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.
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 Middle English.
- 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
Constructed languages
- Volapük (with other sources)
