a particular piece of new or salient information within a
sentence, generally through allocating the main sentence level stress on
the focal constituent. For example, "the girl was stung by a bee" (emphasising it was a bee and not, for example, a wasp that stung her), or "the girl was stung by a bee" (contrasting with another possibility, for example that it was the boy). Topic and focus can also be established through syntactic dislocation,
either preposing or postposing the item to be focused on relative to the
main clause. For example, "That girl over there, she was stung by a
bee", emphasises the girl by preposition, but a similar effect could be
achieved by postposition, "she was stung by a bee, that girl over
there", where reference to the girl is established as an afterthought.
Cohesion between sentences is achieved through the use of deictic pronouns as anaphora (e.g. "that is exactly what I mean" where that refers to some fact known to both interlocutors, or then used to locate the time of a narrated event relative to the time of a previously narrated event). Discourse markers such as oh, so, or well,
also signal the progression of ideas between sentences and help to
create cohesion. Discourse markers are often the first constituents in
sentences. Discourse markers are also used for stance taking
in which speakers position themselves in a specific attitude towards
what is being said, for example, "no way is that true!" (the idiomatic
marker "no way!" expressing disbelief), or "boy! I'm hungry" (the marker
boy expressing emphasis). While discourse markers are
particularly characteristic of informal and spoken registers of English,
they are also used in written and formal registers.
Vocabulary
The English lexicon
consists of around 170,000 words (or 220,000, if counting obsolete
words), according to an estimate based on the 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Over one-half are nouns, one-quarter are adjectives, and one-seventh are verbs. Another estimate – which includes scientific jargon, prefixed and suffixed words, loanwords of extremely limited use, technical acronyms, etc. – counts around 1 million total English words.
English borrows vocabulary quickly from many languages and other sources. Early studies of English vocabulary by lexicographers
(scholars who study vocabulary and compile dictionaries) were impeded
by a lack of comprehensive data on actual vocabulary in use from
high-quality linguistic corpora (collections of actual written texts and spoken passages). Many
statements published before the end of the 20th century about the growth
of English vocabulary over time, the dates of first use of various
words in English, and the sources of English vocabulary will have to be
corrected as new computerised analyses of linguistic corpus data become
available.
Word-formation processes
English forms new words from existing words or roots in its
vocabulary through a variety of processes. One of the most productive
processes in English is conversion, using a word with a different grammatical role, for example using a
noun as a verb or a verb as a noun. Another productive word-formation
process is nominal compounding, producing compound words such as babysitter or ice cream or homesick.
Formation of new words, called neologisms, based on Greek or Latin roots (for example television or optometry)
is a highly productive process in modern European languages like
English, so much so that it is often difficult to determine in which
language a neologism originated. For this reason, American lexicographer
Philip Gove attributed many such words to the "international scientific vocabulary" (ISV) when compiling Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961). Another active word-formation process in English is that of acronyms, which result from pronouncing abbreviations of longer phrases as single words, e.g. NATO, laser, scuba.
Latin, including scientific and technical loans (28.2%)
Germanic (Old English, Old Norse, Dutch) (25.0%)
Greek (5.32%)
None given (4.03%)
Derived from proper names (3.28%)
Other (5.83%)
Throughout its history, English has been a particularly frequent borrower of loanwords from other languages. West Germanic words in use since the Anglo-Saxon period still comprise
most of the language's core vocabulary, as well as most of its most
frequently used words. Many sentences can be constructed without loanwords, but not without core Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. English has formal and informal speech registers;
informal registers, including child-directed speech, tend to be made up
predominantly of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, while Latinate vocabulary
appears more frequently in legal, scientific, and academic writing.
Prolonged and intense contact with French has resulted in English
having a very high proportion of Latinate words – with French loanwords
borrowed during different stages of the language's history comprising
28 per cent of the English lexicon. In all periods of its history, English has also borrowed words from Latin directly, representing another 28 per cent of the lexicon. In turn, many of these words had originally entered Latin from Greek.
