Talk:English language

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Where English is spoken and the Map

First of all, I noticed the absence of Indonesia in the list of countries where it's an official language. I've lived here for almost 6 years (I'm American) and it's pretty clear it's the official 2nd language of the country.

I know it's also used in Sri Lanka but I'm not sure of its status there. I can, if needed, contact my Sri Lankan friend to find out.

Which brings me to the map. It needs to be updated to show this info. Sorry to make more work for you folks! :)

Best regards, Glenn McGrew ReveurGAM 03:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

English is not an official language in Indonesia, no matter how common. Do you have a reference to suggest otherwise? In East Timor, English and Indonesian are constitutionally defined as 'working languages'. regards --Merbabu 03:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And according to the Wikipedia article the official languages of Sri Lanka are Sinhala and Tamil. --teb728 03:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It does bring up a question that it may be worthy to either add to the map (though I would say no) or to place in the text (my preference) countries where English is so widely spoken so well known and spoken that it is entirely possible to never have to learn the local language and where locals commonly switch to English to accomodate a foreigner - although this does bring up verifiability issues. The Indonesia example may be one, the Netherlands may be another. --sony-youth^pléigh 08:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The countries where that is not the case might make a shorter list. --teb728 08:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe - but from my experience of the Netherlands, and what I gather from ReveurGAM's experience of Indonesia, these are extreme examples of the pervasiveness of English. I've lived in the Netherlands for two years and came with every intention of becoming fluent in Dutch, but nobody will speak it to me. Two years of what would in any other case be total emmersion and the best I can manage is asking for a packet of cigarettes, which, if I do in Dutch, the shop assistant will inevitably answer in English unless I fake a Dutch accent. And my experience is the norm. TV/cinema is in English. Advertising headlines are in English. It doesn't even have the sense of a foreign language, its a case more of code-switching. Anyho, that's my 2 euro cents. --sony-youth^pléigh 09:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. First, I apologize. I checked with an official in the dept. of education and she confirmed that English is an unofficial language in Indonesia. However, considering that the government requires it be taught in most schools, and it is pushing this immersion program to convert schools to English as the main language of instruction, it certainly seems like they might as well declare it.

What I'm really suggesting is that a third color be introduced to the map to show countries where it's neither a primary nor an official language, but its usage is so prevalent or important that it needs to be shown. I have met many Dutch people (not to mention from Germany, Belgium and other parts of the E.U.) and most of them were fluent enough to impress me. I certainly hadn't expected it. From what has been said, one can live in the Netherlands without ever having to learn Dutch.

English is not as obvious here since many people cannot communicate well in English, if at all, but the programs are in place in the government and there is a substantial interest in English - mostly amongst the middle and upper classes that have the extra income to study it. The problem is that most local teachers in schools are so bad at English that they can do little more than teach reading and writing. Books written by self-styled experts here contain many errors and most of the books published locally for the schools (including exam-prep booklets), as well as material prepared by teachers, are so full of mistakes that one wonders how anyone can speak English at all. One MUST learn Indonesian to be able to function here alone.

Thus, between Indonesia and the Netherlands the stories are quite different, but there appears to be a common thread - the interest in English and its backing by the government - officially and unofficially.

Aside from local languages and dialects, the only other languages that get a good amount of attention (although less) here are Mandarin (Chinese) and Arabic. Arabic, due to the importance of Islam here, is probably the second-most-prominent foreign language, and it is taught in most schools as well as at mosques. There are tutors and learning centers, too, but there aren't as many as English. It is hard to travel through Semarang or Jakarta without finding either a language school that teaches English or a regular school that does so, and you can see signs offering private English lessons more often than indigenous birds. As a clarification, many people here can read Arabic aloud but do not understand it.

If not in the map, then a list in the text would be nice. This is, after all, an encyclopedia, and it would be nice if we could make it more comprehensive, right? :)

If you have questions about verifiability, you may certainly ask me to do research, since I'm here in the capitol of Central Java (Semarang), and I have contacts in the dept. of education and police. Also, I believe that Merbabu is a native and could do even more than can I.

Regards, Glenn ReveurGAM 03:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Much more than Indonesia, or perhaps that should be even more than Indonesia - how about Malaysia? I work in a Malaysian company but all documents and meetings are in English. Everyone learns English at school and government policy is that Malaysians are taught maths and science in English. You can chat to taxi drivers in English. Perhaps a quarter of road side adverts are in English, there are at least 4 English national newspapers for the local market. The government will deal with you in English but make no doubt Bahasia Malaysia is the national and therefore only official language (but for the reasons given above for the Netherlands it is difficult to practice Malay). It is possible a similar situation exists in countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Colouring as an official language is clearly not right in these circumstances but to my mind leaving the map blank means its not an accurate reflection of the usage of English either Nickhk 01:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. If you have a look at the Spanish language page you will notice that parts of the US are coloured in as Spanish speaking even though Spanish is not an official language of the US. The reason why these areas are coloured is that signigicant parts of the population speak Spanish. I think that the English page should do something similar or the Spanish language page should leave the US blank. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.197.7 (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

So, I've noticed that some people agree, yet the editors have said nothing. How does it work now? Who do we contact to encourage them to make the necessary changes? It seems kind of pointless to contribute if, in the end, it is ignored. I am new here so can someone advise me please?

