Talk:English language/Archive 2

message: Two-thirds of the world's native English speakers speak some form of American English.
In the interests of keeping the introduction concise and to the point I have removed this sentence, its not exactly necessary as the pie chart below illustrates the fact that Americans are the largest group of native English speakers. --JDnCoke 18:31, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: I changed several instances of "English English" in the article to "British English.  I'm not really sure if that change was made to claim that British English is the true form of English or to distinguish British English
(which is generally considered to be inclusive of English elsewhere on that isle) from Scottish English.  Either way, it seemed somewhat POV, especially considering that both directed to the same article, British English.  — Daniel Quinlan 01:38, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
:I'd say that the Queens English is the international English.  The only country that utilises American perversions of English would be America.  You do encounter Americanisation of youth in other English speaking countries however, but in those instances it is not an intentional adoption, it is usually an uneducated abridgement by illiterate users of the language.
>>> Thank you, Professor 'iggins! Wahkeenah 23:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: English English to British English

message: I see 24.169.71.157 has restructured the article. Unfortunately there seems to be something in his/her software which has REALLY screwed up all the accented letters in the article and interlanguage links. I shall try to correct them as best I can... -- Arwel 22:16, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Apart from the interlanguage links for Catalan (Anglès) and Spanish (Idioma inglés) and for ë,ï, and ö because I couldn't find the codes, I have used HTML style e.g. ntilde so we don't get this problem again. -- Arwel 22:44, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Restructuring

message: What's an "exclusive cultural emblem"? Or rather, I suppose a flag is an "exclusive cultural emblem", but what does it mean to suggest (or deny) that the English language is the "exclusive cultural emblem" of native English speakers.  Andy G 
22:23, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Exclusive cultural emblem

message: Should Spanglish really be listed as an American dialect? It's not really English or Spanish, nor is it considered an official dialect by either. Even its own article refers to it as a "range of language contact phenomena". Certainly it is notable, but not as a dialect of English. Zarggg 00:24, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Spanglish

message: This source is talking about million. I also found this which states that the Oxford English Dictionary states to contain 615,000 words (not including supplements)...AskOxford talks about 300,000 headwords. Guaka 12:28, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: What is the source of "the-bag-lady.co.uk"? It rather blows its credibility with me when I browse that list of countries and languages on the page you reference, and see that in Belgium they apparently speak Dutch, French, and Flemish... (Flemish is a form of Dutch, the actual official languages are Dutch (Flemish), French, and German), or that the languages of Greenland are "Danish and Eskimo" Eskimo??! The language is "Greenlandic"! -- Arwel 21:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: How many words are there in the English language?

message: Looking at the numbers mentioned in articles on other languages, the numbers of foreign language speakers seems very little compared to English (es:65m, fr:51m), which seems to suggest that we are counting with different measures compared to the 1,500 in this article. One can only speak of 1,500 m speakers, if one counts everyone who can just say greetings, but nothing else. But if we count like that, we would have to change all the articles on other languages as well. Instead, I propose to adjust this article. Thus I have changes the information in the table from "350 to 1,500 m" to "350 to 1,500 m". Marcoscramer 21:24, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Number of foreign language speakers

message: "The voiceless velar fricative (/x/) is used (..) by some speakers for loanwords from German (..) like reich (raix) (..)"
Is that really true? I ask, because in German, "reich" is not pronounced /raix/, but /raiC/. The /x/ is only used after a, o and u, whereas the /C/ is used in all other cases. --Neg 14:22, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no distinction in any dialect of English of any of the fricatives back of palatoalveolar (sh). That is, [C], [x], and [X] are all borrowed into English as the same sound, whether as /x/, or as something else (usually /h/ or /k/, depending on whether the sound occurs in the syllable onset or coda—/h/ in onsets, /k/ in codas— hence chanukah is pronounced with initial /h/ and mach is pronounced with final /k/). The only English speakers who differentiate between different varieties of back fricatives are those who have in-depth knowledge of a language or languages that make such a distinction. "Reich" might be pronounced with [C] in German, but it's pronounced with [x] or [k] in English. See also Talk:List of words of disputed pronunciation#reich and the consonant sound of .22she.22. Nohat 03:44, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  /x/ in loanwords from German 