Greek and Latin stems remain highly productive sources for new literary,
technical, and scientific vocabulary in English.
Loanwords from Old Norse primarily entered English between the
8th and 11th centuries, during the Norse colonisation of eastern and
northern England, and typically displaced an Anglo-Saxon equivalent.
Many represent core vocabulary – including give, get, sky, skirt, egg, and cake.
Sign written in United States Spanish, using the English word free instead of the Spanish gratis
English has had a strong influence on the vocabulary of other languages. The influence of English comes from such factors as opinion leaders in
other countries knowing the English language, the role of English as a
world lingua franca, and the large number of books and films that are
translated from English into other languages. That pervasive use of English leads to a conclusion in many places that
English is an especially suitable language for expressing new ideas or
describing new technologies. Among varieties of English, it is
especially American English that influences other languages. Some languages, such as Chinese, write words borrowed from English mostly as calques, while others, such as Japanese, readily take in English loanwords written in sound-indicating script. Dubbed films and television programmes are an especially fruitful source of English influence on languages in Europe.
Orthography
Since the 9th century, English has been written using the English alphabet, which uses the Latin script. Anglo-Saxon runes
were previously used to write Old English, but only in short
inscriptions; the overwhelming majority of attested writings in Old
English are in the Old English Latin alphabet.
English orthography is multi-layered and complex, with elements of French, Latin, and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system. Further complications have arisen through sound changes with which the orthography has not kept pace. Compared to European languages for which official organisations have promoted spelling reforms,
English has spelling that is a less consistent indicator of
pronunciation, and standard spellings of words that are more difficult
to guess from knowing how a word is pronounced. There are also systematic spelling differences between British and American English. These situations have prompted proposals for spelling reform in English.
Although letters and speech sounds do not have a one-to-one
correspondence in standard English spelling, spelling rules that take
into account syllable structure, phonetic changes in derived words, and
word accent are reliable for most English words. Moreover, standard English spelling shows etymological relationships
between related words that would be obscured by a closer correspondence
between pronunciation and spelling – for example, the words photograph, photography, and photographic, or the words electricity and electrical. While few scholars agree with Chomsky and Halle (1968) that conventional English orthography is "near-optimal", there is a rationale for current English spelling patterns. The standard orthography of English is the most widely used writing system in the world. Standard English spelling is based on a graphomorphemic segmentation of
words into written clues of what meaningful units make up each word.
Readers of English can generally rely on the correspondence
between spelling and pronunciation to be fairly regular for letters or digraphs used to spell consonant sounds. The letters b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, y, z represent, respectively, the phonemes /b,d,f,h,dʒ,k,l,m,n,p,r,s,t,v,w,j,z/. The letters c and g normally represent /k/ and /ɡ/, but there is also a soft c pronounced /s/, and a soft g pronounced /dʒ/. The differences in the pronunciations of the letters c and g
are often signalled by the following letters in standard English
spelling. Digraphs used to represent phonemes and phoneme sequences
include ch for /tʃ/, sh for /ʃ/, th for /θ/ or /ð/, ng for /ŋ/, qu for /kw/, and ph for /f/ in Greek-derived words. The single letter x is generally pronounced as /z/ in word-initial position and as /ks/
otherwise. There are exceptions to these generalisations, often the
result of loanwords being spelled according to the spelling patterns of
their languages of origin or residues of proposals by scholars in the early period of Modern
English to follow the spelling patterns of Latin for English words of
Germanic origin.
For the vowel sounds of the English language, however,
correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are more irregular.
There are many more vowel phonemes in English than there are single
vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u, y, and very rarely w). As a result, some "long vowels" are often indicated by combinations of letters (like the oa in boat, the ow in how, and the ay in stay), or the historically based silent e (as in note and cake).
