Talk:English language

Broken External Link to "The Global English Survey Project"

The last External Link "The Global English Survey Project - A survey tracking how non-native speakers around the world use English", is broken. Page no longer exists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.234.35.247 (talk • contribs) 16:25, 17 July 2009

Guyana, Jamaica and Belize

As far as I can tell from sources provided elsewhere on wikipedia, the first language of most people in these countries are English-based creole languages, not English. I have tried to edit the map to reflect this but I can't manage to save as an svg. Can someone help please? Munci (talk) 13:19, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

English is the official languge in Jamaica and Guyana, and it is the primary language taught in schools there. The creoles aren't written languages or taught in schools, so most of the population is effectively English-speaking. Sources do exist for that, so I wouldn't recommend changing the maps for them. I don't know about Belize. - BilCat (talk) 15:24, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

The legend of the map says

Countries where English is an official or de facto official language, or national language, and is spoken natively by the majority of the population

Note the part that says "AND is spoken natively by the majority of the population". The article on Jamaican English#Language use: Standard versus Patois says

Standard [Jamaican English], on the other hand, ... is also the native language of a small minority of Jamaicans (typically upper class and upper/traditional middle class).

So it would be incorrect to leave both the map and its legend as they are. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:18, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Both Jamaica and Guyana are considered English speaking countries by most official sources. The media in Jamaica all use English. So, no, the map and legend are correct. - BilCat (talk) 16:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

You missed my point. Of course Jamaica is an English-speaking country. If that's all the legend said, the legend would be correct. But the legend says, falsely, that the majority of Jamaicans are native speakers of English.

Or do you have a source that says that the majority of Jamaicans are native speakers of English? If so, we would need to correct the statement to the contrary in the Jamaican English article.

Maybe the legend would correspond correctly to the map if we just change and is spoken natively by the majority to or is spoken natively by the majority. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Perhaps the legend can be tweaked a bit to be "hyper-accurate", but I do think it is fine as-is. The situation in Jamaica and Guyana is totally different from that regarding NPE as discussed above, as most speakers of NPE speak other native African languages as their first language, not NPE. In contrast, English and Creole are spoken in a Post-creole continuum in Guyana and Jamaica, and in general, no one speaks the pure basilect with no comprehension of Standard English. (Complete) Fluency (in Standard English) is a different matter, but the same could be said of rural SAE or urban AAVE speakers in the US! - BilCat (talk) 16:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

The situation is certainly different from Nigeria where there are many other languages to consider as well. The prescence of a continuum does not take away from the fact that most people in these people have creole languages as their first language. Munci (talk) 20:54, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The presence of the continuum means that the majority population is effectively bi-lingual natively, or else fall somewhere in between. It's not a simple either/or situation, as most of the poulation is exposed to both Standard English and Creole from birth, and thus learn both to varying degrees of fluency. - BilCat (talk) 07:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

No that's not how it works. I mean here in Réunion kids don't necessarily understand what the teacher says in the first few years of school for example. Most people learn French later but it's still not the native language for most people. Creole languages really are simply separate languages from the languages they are derived from and you need to learn both to understand and speak both. Munci (talk) 08:53, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not talking about all countries or territories where there are creole languages, only Jamaica and Guyana. What I described in the previous post is the situation in Jamaica, where I lived as a child and went to a local school there, and in Guyana, which I have visited. In both countries, English is generally understood by young children well before they begin attending school, which is usually age 3 in Jamaica. - BilCat (talk) 15:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

OK but what you're saying contradicts this article: "The vast majority of children arrive at school speaking little apart from the creole of their ancestors" [1]. What do you think about that? Munci (talk) 20:28, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, how about if we change the legend to Countries where English is an official or de facto official language, or national language, and is spoken natively or near-natively by the majority of the population. I.e., we would change natively to natively or near-natively. Any objection? Duoduoduo (talk) 18:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Well it's an improvement. If you do change the legend, you would need to change it in all the languages. Munci (talk) 20:54, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I can live with that change for the primarily English-speaking countries such as Jamaica and Guyana, barring further discussion which might lead to other questions. I'm not sure about Belize, where IIRC Spanish also has a presence. - BilCat (talk) 07:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

It's still not correct. We don't know that the majority of Guyanese are "near native" in their ability. But per Ethnologue 90% are literate, and I suspect that the majority of that is English. So it would seem that they're at least fluent. As for Belize, my impression is that the majority are fluent in English, though I wouldn't want to claim that they're 'nearly native' w/o a ref. — kwami (talk) 10:14, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

If by "literate" you mean that they can read and write their "native" language, then no one in Jamaica or Guyana is literate in their Creole languages without first being literate in English, simply bacuase the Creoles aren't fully written languages. English is taught as the primary literate language in almost all schools in both countries, nad I unaware of either creole being taught to children before English. It should be fairly simple to find several relable sources for English being the literate language for the majority in Jamaica and Guyana, if that is needed here. - BilCat (talk) 21:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Describing someone's fluency as "near native" means that they necessarily have a different native language. Is that in fact the case in the countries being discussed here? Roger (talk) 10:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

It's more complicated than an either/or situation. In the case of Jamaica and Guyana, English and the respective Creoles aren't learned in vacuums. Children are routinely exposed to both languages from birth. Though they probably have better fluency in the Creole, which is generally spoken at home. They aren't in any way ignorant of standard English even before they start school, due to media exposure and other sources, though of course the majority can't write English, or the Creoles either! It's usually that way with most 3-year-olds. :) - BilCat (talk) 21:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Sentence not terribly clear

"The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, or slang terms, or words that belong to multiple word classes."

