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Secondary Articulation

Secondary articulation

Secondary articulation refers to co-articulated consonants where the two articulations are not of the same manner. The approximant-like secondary articulation is weaker than the primary, and colors it rather than obscuring it. For example, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar [k], with a simultaneous [w]-like rounding of the lips, and is usually heard as a kind of [k]. This is in contrast to the doubly articulated labial-velar consonant , which has two equal stop articulations at the velum and lips. There are a number of secondary articulations. The most frequently encountered are labialization (such as ), palatalization (such as the Russian "soft" consonant ), velarization (such as the English "dark" L ), and pharyngealization (such as the Arabic "emphatic" consonant ). Although the symbol for secondary articulation is a superscript written after the primary consonant, this is misleading, as they are pronounced simultaneously. Since secondary articulation has a strong effect on surrounding vowels, it will often seem that it precedes the consonant, or both precedes and follows it. For this reason, the IPA symbols for labialization and palatalization were for a time placed directly under the consonant (as and ), and there is still an alternate symbol for velarization or pharyngealizaton that is superposed across the consonant (as in for dark L).

Co-articulated consonant

Co-articulated consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. They may be divided into two classes, doubly articulated consonants with two primary places of articulation of the same manner (both plosive, or both nasal, etc.), and consonants with secondary articulation, that is, a second articulation not of the same manner. An example of a doubly articulated consonant is the voiceless labial-velar plosive , which is pronounced simulateously at the velum (a [k]) and at the lips (a [p]). On the other hand, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar [k], with a simultaneous approximant-like rounding of the lips. Except for clicks, practically all doubly articulated consonants are labial-velars. However, there is a large number of common secondary articulations. The most frequently encountered are labialization (such as ), palatalization (such as the Russian "soft" consonant ), velarization (such as the English "dark" el ), and pharyngealization (such as the Arabic "emphatic" consonant ). As might be expected from the approximant-like nature of secondary articulation, it is not always easy to tell whether a co-articulated approximant consonant such as is doubly or secondarily articulated. In English, for example, is a labialized velar that could be transcribed as , but the Japanese is closer to a true labial-velar, . The glottis controls phonation, and works simultaneously with many consonants. It is not normally considered an articulator, and an ejective , with simultaneous closure of the velum and glottis, is not normally considered to be a co-articulated consonant.

See also


- List of phonetics topics Category:Phonetics

Manner of articulation

In linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, and other speech organs involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants. For any place of articulation, there may be several manners, and therefore several homorganic consonants. One parameter of manner is stricture, that is, how closely the speech organs approach one another. Parameters other than stricture are those involved in the ar sounds (taps and trills), and the sibilancy of fricatives. Often nasality and laterality are included in manner, but phoneticians such as Peter Ladefoged consider them to be independent.

Stricture

From greatest to least stricture, speech sounds may be classified along a cline as stop consonants (with occlusion, or blocked airflow), fricative consonants (with partially blocked and therefore strongly turbulent airflow), approximants (with only slight turbulence), and vowels (with full unimpeded airflow). Affricates often behave as if they were intermediate between stops and fricatives, but phonetically they are sequences of stop plus fricative. Historically, sounds may move along this cline toward less stricture in a process called lenition.

Other parameters

Sibilants are distinguished from other fricatives by the shape of the tongue and how the airflow is directed over the teeth. Fricatives at coronal places of articulation may be sibilant or non-sibilant, with sibilants more common. Taps and flaps are similar to very brief stops. However, their articulation and behavior is distinct enough to be considered a separate manner, rather than just length. Trills involve the vibration of one of the speech organs. Since trilling is a separate parameter from stricture, the two may be combined. Increasing the stricture of a typical trill results in a trilled fricative. Trilled affricates are also known. Nasal airflow may be added as an independent parameter to any speech sound. It is most commonly found in nasal stops and nasal vowels, but nasal fricatives, taps, and approximants are also found. When a sound is not nasal, it is called oral. An oral stop is often called a plosive, while a nasal stop is generally just called a nasal. Laterality is the release of airflow at the side of the tongue. This can also be combined with other manners, resulting in lateral approximants (the most common), lateral flaps, and lateral fricatives and affricates.

