Talk:English language/Archive 12

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

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

text: 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-youthpléigh 08:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The countries where that is not the case might make a shorter list. --teb728 08:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 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-youthpléigh 09:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Hi Glenn. About your comment "the editors say nothing". My response is: In Wikipedia there is no such thing as an "official" editor. You, me, everyone who wants to be, is an editor. So go ahead - start making that list and others will join you in  adding to it. The most important requirement for any addition or change to an article is that you must cite authorotative references for your facts. Although accuracy is important don't worry too much about making mistakes - everything you do to an article can easily be undone Roger 19:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Reduce that number by a factor of 1000 and you're about right. —Angr 18:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed.  Out of all the Indians I have met, taught or worked with (granted, not an enormous number, but a fair sampling) from different parts of India, I have never met one that claimed that they are a native English speaker, and I have been told that English is a second language there, ousted from 1st place by the local languages like Hindi and Thamil.  Further, I have never met an Indian (and I say this as a native American English speaker) whilst overseas who could qualify as a native English speaker by my standards or anyone else's.  In fact, while I have met some Indians who are fairly adept at English, they are not the norm but, rather, the exception.  I have met plenty of Indians who were not adept at listening or speaking.  There are Indians who work at the school I currently work at and, while one is fairly good at English, listening to them teach in English makes me cringe.  Most of the Indonesians do, too.
If you care to look at English books produced in India (and I have looked at a few), you can readily see that their level of English is not on a par with a native speaker.  Of course, even books from Singapore have flaws within them, but not to the degree of Indian books.  I would never, unless I had carefully reviewed it first, agree to use an Indian book.  No offense to Indians - I like them.  I want to move to India someday.
There are ESL/EFL speakers of English in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries, but their mother tongue was not English (in most cases), thus they do not qualify as native speakers.
ReveurGAM (talk) 09:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Ok, so is there a consensus about changing the map to include countries like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and others where English is an unofficial language?
ReveurGAM (talk) 09:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely not. Starting to add countries on the basis of "Hm, they speak English rather well over there" is nothing but original research and has no place in this article. I agree that most people I've met from the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Germany or Belgium speak English at least as well as people from some of the countries on the map here, but that doesn't justify marking those countries as English speaking. And what do you mean by countries "where English is an unofficial language"? Which standards do you suggest for selecting these countries? Our personal experience or self-reported ability? Neither is good. JdeJ (talk) 12:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure I want the map changed but it would not be original research to make a map showing countries where english proficiency met some arbitrary benchmark.  So long as the numbers were sourced for the countries shown it would not be original research no matter how arbitrary the selection of inclusion criteria was.Zebulin (talk) 16:38, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True, but it would still be rather problematic in many ways and possibly give the wrong impression. I hate to generalise, but my impression is that people in some countries tend to regard their English as far better than it is while we got the opposite problem in other countries. I've met quite a number of Italians, Greeks and Pakistanis who have put down full fluency in English on their CVs and barely managed to communicate at all. I've also met many Scandinavians, Swiss and Dutch who have been very modest about their English despite being functionally fluent. So a map using self-reported ability as a basis would not be original research, but I'm not too sure it would be very accurate either. Besides, I think that finding such data for most countries could be pretty hard. So my main point is that we create much more problems than we solve by changing the map. The text already mentions the rather high level of self-reported competence in many countries so the information is there already. I suggest keeping English as an official language in the map. JdeJ (talk) 18:44, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for your post and for your observations in Indonesia. What you report from Indonesia seems to be more or less the same as in almost any other country in the world, and I don't think anybody will call you a crackhead. It is of course always sad to hear that efforts are being made to wipe out domestic languages, but that is a personal opinion as well. The facts are that you will find companies using English, English immersion schools and an interest in English all over the world. You will find French immersion schools, Spanish immersion schools and immersion schools for other language as well, although not to the same extent. Given that most people know this to be a fact, I'm not sure what we would accomplish by changing the map; especially not since this information is already found in the text. On a final note, also a personal one, we should not confuse the ability to speak English with any desire to see English as an official, or even unofficial, language. I believe myself to be fairly fluent in English and I like the language a lot - in England, in the US, in Australia etc. I would, on the other hand, hate to see it made an official language of this country and I deplore its spread at the expense of other languages and cultures. Needless to say, that has nothing to do with it being English, I deplore every smaller language being replaced by a bigger one. Making up a map in which we impose English as an 'unofficial' language would, frankly, be offensive to many people who have no wish to identify with the language no matter how well they speak it. JdeJ (talk) 08:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where English is spoken and the Map 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Liberia? 

message: 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,  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  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)
thread_title: Vowels

message: 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)
thread_title: Status of English in Mongolia

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Roots 

message: 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)
replies: text: This talk page is supposed to be about improvements to the English language article. This section is off topic. --teb728 t c 21:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internationalization 

message: The article currently has, at the end of the first paragraph of (English_language#Characteristics_of_intonation), "In general, for a two-syllable word in English, it can be broadly said that if it is a noun or an adjective, the first syllable is accentuated; but if it is a verb, the second syllable is accentuated."  This seems unsubstantiated as well as weasely ("in general" and "it can be broadly said").  Furthermore, if it's appropriate at that place in the article to talk about tendencies for words to have stress on one syllable or another, it seems we'd need something lengthier in order not to be misleading or flat-out wrong, which would merit its own section.  --Atemperman 20:03, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stress in two-syllable words 

message: English is an official language of Malta. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_speaking_countries
There are a lot of english schools in Malta, and many english students especially in summer.
Simonscerri 11:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Malta 

message: The CIA reference gives no information to substantiate a ranking of any kind. Please remove this reference as it gives the ranking more authority than it actually deserves. AnthroGael 00:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranking References 

message: How can the article say that English is “the primary language” of Singapore when there are only 0.7 million native speakers out of 4.6 million total population? It seems to me that Singapore should be in the list of countries where English is an official language but not the primary language. --teb728 (talk) 09:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Singapore 

message: Why not change (and considerably shorten) the intro from the current "for most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America" to "for most people in Britain and ex members of the British Empire"? --Camaeron 14:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Because that would be incorrect. India's population alone is so large that it's safe to say that most people in britain and ex members of the british empire do *not* speak english as their native tongue.Zebulin 18:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  British Empire