The only sense I can make of the last part is that it's supposed to mean that words that can, for example, be both nouns and verbs are counted only once. Actually, though, it doesn't really say this. If anything, it says that they are not counted at all. I feel this wording would benefit from clarification. 86.181.201.103 (talk) 13:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I tried to find this sentence, to change "or words that belong to multiple..." to "and not counting multiply words that belong to multiple...", but I can't find the sentence in the article. Can you say what section and subsection it's in, and how many paragraphs from the beginning of the sub-section? Thanks. Duoduoduo (talk) 22:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Duoduoduo, thanks for your reply. The part about "multiple word classes" was deleted earlier today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_language&action=historysubmit&diff=463187451&oldid=463184576

86.179.4.77 (talk) 00:27, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Dyslexia

"[dyslexia] is twice as prevalent among dyslexics in the United States (and France) as it is among Italian dyslexics."

This makes no more sense now than it did last time I passed by this article and commented on it, which must have been many months ago. If no one is able to clarify it, I think it is high time that this text was deleted. 86.179.4.77 (talk) 20:56, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. Duoduoduo (talk) 22:38, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

And I feel compelled to make the same comment I did back in December:

The cite is horribly written. The cite, *ahem*, cites the following article:

http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/speech/booth/james/neuropsychology/ReadingArticles/PaulesuDemonet.2001.pdf

And their conclusion is that (poor) word recognition accuracy, the common diagnostic basis for dyslexia, is in fact, twice as common in English and French speakers as in Italian speakers, *but* assuming a biological cause for dyslexia (for which there is considerable evidence), biological dyslexics (who score consistently poorly on control tests no matter the their language), are better able to compensate in languages with "shallow orthographies" (Italian) and in languages with "deep orthographies" (English, French), and thus are more hidden. IOW, the proportion of dyslexics is the same, but the word recognition accuracy standard misses many more of the Italian speakers. Now, how to make that point with a semblance of clarity and concision...?

I think the original source makes an important point. Rwessel (talk) 10:17, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Say Again?

The spelling system, or orthography, [...] has grown to vary significantly from the phonology of the language. The spelling of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken.

Aren't the above two sentences repetatively redundant? Should we just remove and delete that last sentence? Or, if the last sentence is clearer and easier to understand (and for many readers it may be) then should we remove and delete the first bit which precedes the last quoted sentence? Thank you, gracias .... Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 20:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. Duoduoduo (talk) 22:15, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

"most widely spoken language"

Estimates for how many English speakers there are vary enormously, with numbers as low as half a billion, so why does the lead say "It is the most widely spoken language across the world.", as though this were undisputed? --Yair rand (talk) 02:50, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Depends on whether you are talking about native speakers, or second language users. And how competent a speaker has to be before you count them as an English speaker. The number of native speakers is about 400 million. Depending on where the line is drawn as far as competence is concerned, the number of second language speakers varies enormously, from 200 million to about a billion and a half. The nearest contender is Mandarin Chinese, with about 850 million native speakers and about 200 million second language speakers. Unlike Mandarin, which is spoken mainly in China, English is an international language and has a great deal of second language speakers of varying levels of competence. Different sources use different criteria, hence the wide range you see. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 03:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

How many of these sources say that English has more speakers than Mandarin? I'm guessing many don't. --Yair rand (talk) 03:18, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

The number of people that have SOME working knowledge of English easily exceeds that of people who have SOME working knowledge of Mandarin. No one disputes that. It's just a question of which level of knowledge qualifies someone to be called an "English speaker", and that depends on who is reporting the figure. The low figure, about 600 million, is for native and rather fluent speakers. The higher numbers include moderately and slightly fluent speakers. The highest figures take into account people who can understand the language to some degree, but probably cannot speak it with any degree of fluency.