Individual manners


- Plosive, or oral stop, where there is complete occlusion (blockage) of both the oral and nasal cavities of the vocal tract, and therefore no air flow. Examples include English /p t k/ (voiceless) and /b d g/ (voiced). If the consonant is voiced, the voicing is the only sound made during occlusion; if it is voiceless, a plosive is completely silent. What we hear as a /p/ or /k/ is the effect that the onset of the occlusion has on the preceding vowel, and well as the release burst and its effect on the following vowel. The shape and position of the tongue (the place of articulation) determine the resonant cavity that gives different plosives their characteristic sounds. All languages have plosives.
- Nasal stop, usually shortened to nasal, where there is complete occlusion of the oral cavity, and the air instead passes instead through the nose. The shape and position of the tongue determine the resonant cavity that gives different nasal stops their characteristic sounds. Examples include English /m, n/. Nearly all languages have nasals, the only exceptions being in the area of Puget Sound and a single language on Bougainville Island.
- Fricative, sometimes called spirant, where there is continuous frication (turbulent and noisy airflow) at the place of articulation. Examples include English /f, s/ (voiceless), /v, z/ (voiced), etc. Most languages have fricatives, though many have only an /s/. However, the Australian languages are almost completely devoid of fricatives of any kind. :
- Sibilants are a type of fricative where the airflow is guided by a groove in the tongue toward the teeth, creating a high-pitched and very distinctive sound. These are by far the most common fricatives. Fricatives at coronal (front of tongue) places of articulation are usually, though not always, sibilants. English sibilants include /s/ and /z/. :
- Lateral fricatives are a rare type of fricative, where the frication occurs on one or both sides of the edge of the tongue. The "ll" of the Welsh language and the "hl" of Zulu are lateral fricatives.
- Affricate, which begins like a plosive, but this releases into a fricative rather than having a separate release of its own. The English letters "ch" and "j" represent affricates. Affricates are quite common around the world, though less ubiquitous than fricatives.
- Flap, often called a tap, is a momentary closure of the oral cavity. The "tt" of "utter" and the "dd" of "udder" are pronounced as a flap in North American English. Many linguists distinguish taps from flaps, but there is no consensus on what the difference might be. No language relies on such a difference. There are also lateral flaps.
- Trill, in which the articulator (usually the tip of the tongue) is held in place, and the airstream causes it to vibrate. The double "r" of Spanish "perro" is a trill. Trills and flaps, where there is one or more brief occlusions, constitute a class of consonant called rhotics.
- Approximant, where there is very little obstruction. Examples include English /w/ and /r/. In some languages, such as Spanish, there are sounds which seem to fall between fricative and approximant. :
- One use of the word semivowel is a type of approximant, pronounced like a vowel but with the tongue closer to the roof of the mouth, so that there is slight turbulence. In English, /w/ is the semivowel equivalent of the vowel /u/, and /j/ (spelled "y") is the semivowel equivalent of the vowel /i/ in this usage. Other descriptions use semivowel for vowel-like sounds that are not syllabic, but don't have the increased stricture of approximants. These are found as elements in diphthongs. The word may also be used to cover both concepts. :
- Lateral approximants, usually shortened to lateral, are a type of approximant pronounced with the side of the tongue. English /l/ is a lateral. Together with the rhotics, which have similar behavior in many languages, these form a class of consonant called liquids.

Broader classifications

Manners of articulation with substantial obstruction of the airflow (plosives, fricatives, affricates) are called obstruents. These are prototypically voiceless, but voiced obstruents are extremely common as well. Manners without such obstruction (nasals, liquids, approximants, and also vowels) are called sonorants because they are nearly always voiced. Voiceless sonorants are uncommon, but are found in Welsh and Classical Greek (the spelling "rh"), in Tibetan (the "lh" of Lhasa), and the "wh" in those dialects of English which distinguish "which" from "witch". Sonorants may also be called resonants, and some linguists prefer that term, restricting the word 'sonorant' to non-vocoid resonants (that is, nasals and liquids, but not vowels or semi-vowels). Another common distinction is between stops (plosives and nasals) and continuants (all else); affricates are considered to be both, because they are sequences of stop plus fricative.

Other airstream initiations

All of these manners of articulation are pronounced with an airstream mechanism called pulmonic egressive, meaning that the air flows outward, and is powered by the lungs (actually the ribs and diaphragm). Other airstream mechanisms are possible. Sounds which rely on some of these include:
- Ejectives, which are glottalic egressive. That is, the airstream is powered by an upward movement of the glottis rather than by the lungs or diaphragm. Plosives, affricates, and occasionally fricatives may occur as ejectives. All ejectives are voiceless.
- Implosives, which are glottalic ingressive. Here the glottis moves downward, but the lungs may be used simultaneously (to provide voicing), and in some languages no air may actually flow into the mouth. Implosive oral stops are not uncommon, but implosive affricates and fricatives are rare. Voiceless implosives are also rare.
- Clicks, which are velaric ingressive. Here the back of the tongue is used to create a vacuum in the mouth, causing air to rush in when the foreward occlusion (tongue or lips) is released. Clicks may be oral or nasal, stop or affricate, central or lateral, voiced or voiceless. They are extremely rare in normal words outside Southern Africa. However, English has a click in its "tsk tsk" (or "tut tut") sound, and another is used to say "giddy up" to a horse.

