Modern English

English is a Germanic language, serving basically as the lingua franca over much of the world; the most notable English-speaking countries are the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

English Modern English
Spoken in:	Great Britian, Ireland, United States, Australia, amongst others.
Conworld:	Real world
Total speakers:	350-400 million native.
Genealogical classification:	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic      Anglo-Frisian        Anglic English
Basic word order:	SVO,
Morphological type:	Isolating (mostly)
Morphosyntactic alignment:	nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
unknown	Great Vowel Shift-Present C.E.

Stages

English has had 4 primary stages:

• Anglo-Saxon also known as Old English
• Middle English
• Early Modern English
• Modern English

The separation of Anglo-Saxon from Middle English is marked by The Battle of Hastings in 1066. The separation of Middle English and the Modern English stages is the Great Vowel Shift.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Inter-dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m						n						ŋ
Plosive	p	b					t	d					k	g	ʔ
Fricative			f	v	θ	ð	s	z	ʃ	ʒ		ç	(x)		h
Affricate							ʦ	ʣ	ʧ	(ʤ)
Approximants & glides	ʍ	w						ɹ				j
Trill								r
Flap								ɾ
Lateral Approximant								l/ɫ

• The glottal stop /ʔ/ is used in some British and Scottish accents instead of an unstressed intervocalic alveolar stop. The same sound becomes an alveolar flap /ɾ/ in many American and some Australian dialects.
• In most dialects /h/ + /j/ results in /ç/.
• Voiceless consonants are unaspirated after /s/.
• The voiceless labio-velar glide /ʍ/ was descended from Anglo-Saxon hw and Middle English wh, although it has been replaced in most dialects with /w/, in some dialects (particularly Scottish and some Midwestern American dialects) have preserved this sound.
• The orthographic diagraph gh has many pronunciations in English, historically it was /x/ or /ç/ and this sound is still preserved in some Scottish dialects.
• The nasal sound /ŋ/ occurs after a velar stop, so /ŋk/, /ŋg/, and /ŋ/ are common.
• The inter-dental sounds are spelt th for both voicings.
• The sound /ʒ/ occurs in French loanwords and in a few select inter-vocal orthographic s.
• The sound /ʤ/ occurs from an orthographic j or gi or ge, although the latter two sometimes retain hard /g/ pronunciations from Old English, such as give /gɪv/ and get /gɛt/.
• The trill /r/ is preserved in a few British and Scottish dialects.
• The inter-dentals are replaced by several other pairings in many dialects, some of the replace sounds are: /d, t/, /f, v/ /s, z/.
• The /t/ in the combination is often dropped in terms such as: soften, often. Although, this sound is preserved in the open forms: oft, soft.

The consonants of English tend to be more stable cross-dialectally than the vowels.

The phonemic status of [ŋ] is sometimes disputed, instead being replaced by a rule /nɡ → ŋ/ at the end of a morpheme. Most of the time /ŋ/ occurs after a velar stop, but in the case of /ŋg/ may times the /g/ is dropped and the /ŋ/ remains. In standard English words such as sing, sin, and sink are minimal pairs as such /sɪŋ/, /sɪn/, and /sɪŋk/. There are exceptions such as singer /sɪŋəɹ/ vs. finger /fɪŋgəɹ/.

The voiceless stops are aspirated. In some dialects aspiration is more salient than voicing for distinguishing stops.

The general American value of /r/ is the approximate /ɹ/ which also involves a bit of lip rounding, leading to some children changing /ɹ/ to /w/ in early stages of development.

Notable features of English

• Most verbs cannot normally participate in processes such as negation; for this auxiliary verbs are used. E.g.: to negate "I ate the cat.":

  *I ate not the cat. (possible, but archaic)

  I didn't eat the cat. (auxiliary "do" takes tense and negation marking)

Languages based on English

Creoles and natural descendants

• Tok Pisin

Constructed languages

• Volapük (with other sources)

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