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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

English language has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

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This article has been viewed enough times in a single year to make it into the Top 50 Report annual list. This happened in 2010, when it received 9,183,400 views.

There is a request, submitted by Sdkb, for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia.

The rationale behind the request is: "Subject is of particular interest to English language-learners, many of whom particularly benefit from spoken articles. Note: barnstar offered as reward".

British English

No mention of MLE or estruary English? MLE in particular is spreading to many cities in England. Definitely worth a mention. Bigbotnot2 (talk) 20:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Questionable examples of Norse influence

"Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent."

How is "give" a Norse loanword, when it is common all over the West Germanic languages? (Dutch and Low German "geven", High German "geben" etc.) "skirt" (with a shifted meaning) can also be found in German "Schürze", probably stemming from Middle Low German schörte, from Old Saxon skurtia!

"cake" is "Kuchen" in German.

Granted, some originally used West Germanic words might have been given up and later re-introduced via Norse words of the same etymology...94.219.14.131 (talk) 02:41, 14 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

Pretty easily:

skirt and shirt are cognate doublets, but are of Norse and Anglo-Saxon origin respectively.
give displaced its Anglo-Saxon doublet, which fell out of use as yiven during the Middle English period

And so on. Remsense诉 02:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

External link

Will the following link be accepted: Free English Grammar and Vocabulary Lessons? תיל"ם (talk) 04:40, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is not appropriate to include. This article's main goal is describing English and explaining characteristics about it, not teaching the language. The external links currently on the article are for giving more information describing English that cannot be included in the text of the article (namely, archives of sound recordings). IndigoManedWolf (talk) 05:31, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Inconsistent figures

The lead section mentions >2 billion total speakers, whereas the infobox states that there are less than 1.5 billion. Sure, there are countless organizations publishing figures, each with their own way of estimating and different definitions of someone being able to speak English. However, I think the figures presented in the lead section and infobox should at least be the same, perhaps - if necessary - with a note or link to a subsection in which it is explained why there are such large ranges in estimates. Maxeto0910 (talk) 23:20, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While the scholars with the 2 billion figure are recognizable to me, it's clear they were not really rigorous in the journal cited. I've switched the lead figure to Ethnologue. Remsense ‥ 论 00:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Instrumental case

The reference to the instrumental case being lost in the Middle English period is surely wrong. This case was largely lost already in Old English. Does the author mean the dative? 86.190.145.222 (talk) 20:14, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 19 October 2024

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Hello. In Quebec, French is the sole official language. English is not official, and has no status in that province. Kindly update the map and shade Quebec a very light blue, and not the current blue it is. Thanks 2605:8D80:502:A954:7880:F88:64E7:930A (talk) 23:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done English is an administrative language in Quebec, which is also included in the map. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:09, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is not true that “the majority of English vocabulary derives from Romance languages”.

Latin is not a Romance language. According to this article, only 28% of English vocabulary is of Romance origin. And I’m very skeptical about that claim as well, considering how much of French is Germanic in origin.

Also, I think much more needs to be done to emphasize how Germanic English is, considering how misleading those statements about the Italic loanwords are. They may be in the dictionary, but they’re not in common use.

To say that “much of English's most basic vocabulary remains identifiably Germanic, as well as aspects of its grammar and phonology” is a huge understatement. As far as I’m aware, absolutely no aspects of its grammar or phonology aren’t Germanic. As a matter of fact, in some aspects of its phonology (like /w/ and /th/), English is much closer to Proto-Germanic than most other Germanic languages.

Really, I think it should say that *all* of the basic and most-used words are Germanic in origin, and that *every* aspect of its grammar and phonology is as well.

The way this article is written gives undue weight to the Italic loanwords and makes it seem like some words that are almost never used but exist in a dictionary that the vast majority of the native speakers of the language will never read and wouldn’t even know how to pronounce, or words that were also loaned into *every* Germanic language, not only English, have made English some kind of hybrid anomaly. And that’s really not the case. It’s very misleading.

Also, you don’t see other non-Italic languages with the majority of their vocabulary made up of Italic loanwords, like Albanian, having undue emphasis given to that fact by having it in the heading of their articles. 2600:100A:B1CD:CDC1:189A:4B36:6A05:2BC9 (talk) 04:28, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]