See also


- Place of articulation
- Phonation
- Airstream mechanism
- List of phonetics topics

External links


- [http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~danhall/phonetics/sammy.html Interactive place and manner of articulation] Category:Phonetics ko:조음 방법 ja:調音方法

Approximant consonant

Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are therefore more open than fricatives. This class of sounds includes lateral approximants like , as in lip, and approximants like and in yes and well which correspond closely to vowels and semivowels. Palatal approximants correspond to front vowels, velar approximants to back vowels, and labialized approximants to rounded vowels. They are typically briefer and closer than the corresponding vowels. When emphasized, approximants may be slightly fricated (that is, the airstream may become slightly turbulent), which is reminiscent of fricatives. Examples are the y of English yes! (especially when lengthened) and the "weak" allophones of Spanish b, d, g, which are often transcribed as fricatives (often due perhaps to a lack of dedicated approximant symbols). However, such frication is generally slight and intermittant, unlike the strong turbulence of fricative consonants. This confusion is also common with voiceless approximants, which necessarily have a certain amount of fricative-like noise. For example, the voiceless labialized velar approximant has traditionally been called a fricative. Tibetan has a voiceless lateral approximant, , and Welsh has a voiceless lateral fricative , but the distinction is not always clear from descriptions of these languages. For places of articulation further back in the mouth, languages do not contrast voiced fricatives and approximants. Therefore the IPA allows the symbols for the voiced fricatives to double for the central approximants, with or without a lowering diacritic. Occasionally the glottal "fricatives" are called approximants, since [h] typically has no more frication than voiceless approximants, but they are often phonations of the glottis without any accompanying manner or place of articulation. Central approximants
- bilabial approximant (usually written )
- labiodental approximant
- dental approximant (usually written )
- alveolar approximant (a consonantal )
- retroflex approximant
- palatal approximant (a consonantal )
- velar approximant (a consonantal )
- uvular approximant (usually written )
- pharyngeal approximant (usually written )
- epiglottal approximant (usually written ) Lateral approximants
- voiced alveolar lateral approximant
- voiceless alveolar lateral approximant
- retroflex lateral approximant
- palatal lateral approximant
- velar lateral approximant Coarticulated approximants with dedicated IPA symbols
- voiced labialized velar approximant (a consonantal )
- voiceless labialized velar approximant
- labialized palatal approximant (a consonantal )
- velarized alveolar lateral approximant Although many languages have central vowels which lie between back/velar and front/palatal , no language is known to have corresponding approximants.

See also


- List of phonetics topics
- Semivowel Category:Consonants ko:접근음 ja:接近音

Stop consonant

A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The term plosive is reserved for oral (non-nasal) stops: that is, stops with a release burst. All languages in the world have stops. Most have at least [p], [t], [k], [n], [m]. However, colloquial Samoan lacks the dentals [t] and [n], and the northern Iroquoian languages lack the labials [p] and [m]. Several of the Chimakuan, Salishan, and Wakashan languages around Puget Sound lack nasal stops.

Stop articulation

In the articulation of the stop, three phases can be distinguished:
- Catch: The airway closes so that no air can escape through the mouth (hence the names stop). With nasal stops, the air escapes through the nose.
- Hold or occlusion: The airway stays closed, causing a pressure difference to build up (hence the name occlusive).
- Release or burst: The closure is opened. In the case of plosives, the released airflow produces a sudden impulse causing an audible sound (hence the name plosive). In many languages, such as and , final stops lack a release burst, or have a nasal release. See Unreleased stop. In affricate stops, the release is a fricative.

Classification of stops

Nasalization

nasal stops are differentiated from oral stops only by a lowered velum that allows the air to escape through the nose during the occlusion. Nasal stops are acoustically sonorants, as they have a non-turbulent airflow and are nearly always voiced, but they are articulatorily obstruents, as there is complete blockage of the oral cavity. A prenasalized stop starts out with a lowered velum that raises during the occlusion. The closest examples in English are consonant clusters such as the [nd] in candy, but many languages have prenasalized stops that behave as single consonants. Swahili is well known for having words that begin with sounds like [mp] or [nd]. A postnasalized stop begins with a raised velum that lowers during the occlusion. This causes an audible nasal release, as in English sudden. Russian and other Slavic languages have words that begin with [dn], which can be seen in the name of the Dnieper River. Note that the terms prenasalization and postnasalization are normally only used in languages where these sounds are phonemic, that is, not analyzed into sequences of plosive plus nasal stop.

Voice

Voiced stops are articulated with simulaneous vibration of the vocal cords, voiceless stops without. Plosives are commonly voiceless, whereas nasal stops are only rarely so.

Aspiration

In aspirated stops, the voice onset (the time when the vocal cords begin to vibrate) comes perceivably later than the release of the stop. The duration between the release of the stop and the voice onset is called voice onset time (VOT). Tenuis stops have a voice onset time close to zero, meaning that voicing begins when the stop is released. Voiced stops have a negative voice onset time, meaning the voicing begins before the stop is released. A stop is called "fully voiced" if it is voiced during the entire occlusion. In English, however, initial voiced plosives like [b] or [d] are only partially voiced, meaning that voicing picks up sometime during the occlusion. Aspirated stops have a voice onset time greater than zero, so that there is a period of voiceless airflow (a phonetic ) before the onset of the vowel. In most dialects of English, the final g in the word bag is likely to be fully voiced, while the initial b will be only partially voiced. Initial voiceless plosives, like the p in pie, are aspirated, with a palpable puff of air upon release, while a plosive after an s, as in spy, is tenuis. If you speak near a candle flame, you will see that the flame will flicker more when you say pie, tie, chi than when you say spy, sty, sky.