Glenn ReveurGAM 09:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

English as a West-Germanic language

A few users have inserted statements trying to position English as somewhere between West Germanic and North Germanic languages. While it is true that English has borrowed some very common words from Old Norse (they, law, window) that does not make English any closer to North Germanic. In comparison, English has borrowed a thousand times more words from French and Latin without being a Romance language. Out of the contemporary Germanic languages, the North Germanic ones are more similar to West Germanic languages such as Dutch and Platt than to English, although this is largely due to the Norman influence of English. Features such as a dual gender system (common nouns and neuter nouns) and simplying the case system can be found in both. That still doesn't make Dutch a North Germanic language or Swedish a West Germanic one. JdeJ 21:52, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Well put, but please don't retell us how much French/Latin/Greek shit has been shoved down our throats...Cameron Nedland 03:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Apart from vocabulary, there are some structural features in English that are Scandinavian, e.g. the formation of the future with will/shall, which is shared with Norwegian but not with German. In word order too, English is more like the Scandinavian languages where Dutch is more like German. But this could be coincidence, as English word order is also like French (apart from adjectives preceding nouns). As I see it, there is a continuum, where High German is at one end, the Scandinavian languages at the other, and Low German, English, Dutch and Frisian at various points in between, though obviously English is much nearer the German end of the spectrum.

Cameron, are you a supporter of William Barnes' proposals for a purely Saxon English ("folkwain" instead of "bus", "farspeaker" instead of "telephone"?) --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 08:50, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Don't get me wrong, I know and like speaking Spanish and would like to learn other Romance tongues, but English should be English, Spanish should be Spanish, and so on.Cameron Nedland 05:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, that's a very xenophobic attitude towards language. People who start with a desire to purge foreign words from their language often end with the desire to purge foreigners from their society. —Angr 05:35, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I cannot agree there. Personally, I don't suggest removing loan words and many European languages would have to drop so many words it would be well nigh impossible to speak them. On the other hand, the country that has taken this to the extreme is Iceland and, if memory serves me right, Iceland is also the European country in which the population has the most positive attitude to foreigners on average. So while I don't agree with Cameron, I don't find anything xenophobic at all in his view, far from it. JdeJ 07:03, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

As the first line of this talk page says, “This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the English language article.” Discussion of the merits of Anglish is not appropriate here. --teb728 08:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

So back to the main point: English is a West Germanic tongue, even though it has lots of North Germanic words.Cameron Nedland 17:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Why are there only 3.8 million speakers recorded for Ireland? - Everyone speaks English here and although Irish is important it tends not to be primary —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dionysus99 (talk • contribs) 17:29, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Liberia?

Shouldn't Liberia be in the major table of English-speaking countries? It has a population of over 3 million, and English is its only official language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jez9999 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The table is by native speakers. How many of those 3 million+ are native speakers of English? (Give a reference please.) --teb728 22:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wells, Accents of English says 1% of the population (all descendents of settlers from the USA) are native English speakers. "Among the remaining 99 per cent of the population of Liberia, English is known (if at all) only as a second language." (Wells, Accents of English iii, p. 633). Grover cleveland 03:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry - please disregard my last statement - the real difference in population and quoted figures is so small as to be unimportant

Vowels

I'm a bit confused about how the "vowels" section is supposed to work. I presume its purpose is to demonstrate the different vowels that are used in English, with examples. The problem, of course, is that almost every accent of English has a different inventory of vowel sounds.

The current section is based on RP and GenAm. However, because there are several classes of words where RP and GenAm have different vowels, we end up with a rather messy list. For example, [ɒ] occurs in RP but not GenAm, but is included, which requires a footnote to explain its absence in GenAm. On the other hand, there are diphthongs that occur in non-rhotic accents such as RP, such as [ɪə] in "beer", which are absent from the table.

Can I suggest that we either just use one accent in this section, or alternatively have two separate tables? The current option we have seems half-baked, doing justice to neither GenAm nor RP. And we should definitely make clear that these are only two out of many possible vowel schemes. Thanks. Grover cleveland 04:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Status of English in Mongolia

I keep on finding articles that claim that Mongolia has adopted English as its second official language. What's up with this?

http://www.worldteach.org/programs/mongolia_year/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.197.7 (talk) 14:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2930&purchase_type=ITM&item_id=0286-19033711 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.197.7 (talk) 14:02, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Roots

French is 100% derived from latin, so shouldnt the graph merge latin and french together? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.114.19.176 (talk) 00:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the chart is about individual words, and it's not true that 100% of French words are derived from Latin. (French also has words from Germanic and Celtic languages, for example.) Also, it often makes a difference whether English borrowed a word directly from Latin or indirectly via French: for example, legal is borrowed directly from Latin, while loyal is borrowed from a French word that is descended from the Latin word. —Angr 06:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Internationalization

Why do not to make English as a primary language in all the aviable countries in the world? It will be very good for unity! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.20.119.87 (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2007 (UTC)