The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that
learning to read and write can be challenging in English. It can take
longer for school pupils to become independently fluent readers of
English than of many other languages, including Italian, Spanish, and
German. Nonetheless, there is an advantage for learners of English reading in
learning the specific sound-symbol regularities that occur in the
standard English spellings of commonly used words. Such instruction greatly reduces the risk of children experiencing reading difficulties in English. Making primary school teachers more aware of the primacy of morpheme
representation in English may help learners learn more efficiently to
read and write English.
English writing also includes a system of punctuation
marks that is similar to those used in most alphabetic languages around
the world. The purpose of punctuation is to mark meaningful grammatical
relationships in sentences to aid readers in understanding a text and
to indicate features important for reading a text aloud.
Dialects, accents, and varieties
Dialectologists identify many English dialects,
which usually refer to regional varieties that differ from each other
in terms of patterns of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The
pronunciation of particular areas distinguishes dialects as separate regional accents. The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into the two extremely general categories of British English (BrE) and North American English (NAE).
Britain and Ireland
Primary dialect regions in the United Kingdom and Ireland
The fact that English has been spoken in England for 1,500 years explains why England has a great wealth of regional dialects.[278] Within the United Kingdom, Received Pronunciation (RP), an educated accent associated originally with South East England,
has been traditionally used as a broadcast standard and is considered
the most prestigious of British accents. The spread of RP (also known as
BBC English) through the media has caused many traditional dialects of
rural England to recede, as youths adopt the traits of the prestige
variety instead of traits from local dialects. At the time of the
1950–61 Survey of English Dialects,
grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of
lexical attrition has led most of this variation to disappear.
Nonetheless, this attrition has mostly affected dialectal
variation in grammar and vocabulary. Only 3% of the English population
actually speak RP, the remainder speaking in regional accents and
dialects with varying degrees of RP influence. There is also variability within RP, particularly along class lines
between Upper and Middle-class RP speakers and between native RP
speakers and speakers who adopt RP later in life. Within Britain, there is also considerable variation along lines of
social class; some traits, though exceedingly common, are nonetheless
considered "non-standard" and associated with lower-class speakers and
identities. An example of this is h-dropping,
which was historically a feature of lower-class London English,
particularly Cockney, and can now be heard in the local accents of most
parts of England. However, it remains largely absent in broadcasting and
among the upper crust of British society.
English in England can be divided into four major dialect regions: South East English, South West English (also known as West Country English), Midlands English and Northern English. Within each of these regions, several local dialects exist: within the Northern region, there is a division between the Yorkshire dialects, the Geordie dialect (spoken around Newcastle, in Northumbria) and the Lancashire dialects, which include the urban subdialects of Manchester (Mancunian) and Liverpool (Scouse).
Having been the centre of Danish occupation during the Viking invasions
of England, Northern English dialects, particularly the Yorkshire
dialect, retain Norse features not found in other English varieties. In the West Midlands, dialects such as Black Country (Yam Yam), and by less extent Birmingham (Brummie),
preserve archaic features from early modern and Middle English,
retaining Germanic elements such as specific grammatical structures and
vocabulary.
Since the 15th century, South East England varieties have centred
on London, which has been the centre from which dialectal innovations
have spread to other dialects. In London, the Cockney
dialect was traditionally used by the lower classes, and it was long a
socially stigmatised variety. The spread of Cockney features across the
South East led the media to talk of Estuary English as a new dialect,
but the notion was criticised by many linguists on the grounds that
London had been influencing neighbouring regions throughout history. Traits that have spread from London in recent decades include the use of intrusive R (drawing is pronounced "drawring" /ˈdrɔːrɪŋ/), t-glottalisation (Potter is pronounced with a glottal stop as Po'er/ˈpɒʔə/) and th-fronting, or the pronunciation of th- as /f/ (thanks pronounced "fanks") or /v/ (bother pronounced "bover").