Length

In a geminate or long stop, the occlusion lasts longer than in normal stops. In languages where stops are only distinguished by length (e.g. Arabic, Ilwana, Icelandic), the long stops may last up to three times as long as the short stops. Italian is well known for its geminate stop, as the double t in the name Vittoria takes just as long to say as the ct does in English Victoria. Note that there are many languages where the features voice, aspiration, and length reinforce each other, and in such cases it may be hard to tell which of these features predominates. In such cases the terms fortis is sometimed used for aspiration or gemination, while lenis is used for single, tenuis or voiced stops. Beware, however, that the terms fortis and lenis are poorly defined, and their meanings vary from source to source.

Airstream mechanism

Stops may be made with more than one airstream mechanism. The normal mechanism is pulmonic egressive, that is, with air flowing outward from the lungs. All languages have pulmonic stops. Some languages have stops made with other mechanisms as well: ejective stops (glottalic egressive), implosive stops (glottalic ingressive), or click consonants (velaric ingressive).

Tenseness

A fortis stop (in the narrow sense) is produced with more muscular tension than a lenis stop (in the narrow sense). However, this is difficult to measure, and there is usually debate over the actual mechanism of alleged fortis or lenis consonants. There are a series of stops in Korean, sometimes written with the IPA symbol for ejectives, which are produced using "stiff voice", meaning there is increased contraction of the glottis than for normal production of voiceless stops. The indirect evidence for stiff voice is in the following vowels, which have a higher fundamental frequency than those following other stops. The higher frequency is explained as a result of the glotis being tense. Other such phonation types include breathy voice, or murmur; slack voice; and creaky voice.

Examples

Here are the oral stops (plosives) granted dedicated symbols in the IPA. See also the nasal stops.
- voiceless bilabial plosive
- voiced bilabial plosive
- voiceless alveolar plosive
- voiced alveolar plosive
- voiceless retroflex plosive
- voiced retroflex plosive
- voiceless palatal plosive
- voiced palatal plosive
- voiceless velar plosive
- voiced velar plosive
- voiceless uvular plosive
- voiced uvular plosive
- epiglottal plosive
- glottal stop

English stops

, , (aspirated word-initially, tenuis in clusters with s) , , (in most dialects: partially voiced word-initially, fully voiced intervocalically) , , (fully voiced nasal stops) (glottal stop, not as a phoneme in most dialects)

See also


- Continuant, the antonym of a stop
- List of phonetics topics Category:Consonants ko:파열음 ja:破裂音

Doubly articulated consonant

Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner (both plosive, or both nasal, etc.). They are a subset of co-articulated consonants. They are to be distinguished from co-articulated consonants with secondary articulation, that is, a second articulation not of the same manner. An example of a doubly articulated consonant is the voiceless labial-velar plosive , which is a [k] and a [p] pronounced simulataneously. On the other hand, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar ([k]), with a simultaneous approximant-like rounding of the lips. In some dialects of Arabic, the voiceless velar fricative has a simultaneous uvular trill, but this is not considered double articulation either. There are four independently controllable articulations that may double up in the same manner of articulation: labial, coronal, dorsal, and radical. (The glottis controls phonation, and works simultaneously with many consonants. It is not normally considered an articulator, and an ejective , with simultaneous closure of the velum and glottis, is not considered a doubly articulated consonant.) Approximants such as and may not be consistantly doubly or secondarily articulated. For example, in English, is a labialized velar that could be transcribed as , but the Japanese is closer to a true labial-velar . (See the article on approximants.) No claims have ever been made for doubly articulated flaps or trills, such as a simultaneous alveolar-uvular trill, , and these are not expected to be found. Several claims have been made for doubly articulated fricatives or affricates, most notoriously a Swedish which has its own IPA symbol, . However, laboratory measurements have never succeeded in demonstrating simultaneous frication at two points of articulation, and such sounds turn out to be either secondary articulation, or a sequence of two non-simultaneous fricatives. (Despite its name, the "voiceless labial-velar fricative" is actually a voiceless approximant; the name is a historical remnant from before the distinction was made.) Such sounds can be made, with an effort, but it is very difficult for a listener to discern them, and therefore they are not expected to be found. Clicks are doubly articulated by definition: they are involve a coronal (more rarely labial) forward articulation, or release, plus a dorsal closure that pulls double duty, both as the second place of articulation, and as the controlling mechanism of the velaric ingressive airstream. (Some of these clicks are uvular, rather than velar, but the term "velaric ingressive airstream" is used as the general term. See the article on clicks.) This leaves stops, and both oral and nasal doubly articulated stops are found. However, there is a great assymmetry in the places of their articulation. Of the six possible combinations of labial, coronal, dorsal, and radical, one is common, and the others vanishingly rare. The common articulation is labial-dorsal, which is attested by labial-velar stops, such as the mentioned above. These are found throughout West and Central Africa, as well as eastern New Guinea. A second possibility, labial-coronal, is attested by labial-alveolar and -postalveolar in a single language, Yelî Dnye of New Guinea. A third possibility, coronal-dorsal, is found marginally in a few languages. Isoko, in Nigeria, has laminal dental stops (plosives and nasals) that, in some dialects, are realized as dental-palatal stops. However, these are not contrastive with either dental or palatal stops, unlike the articulations mentioned above, and Peter Ladefoged considers them to be "accidental contacts in two regions", rather than being inherently double. Similarly, several languages of Australia, such as Maung, have dental-palatals which are variants of laminal postalveolars, with an "extended closure covering the entire region from the teeth to the hard palate". Note that in both cases, the double articulations are variants of laminal consonants, which have inherently broad contact with the roof of the mouth. The other three possibilities, which for stops would need to involve the epiglottis, are not found, but this may be an accidental gap due to the relative rarity of epiglottal consonants.

