Modern English

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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, Canada, New Zealand 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:

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, although it is always devoiced before /ɹ/.
  • 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 and ge, 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 Standard 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.
  • The combination of ng usually produces the following: /nɡ → ŋ/. Most of the time /ŋ/ occurs after a velar stop, but in the case of /ŋg/ many 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/ which obviously don't rhyme.

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/.
  • 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. This is a simplified version based on British RP and Standard American.

Grammar

English is known for the fact that is does not have Genders, although it originally had.

Articles

There are two articles in the English language, one definite and one indefinite. They are used in specific ways, sometimes unique to English, sometimes they are used in the generic meaning of definite and indefinite. The definite article is the and the indefinite article is a or an before a word starting with a vowel sound . This means that it must be a vowel sound, not orthographic vowel. Examples that might seem strange would be : An honest decision, An hour, BUT: a universe, a unicorn, a use (many uni- words in English are pronounced /juni-/ with a consonantal /j/ not an initial vowel.

Nouns

English nouns have four forms, descended from the Anglo-Saxon declension system. There are two numbers, singular and plural, and there is one case which distinguishes itself from the other forms. That would be the Genitive which has the ending -'s and sometimes -' in the singular and -' in the plural.

The common way to form the plural in English is addition of -s or -es (if the word ends with -sh, -ch, -s, -z or -x. If the word ends with a -y the plural is usually -ies.

A common noun such as ship or glass might look as follows:

Sing. Plur. Sing. Plur.
Nom. ship ships glass glasses
Gen. ship's ships' glass's glasses'

There are many irregular nouns in English, most of which come from Old English, although a few come from Latin and French. Some require stem changes, such as man to men, mouse to mice, or foot to feet. There are some patterns, and a few are rooted in Germanic words such as child to children and ox to oxen. Many animal nouns have plural forms which are the same as the singular forms, such as sheep, deer, and fish. Some nouns are completely irregular and have to memorized, such as die and dice. It should be noted that with words like Woman versus Women the difference in pronunciation is in the first vowel, not the second.

Latin based nouns often have Latin plurals or two plurals (one Latin ending, and another Standard English ending). There are also many group nouns which are always plural. There are some plural nouns which have plural forms, group & groups, people & peoples.

Personal Pronouns

There are two major cases for Personal Pronouns in English, Subjective and Objective (Nominative and Accusative). There is a possessive form, similar to an Genitive form, as well as an adjective form of that. There is only one second person form in Modern English, although all previous stages had a second person form, leading to thou in Early Modern English. The third person singular pronoun does separate out by gender.

Case First Person Second Person Third Person
Sing. Plur. Sing. & Plur. Sing. Masc. Sing. Fem. Sing. Neut. Plur.
Subjective I we you he she it they
Objective me us you him her it them
Possessive mine, my ours, our yours, your his, his hers, her its, its theirs, their

Adjectives and Adverbs

Prepositions and Conjunctions

Verbs

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
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