Scots is today considered a separate language from English, but it has its origins in early Northern Middle English and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, particularly Scottish Gaelic and Old Norse. Scots itself has a number of regional dialects. In addition to Scots, Scottish English
comprises the varieties of Standard English spoken in Scotland; most
varieties are Northern English accents, with some influence from Scots.
In Ireland, various forms of English have been spoken following the Norman invasion of the island during the 11th century. In County Wexford and in the area surrounding Dublin, two extinct dialects known as Forth and Bargy and Fingallian developed as offshoots from Early Middle English and were spoken until the 19th century. Modern Irish English, however, has its roots in English colonisation in the 17th century. Today Irish English is divided into Ulster English,
the Northern Ireland dialect with strong influence from Scots, and
various dialects of Ireland. Like Scottish and most North American
accents, almost all Irish accents preserve the rhoticity which has been lost in the dialects influenced by RP.
North America
Percentage of Americans aged 5+ in the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico who speak English at home, according to the 2016–2021 American Community SurveyRhoticity dominates in North American English, but The Atlas of North American English
found over 50 per cent non-rhoticity, with at least one local speaker
in each US metropolitan area (marked with a red dot) and non-rhotic AAVE
pronunciations found primarily among African Americans regardless of
location.
Due to the relatively strong degree of mixing, mutual accommodation, and koinéisation that occurred during the colonial period, North American English
has traditionally been perceived as relatively homogeneous, at least in
comparison with British dialects. However, modern scholars have
strongly opposed this notion, arguing that North American English shows a
great deal of phonetic, lexical, and geographic variability. This
becomes all the more apparent considering social, ethnolinguistic, and
regional varieties such as African-American English, Chicano English, Cajun English, or Newfoundland English. American accent variation is increasing at the regional level and decreasing at the very local level, though most Americans still speak within a phonological continuum of similar accents, known collectively as General American English (GA), with differences hardly noticed even among Americans themselves, including Midland and Western American English.
In most American and Canadian English dialects, rhoticity (or r-fullness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (or r-dropping) being associated with lower prestige and social class, especially since the end of World War II. This contrasts with the situation in England, where non-rhoticity has become the standard. Varieties beyond GA which have developed distinct sound systems include the Southern American English, New York City English, Eastern New England English, and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) groups – all of which are historically non-rhotic, save a few varieties of Southern American.
In Southern American English, the most populous grouping outside GA, rhoticity now strongly prevails, replacing the region's historical non-rhotic prestige. Southern accents are colloquially described as a "drawl" or "twang", being recognised most readily by the Southern Vowel Shift initiated by glide-deleting in the /aɪ/ vowel (e.g. pronouncing spy almost like spa), the "Southern breaking" of several front pure vowels into a gliding vowel or even two syllables (e.g. pronouncing the word press almost like "pray-us"), the pin–pen merger,
and other distinctive phonological, grammatical, and lexical features,
many of which are actually recent developments of the 19th century or
later.
Spoken primarily by working- and middle-class African Americans, African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE) is largely non-rhotic, and likely originated among enslaved
Africans and African Americans influenced primarily by the non-standard older Southern dialects. A minority of linguists, contrarily, propose that AAVE mostly traces back to African languages spoken by the slaves who had to develop a pidgin or English-based creole to communicate with slaves of other ethnic and linguistic origins. AAVE's important commonalities with Southern accents suggest it
developed into a highly coherent and homogeneous variety in the 19th or
early 20th century. AAVE is commonly stigmatised in North America as a
form of "broken" or "uneducated" English, as are white Southern accents,
but linguists today recognise both as fully developed varieties of
English with their own norms shared by large speech communities.
Australia and New Zealand
Since 1788, English has been spoken in Oceania, and Australian English
has developed as the first language of the vast majority of the
inhabitants of the Australian continent, its standard accent being General Australian. The English of neighbouring New Zealand has to a lesser degree become an influential standard variety of the language. Australian and New Zealand English are each other's closest relatives with few differentiating characteristics, followed by South African English and the English of South East England, all of which have similarly non-rhotic accents, aside from some accents in the South Island
of New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand English stand out for their
innovative vowels: many short vowels are fronted or raised, whereas many
long vowels have diphthongised. Australian English also has a contrast
between long and short vowels, not found in most other varieties.