Velum

The velum, derived from Latin velum, meaning a "sail", "curtain," "awning" or "veil," has several quite separate meanings in biology:
The velum is the locomotory and feeding organ provided with cilia found in the larval stage called the veliger or "velum-bearing" stage of bivalves, such as mussels and oysters; or a delicate membrane found on certain Protists. The velum is the circular membrane round the cap of a sea jelly, or medusa. The velum is the veil-like membrane of immature mushrooms extending from the margin of the cap to the stem and is torn by growth, revealing the gills of a mature sporophore; in a mature mushroom the remains of the velum may form an annulus or ring around the stem, familiar from common button mushrooms, and sometimes on the margin of the cap. The velum is the soft palate behind the hard palate.

Palatalization

Palatalization generally refers to two phenomena:
- As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant frequently have on consonants;
- As a phonetic description, the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalized, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet they are indicated by a superscript 'j', as for a palatalized [t]. The second may be the result of the first, but they often differ. That is, a vowel may "palatalize" a consonant (sense 1), but the result might not be a palatalized consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 2). Conversely, the word palatalization may also be used for the effect a palatal or palatalized consonant exerts on nearby sounds, as in , where the front vowel [æ] only occurs as an allophone of [a] after a palatalized consonant, as seen in the pronunciation of the name of the language itself, . However, while the process may be called palatalization, the resulting vowel [æ] is not called a palatalized vowel in the phonetic sense. Terminology such as "palatal vowel" is found, however, but this is primary and not secondary articulation.

Phonetic (synchronic) palatalization

Palatalization may be a synchronic phonological process, by which some phonemes are palatalized in certain contexts, typically before front vowels or especially high front vowels, and remain non-palatalized elsewhere. This involves raising the body of the tongue toward the palate in addition to the original articulation, which may produce a laminal articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as /t/ and /s/. This process often does not produce separate phonemes, but allophonic variation that may even go unnoticed by native speakers. As an example, compare the /k/ of English key with the /k/ of coo, or the /t/ of tea with the /t/ of took. The first word of each pair is palatalized, but few English speakers would perceive them as distinct. The variation might be seen as allophonic variation as long as the "palatal" sound causing the palatalization is there. However, syncope or elision might delete this sound, and thus only the palatalization remains as a distinct feature. For a minimal pair, consider kass from
- kassi "cat" vs. kas (interrogative). It is also possible for palatalization to occur as an independent feature, independently of the following vowel. Sometimes palatalization is part of a synchronic grammatical process, such as palatalizing the first consonant of a verb root to signal the past tense. This type of palatalization is phonemic, and is recognized by the speakers as a contrasting feature. However, what may have started off as phonetic palatalization can quickly evolve into something else, so not all of the resulting consonants are necessarily palatalized phonetically. Phonetically palatalized consonants may also vary in their exact realization. In , for example, palatalization is continued as a long, noticeable palatal offglide. That is, will be realized as . Furthermore, alveolar stops have a fricative release; is actually more like . In , on the other hand, the palatalization permeates the consonant, and is heard as both an onglide and an offglide: . Palatalization is not the same as primary palatal articulation. These contrast in Skolt Sami; e.g. plain (or velarized) alveolar nasal , palatalized alveolar nasal <'n> and palatal nasal .

