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.

Modern English words have many different origins, but a majority come from Anglo-Saxon, Old Norman French, and a little Old Norse. However in the global world today, many words from many other languages have entered the English language.

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 the g in the combinations gi andge, although the latter two sometimes retain hard /g/ pronunciations from Old English, such as give /gɪv/ and get /gɛt/.
• The c in the spellings ci and ce has the sound /s/, unless it is from an Old English root, such as celt /kɜlt/.
• 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 replacing 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.

Vowels

Vowels
	Front	Central	Back
	Unround	Unrounded	Rounded
High	iː - ɪ		uː - ʊ
Mid	eː - ɛ	ə/ʌ	oː - ɔ
Low	æ	aː/a
All entries are: Tense - Lax

• ee is most often pronounced /iː/ and i is /ɪ/ or /aj/.
• ai and a is often pronounced /eː/ or /ei/.
• a in a monosyllabic words (without The Silent e) is pronounced /æ/ in most American dialects and sometimes /a/ in British ones.
• o is pronounced /a/ in Standard American and /ɔ/ in British RP.
• In monosyllabic words which do have The Silent e, the letter o have a pronunciations of /oː/.
• oo is either pronounced /uː/ or /ʊ/.
• u is pronounced /uː/ or /ʌ/.
• /ə/ is used for most unstressed syllables.

Diphthongs

• oy and oi are pronounced /oj/.
• ie and igh are pronounced /aj/.
• ow or ow is pronounced /aw/.
• ei is often pronounced /ei/.
• ow is sometimes pronounced /ow/ rather than /aw/.

It should be noted that these vary greatly across dialects. These are a simplified version based on British RP and Standard American.

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
• Scots
• Hawai'ian Creole, also known as Hawai'ian Pidgin
• Spanglish

Constructed languages

• Volapük (with other sources)

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