Australian English grammar aligns closely with British and American
English; like American English, collective plural subjects take on a
singular verb, e.g. "the government is" (rather than are).New Zealand English uses front vowels that are often even higher than in Australian English.
Southeast Asia
English is an official language of the Philippines. Its use is ubiquitous in the country, and appears in areas including on street signs,
marquees, and government documents, and in courtrooms, public media,
the entertainment industry, and the business sector. It became an
important and widely spoken language in the country during the period of
American rule between 1898 and 1946. Taglish is a prominent form of code-switching between Tagalog and English.
Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
English is spoken widely in southern Africa and is an official or co-official language in several of the region's countries. In South Africa, English has been spoken since 1820, co-existing with Afrikaans and various African languages such as the Khoe and Bantu languages. Today, about nine per cent of the South African population speaks South African English
(SAE) as a first language. SAE is a non-rhotic variety that tends to
follow RP as a norm. It is one of the few non-rhotic English varieties
that lack intrusive R. The second-language varieties of South Africa differ based on the native languages of their speakers. Most phonological differences from RP are in the vowels. Consonant differences include the tendency to pronounce /p,t,t͡ʃ,k/ without aspiration (e.g. pin pronounced [pɪn] rather than as [pʰɪn] as in most other varieties), while r is often pronounced as a flap [ɾ] instead of as the more common fricative.
Nigerian English is a variety of English spoken in Nigeria; over 150 million Nigerians speak some form of the language. Though traditionally based on British English, increasing United States
influence during the latter 20th century has resulted in American
English vocabulary entering Nigerian English. Additionally, some new
words and collocations have emerged from the variety out of a need to
express concepts specific to the culture of the nation (e.g. senior wife).
Varieties of English are spoken throughout the former British colonial possessions in the Caribbean, including Jamaica, the Leeward and Windward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, and Belize.
Each of these areas is home both to a local variety of English and a
local English-based creole, combining English and African languages. The
most prominent varieties are Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole. In Central America, English-based creoles are spoken on the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Panama. Residents are often fluent in both the local English variety and the local creole languages, and frequently code-switch
between them. The relationship between different varieties can be
conceptualised as a continuum, in which more creole-like or RP-like
forms function as more formal and informal registers of the language
respectively.
Most Caribbean varieties are based on British English and
consequently, most are non-rhotic, except for formal styles of Jamaican
English which are often rhotic. Jamaican English differs from RP in its
vowel inventory, which has a distinction between long and short vowels
rather than tense and lax vowels as in Standard English. The diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/ are monophthongs [eː] and [oː] or even the reverse diphthongs [ie] and [uo] (e.g. bay and boat pronounced [bʲeː] and [bʷoːt]). Often word-final consonant clusters are simplified so that "child" is pronounced [t͡ʃail] and "wind" [win].
Indian English
historically tends towards RP as an ideal, with the proximity of
speakers to RP generally reflective of class distinctions. Indian
English accents are marked by the pronunciation of phonemes such as /t/ and /d/ (often pronounced with retroflex articulation as [ʈ] and [ɖ]) and the replacement of /θ/ and /ð/ with dentals [t̪] and [d̪]. Sometimes Indian English speakers may also use spelling-based pronunciations where the silent ⟨h⟩ found in words such as ghost is pronounced as an Indian voiced aspirated stop [ɡʱ].
Non-native varieties
Non-native English speakers
may pronounce words differently due to having not fully mastered
English pronunciation. This can happen either because they apply the speech rules of their mother tongue to English ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used in first language acquisition. They may create novel pronunciations for English sounds not found in their first language.