Historical (diachronic) palatalization

Palatalization may be a diachronic phonemic split, that is, a historical change by which a phoneme becomes two new phonemes over time through phonetic palatalization. Old historical splits have frequently drifted since the time they occurred, and may be independent of current phonetic palatalization. For example, has undergone such a change historically, in for example keeli → tšeeli "language", but there is currently an additional distinction between palatalized laminal and non-palatalized apical consonants. Palatalization has played a major role in the history of the Uralic, Romance, Slavic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Indic languages, among many others throughout the world. In Japanese, for example, allophonic palatalization affected the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/, turning them into alveolo-palatal affricates and before /i/. Japanese has only recently regained phonetic [ti] and [di] through borrowed words, and thus this originally allophonic palatalization has become lexical. Such phonemic splits due to historic palatalization are common in many other languages. Some English examples of cognate words distinguished by historical palatalization are church vs. kirk, witch vs. wicca, ditch vs. dike, and shirt vs. skirt, although only in witch/wicca did the change occur in historical times; in the other cases the words come from related dialects, only one of which experienced palatalization. More recently, the original /t/ of question and nature have come to be pronounced as ch in some English dialects, and similarly the original /d/ of soldier and procedure have come to be pronounced as j. This effect can be also be seen in casual speech in some dialects, where do you want to go? comes out like jew wanna go?, and did you eat yet? as didja eat yet?.

Local uses of the word

There are various other local or historical uses of the word. In Slavic linguistics, the "palatal" fricatives marked by a hacek are really postalveolar consonants that arose from palatalization historically. There are also phonetically palatalized consonants that contrast with this; thus the distinction is made between "palatal" (postalveolar) and "palatalized". It should be noted that even if it is called "palatalized", this does not guarantee it is phonetically palatalized; e.g. in Russian, when 'т' is so-called "palatalized", a palatalized sibilant offglide is actually added, as in тема . In Uralic linguistics, "palatalization" has the standard phonetic meaning. , , and , , are distinct phonemes, as they are in the Slavic languages, but and are not considered either palatal or palatalized sounds. In particular, the Uralic palatalized is purely a stop, unlike the Russian "palatalized т", where audible frication is permitted. In using the Latin alphabet for Uralic languages, palatalization is typically denoted with an acute accent, as in Võro <ś>; an apostrophe, as in ; or digraphs in j, as in the Savo dialect of , . Postalveolars, in contrast, take a caron, <š>, or are digraphs in h, .

See also


- Iotation, a form of palatalization in Slavic languages
- Soft sign, a Cyrillic alphabet grapheme indicating palatalization
- Manner of articulation
- List of phonetics topics

References

Bynon, Theodora. Historical Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-521-21582-X (hardback) or ISBN 0-521-291188-7 (paperback).
Erkki Savolainen, Internetix 1998. Suomen murteet - Koprinan murretta. [http://www.internetix.ofw.fi/opinnot/opintojaksot/8kieletkirjallisuus/aidinkieli/murteet/koprina.html] (with a sound sample with palatalized t') Category:Assimilation Category:Historical linguistics ko:구개음화 ja:口蓋化

Russian language

Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, ) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish, respectively. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards. While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great political importance in the 20th century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations. NOTE. Russian is written in a non-Latin script. All examples below are in the Cyrillic alphabet, with transcriptions in IPA.

Classification

Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. Many words in modern literary Russian are closer in form to the modern Bulgarian language than to Ukrainian or Belarusian. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English.

Geographic distribution

Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national intercourse throughout the region has continued. In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where more than third of the population is Russian-speaking, consisting mostly of post-World War II immigrants from Russia and other parts of the former USSR (Belarus, Ukraine). Similarly, in Estonia, the Soviet-era immigrants and their Russian-speaking descendants constitute about one quarter of the country's current population. A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was, and still is, widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam and Mongolia due to Soviet influence, and is still used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan by various tribes. Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America (especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It is important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union the overwhelming majority were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According to the United States 2000 Census, Russian was reported as language spoken at home by 1.50% of population, or about 4.2 million, placing it as #10 language in the United States. Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million people. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment. But many are well-off Russian families acquiring property and getting education. Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and also have access to Russian websites and TV channels. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian:

Official status

Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine) and the unrecognized Moldovan Republic of Transnistria. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 11% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia.

Dialects

Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large number of dialects exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language. Also cf. Moscow pronunciation of "-чн-", e.g. "булошная" (buloshnaya - bakery) instead of "булочная" (bulochnaya). The northern dialects typically pronounce unstressed clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of these features are also present in modern Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum or strong influence one way or the other. Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка ), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work. The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.

Derived languages


- Fenia or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
- Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine
- Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
- Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula.
- Runglish: Russian-English pidgin.

Writing system

Alphabet

Runglish publication describing the "Slavonic" language.]] Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ultra-short or reduced , (conventional transcription, not IPA). For information on an informal approach on transliterating Russian into English, see the article Transliteration of Russian into English.

Orthography

Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonetics, morphology, etymology, and grammar, and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990's has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted. The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.