message: Was a bad idea. Don't do it again. If you want to suggest changing the disambiguation policy for language pages, do it on the appropriate policy discussion page, but don't just start moving pages around. Thanks. Nohat 03:44, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving this page to [[English (language)]] 

message: Has anyone else noticed that the English vowel chart is missing a vowel? The missing vowel is the Open back rounded vowel (ɒ), which should be shown in the lower right-hand corner of the diagram. Could someone fix this? -- AxSkov 08:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  English vowel chart 

message: I would like the removal of the pie chart. It is at least 10 years out of date and is based upon statistically flawed data. The data is supposedly taken from http://www.alt-usage-english.org/Distribution_English_speakers.shtml. But it is flawed - For example for the UK the original data lists - 
* English       56,830,000 
* Scots-Gaelic      80,000 
* Welsh            560,000 
* Other            950,000 
:and takes no account of the fact that the vast marjority of the Welsh, Scots-Gaelic and "Other" speakers are in fact bilingual. Jooler 12:10, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: furthermore the page specifically states "According to this information, the number of mother-tongue English speakers  ..... 69% of these live in the United States". where does 70.7% come from?!? Jooler 12:32, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The chart has been updated. Dumbledore 16:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pie Chart

message: Someone changed the number of native speakers from 402 to 514 million, based on an "estimate" by the  World Almanac, which I consider a unappropriate reference for linguistic data. The previous figure (402 million) was already quite large (compared to most estimates, which are about 350 million), but 514 (!) million is simply ridiculous. I don't know how the World Almanac obtained that estimate, but I regard it as completely exaggerated. From a linguistic viewpoint, it's nonsense. Where are all those native speakers supposed to come from? According to List_of_languages_by_total_speakers, the median of five different estimates is 335.5 million native speakers. The deviation of the World Almanac estimate is enormous. 
According to a British Council Study from 2000 (data from 1997):
Native speakers in the four largest core English speaking countries:
US 226,710 UK 56,990 Canada 19,700 Australia 15,316
Rest: 18,581 Total: 337,297
Where are the remaining 514-337 = 177 million native speakers from?
Dumbledore 17:08, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe the World Almanac estimate includes second language speakers. That would make sense. Dumbledore 17:37, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of native speakers exaggerated 

message: The expression It is the most widely learned language among those learning any second language seems unneccesarily repetitive: learned language learning language. Is there no way of expressing this more succinctly in English? One would have hoped that the article about English would be a model of use of English. I am one of those who learnt it as the second language, so my suggestion was reverted within seconds. (Is there something wrong with my use of "the second language" here?) In Swedish it could be expressed as "Det är det vanligaste andraspråket" (roughly "It is the most common second-language.")--Etxrge 07:27, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is the most widely learned second language. Mark1 07:28, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  repetitive formulation in intro 

message: The following has probably and rightfully been removed from the intro. After some editing it might find use in India or related article.
English is also deeply implicated in structures of oppression and exclusion in India. It is the language by which a vast majority of Indians are kept from having a say in their own affairs. It is the language in which all research in all branches of Social Sciences and Humanities that have to do with India is conceived and carried out. Most academicians in these fields not only cannot conjugate any verb in any Indian vernacular any other way than in second person imperative (Gangaa Din, paani laao), they take pride in the fact that their minds are not contaminated with Indian vernaculars. Series of tomes on Indian History are conceived and written in English, published as Subaltern Studies, without anybody asking how many subalterns in India can speak read or write English. As an African writer noted, English is not an innocent language. Otto Jespersen said it is the most masculine of all languages, and its muscular masculinity is evident in its bloody hands.
More than half a century after the so-called independence, a clipped accent opens doors of privilege in India--Etxrge 18:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Role in oppression in India 

message: Can someone please add an interlanguage link to the corresponding article in the Ukrainian Wikipedia, if it exists? Thanks. - dcljr 20:34, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ...I think it's this one maybe??? - dcljr 20:42, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

text: Okay, someone did it who at least knows Cyrillic. Thanks. - dcljr 21:46, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  English in Ukrainian