That doesn't really answer your question, though, about English being the most widely spoken language. There's no doubt about that. English is the major international language, and is spoken in many countries around the world. Mandarin Chinese is spoken primarily in China. Put it this way: wherever you go in the world, you'll have a much easier time finding an English speaker than a Mandarin Chinese speaker, unless you're in China, of course. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 03:39, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Both the Mandarin and Spanish Wikipedias say that English is the third most-spoken language by number of native speakers, and second most-spoken if you include second language speakers (with no mention of disputed/different statistics). Russian Wikipedia says the same, except also mentioning that it might be fourth in number of native speakers. Saying "most widely spoken", if simply referring to total number of speakers, isn't exactly correct, but there's a reasonable possibility this wasn't the intended meaning of the statement in the first place, so it should probably be cleaned up/clarified. You are certainly correct that if one is around the 80% of the world that lives outside China, one is much more likely to be able to find an English speaker than a Mandarin speaker, and I think that a clear explanation of that fact should replace the current ambiguous statement that English is "most widely spoken". --Yair rand (talk) 04:16, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Official Status list

I am not sure it makes sense that treaties such as NAFTA and UKUSA are included in that list. The other non-national additions are organisations with presences, headquarters and the like, rather than simply being cooperative agreements. I'm not aware of a "NAFTA" headquarters, or any documents published by "NAFTA". NAFTA is handled by its respective nations and their bodies. (As I assume UKUSA is, from browsing the article.) I also suspect that if "business will be done in English" gets treaties (or other things) on the list, there'd be an awful lot more to add. - BalthCat (talk) 20:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I doubt that the NAFTA treaty mentions an official language. Duoduoduo (talk) 20:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

On second thought, I disagree with myself and Balthcat. The article NAFTA lists English, French, and Spanish as its three languages; the article French language links to a list of organizations having French as official, including NAFTA; and the article Spanish language includes NAFTA is its list of organizations in which Spanish is official. So even if attempting to list all such treaties, etc. would lead to overkill, for consistency with the other articles I think we should leave it the way it is. Duoduoduo (talk) 21:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, they could have been added at the same time, making them part of one larger mistake :) For example, NAFTA is not an international organisation, it's a treaty. It looks like someone tried to cram NAFTA into an international treaty organisation mould, like CETA has. - BalthCat (talk) 12:02, 16 December 2011 (UTC)- BalthCat (talk) 11:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with the nay-sayers. It should not be listed because then we would have to list a whole lotta other stuff. Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 18:04, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Number of US native English speakers is inconsitant and misleading

The number of American English speakers is misleading. It states there are 215 million native English speakers in the US out of a population of 260 million. But our actual population is 307 million. Oh, but the count only includes people older than 5 years old for the US even though I know kids that age who speak English. But for the UK they include include infants as English speakers and therefore 98% of Britts are native English speakers.

Either way of counting might make sense by itself but makes no sense when comparing one country with anouther. Either all countries shoud only count people older than five years old or all countries should assume that babies and todlers speak (or will speak) the same langage as their parents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.239.133.132 (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but Wikipedia does not collect the data; it only publishes them. We need a source that uses the same standard in order to publish that way; otherwise, we have to make imperfect comparisons and note their deficiencies. Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 23:44, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I understand that Wikipedia does not collect data but the undercount of native English speakers relative to native Spanish speakers combined with the Spanish page's counting every Hispanic that speaks ANY Spanish as a native speaker makes the conclusion that there are more native Spanish speakers than native English speaker questionable. The English page seems to be well done but the Spanish page is poorly done and results in a potentialy false statement (that English is the number three native language) on this page.

If the data can not be adjusted to take into account the different standards used in counting native English and native Spanish speakers then one should not rank them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.171.181.95 (talk) 16:21, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The "215 million" is probably just a simple digit reversal. The table just below the "215" gives the number as "251 million," which sounds like it may be correct. It suggests that there are 50-60 million, or so, persons in the US whose first language is not English, a not unreasonable number, I'd say. Gsdwikiuseracct101 (talk) 03:15, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. I erred. The "251" figure in the table is for the TOTAL number of English speakers. To the right of that figure the "215" figure is also given, but it's for the number of NATIVE English speakers (speakers whose first language is English) and, of course, is the same as the number in the text. The coincidence of the same digits in the two numbers led me to jump to the conclusion that there was just a simple reversal. Sorry.

Perhaps I can partly make up for that error by pointing out that if you adjust the "215" figure for an increase in the US population from 262 million to 307 million, it just turns out that the tentative new figure for native speakers would be 252 million (and the tentative adjusted figure for total speakers would be 294 million). The closeness of the tentative adjusted figure of 252 million for native speakers to the 251 million I used above means that at least I can stand by my statement: "It suggests that there are 50-60 million, or so, persons in the US whose first language is not English, a not unreasonable number, I'd say." Gsdwikiuseracct101 (talk) 04:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

English Originated from Sanskrit ?

Can somebody write on this topic; Look at amazing similarities between numbers and very important words such as mother("Matru" in Sanskrit), Father (Pitru), Brother (Pitru) etc between both languages ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.61.50.119 (talk) 18:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

See Indo-European languages. Duoduoduo (talk) 19:02, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

English language removed

Hello

I would like to say English is not an official language in Madagascar and was removed. (according to the new constitution of 2010). Moreover, English has never been a spoken language in Madagascar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nary14 (talk • contribs) 23:22, 15 January 2012 (UTC)