Sounds

The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400. The language possesses five vowels, which are written with different letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs, which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The 'hard' consonants are sometimes said to be velarized, but this is only the case for /l/.) The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels (except /u/) tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant the stucture can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Consonants

Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While /k/, /ɡ/, /x/ do have palatalized allophones , only might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive. It should be noted that palatalization is a phonological concept, and not all 'soft' consonants are phonetically palatalized. The velar and labial consonants are truly palatalized, which means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. The coronal stops, however, are phonetically laminal. In addition, in the case of /t/ and /d/, the tongue is raised enough to produce frication, thus making affricate-like. (There is no contrast between frication and no frication, though, as /ts/ is never palatalized.) are postalveolar with a flat tongue (laminal retroflex).

Grammar

Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses
- a highly synthetic morphology
- a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
  - a polished vernacular foundation;
  - a Church Slavonic inheritance;
  - a Western European style. The spoken language has been influenced by the literary, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

Vocabulary

Western European See History of Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language. The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Pushkin, are as follows: Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many as 350,000 to 500,000 words. (As a historical aside, Dahl was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective русский, which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official language, be spelled руский with one s, in accordance with ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was contradicted by the philologist Grot, who distinctly heard the s lengthened or doubled.)

The language of abuse and invective

Main article: Mat (language) Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань ) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out. The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат ).

Proverbs and sayings

Main article: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source.

History and examples

See also: Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
- Origins
- The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)
- Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries)
- The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
- Empire (18th-19th centuries)
- Soviet period and beyond (20th century) See also:
- Examples of literary language (12-20th century) Judging by the historical records, by approximately 1000 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects. The political unification of this region into Kievan Rus, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988-9 and the establishment of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and simultaneously the literary language began to be modified in its turn to become more nearly Eastern Slavic. Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100, and the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth century. After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" in the late fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. There is some consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered distinct languages from this period at the latest. The official language remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotrytsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. The political reforms of Peter the Great were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century. The political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific, and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, especially during the middle third of the twentieth century. Since the collapse of 1990-91, fashion for ways and things Western, economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system have made for inevitable rapid change in the language. Russian today is a tongue in great flux.

References

The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language:

In English


- B. Comrie, G. Stone, M. Polinsky, The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd. ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996
- W.K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1960
- T.R. Carleton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers, 1991
- A. Stender-Petersen, Anthology of old Russian literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954

In Russian


- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. "Просвещение", М., 1990.
- Цыганенко Г. П. Этимологический словарь русского языка. Киев, 1970.
- Т. Н. Михельсон, Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М., 1978
- Н.М. Шанский, В.В. Иванов, Т.В. Шанская. Краткий этимологический словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- А. Шицгал, Русский гражданский шрифт, "Исскуство", Москва, 1958, 2-e изд. 1983.
- Л. П. Жуковская, отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987. Many further references are listed in the books above.

See also

Language description


- Russian alphabet
- Russian grammar
- Russian orthography
- Russian phonetics
- History of Russian language

Related languages


- East Slavic languages
- Church Slavonic language
- Great Russian language
- Old Church Slavonic language
- Old Russian language

Other


- List of Russian language topics
- List of English words of Russian origin
- Russian literature
- Russian humour
- Russian proverbs
- Reforms of Russian orthography
- Transliteration of Russian into English
- Volapuk encoding
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- List of commonly confused homonyms in Russian
- Common phrases in different languages
- Runglish

External links


- [http://www.declan-software.com/russian Russian language learning software]
- [http://www.russianlessons.net/ Online Russian language lessons]
- [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries]
- [http://overstuffed-closet.net/russian The Russian Language Fanlisting]
- [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language]
- [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)]
- [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links]
- [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.]
- [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language]
- [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian]
- [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)]
- [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary]
- [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text]
- [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian]
- [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses]
- [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category]
- [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA]
- [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish]
- [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America]
- [http://www.russki-mat.net/ Multilingual Russian slang dictionaries]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition Category:Languages of Belarus Category:Languages of Finland Category:Languages of Russia Category:Languages of Ukraine Category:Languages of Kazakhstan Category:Languages of Georgia Category:Languages of Armenia Category:Languages of Azerbaijan Category:Languages of Turkmenistan Category:Languages of Uzbekistan Category:Languages of Moldova Category:Languages of Tajikistan Category:Languages of Kyrgyzstan Category:Languages of Estonia Category:Languages of Latvia Category:Languages of Lithuania Category:Languages of China Category:Languages of Mongolia Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Bulgaria Category:Russian language Category:East Slavic languages ko:러시아어 ms:Bahasa Russia ja:ロシア語 simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย

English language

English is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and many other countries. English is now the third-most spoken native language worldwide (after Chinese and Hindi), with some 380 million speakers. It has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries and that of the United States from the 20th century to the present. Through the global influence of native English speakers in cinema, airlines, broadcasting, science, and the Internet in recent decades, English is now the most widely learned second language in the world. Many students worldwide are required to learn some English, and a working knowledge of English is required in many fields and occupations.

History

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Old Saxon language brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of northwest Germany. The original Old English language was subsequently influenced by two successive waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of languages in the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who colonised parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second wave was of the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke a variety of French. These two invasions caused English to become "creolised" to some degree (though it was never a full creole in the linguistic sense of the word); creolisation arises from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Friesian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of European languages; this new layer entered English through use in the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of considerable suppleness and huge vocabulary. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern, King of the British Isles, invited the "Angle kin" (Angles led by Hengest and Horsa) to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the south-east. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes). The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy. Modern scholarship considers most of this story to be legendary and politically motivated. These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants, whose languages survived largely in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. The dialects spoken by the invaders formed what would be called Old English, which resembled some coastal dialects in what are now the Netherlands and north-west Germany. Later, it was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the Vikings who settled mainly in the north-east (see Jorvik). The new and the earlier settlers spoke languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more distant, including the prefixes, suffixes and inflections of many of their words. The Germanic language of these Old English inhabitants of Britain would be partly creolised by the contact with Norse invaders. This resulted in a stripping away of much of the grammar of Old English, including gender and case, with the notable exception of the pronouns; thus, the language became simpler and plainer. The most famous work from the Old English period is the epic poem "Beowulf", by an unknown poet. For the 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and the high nobility spoke only a variety of French. A large number of Norman words were assimilated into Old English, with some words doubling for Old English words (for instance, ox/beef, sheep/mutton). The Norman influence reinforced the continual evolution of the language over the following centuries, resulting in what is now referred to as Middle English. Among the changes was a broadening in the use of a unique aspect of English grammar, the "continuous" tenses, with the suffix "-ing". During the 15th century, Middle English was transformed by the Great Vowel Shift, the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration, and the standardising effect of printing. Modern English can be traced back to around the time of William Shakespeare. The most well-known work from the Middle English period is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

Classification and related languages

The English language belongs to the western subbranch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest living relative of English is Scots (Lallans), a West Germanic language spoken mostly in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland. Like English, Scots is a direct descendant of Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon. After Scots, the next closest relative is Frisian—spoken in the Netherlands and Germany. Other less closely related living languages include Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Plattdüütsch and the Scandinavian languages. Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (pronunciations are not always identical, of course), because English absorbed a tremendous amount of vocabulary from French, via the Norman language after the Norman conquest and directly from French in further centuries; as a result, a substantial share of English vocabulary is quite close to the French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional differences in meaning.

Geographic distribution

Norman conquest English is the second or third most widely spoken language in the world today; a total of 600–700 million people use English regularly. About 377 million people use English as their mother tongue, and an equal number of people use it as their second or foreign language. It is used widely in either the public or private sphere in more than 100 countries all over the world. In addition, the language has occupied a primary place in international academic and business communities. The current status of the English language compares with that of Latin in the past. English is the primary language in Antigua and Barbuda, Australia (Australian English), the Bahamas, Barbados (Caribbean English), Bermuda, Belize, Canada (Canadian English), the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Guyana, Ireland (Irish English), Isle of Man, Jamaica (Jamaican English), Jersey, Montserrat, New Zealand (New Zealand English), Saint Helena, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United Kingdom (various forms of British English), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the United States. English is also an important minority language of South Africa (South African English), and in several other former colonies and current dependent territories of the United Kingdom and the United States, for example Guam and Mauritius. In Hong Kong, English is an official language and is widely used in business activities. It is taught from kindergarten, and is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools and all universities. Substantial numbers of students acquire native-speaker level. It is so widely used and spoken that it is inadequate to say it is merely a second or foreign language, though there are still many people in Hong Kong with poor or no command of English. The majority of English native speakers (67 to 70 per cent) live in the United States. Although the U.S. federal government has no official languages, it has been given official status by 27 of the 50 state governments, most of which have declared English their sole official language. Hawaii, Louisiana, and New Mexico have also designated Hawaiian, French, and Spanish, respectively, as official languages in conjunction with English. In many other countries where English is not a major first language, it is an official language; these countries include Cameroon, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Ghana, Gambia, India, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. English is the most widely learned and used foreign language in the world, and as such, many linguists believe it is no longer the exclusive cultural emblem of "native English speakers", but rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it grows in use. Others believe that there are limits to how far English can go in suiting everyone for communication purposes. It is the language most often studied as a foreign language in Europe (32.6 per cent), followed by French, German, and Spanish. It is also the most studied in Japan, South Korea and in the Republic of China (Taiwan), where it is compulsory for most high school students. See English as an additional language.

English as a global language

See also: English on the Internet Because English is so widely spoken, it has been referred to as a "global language". While English is not the official language in many countries, it is the language most often taught as a second language around the world. It is also, by international treaty, the official language for aircraft/airport communication. Its widespread acceptance as a first or second language is the main indication of its global status. There are numerous arguments for and against English as a global language. On one hand, having a global language aids in communication and in pooling information (for example, in the scientific community). On the other hand, it excludes those who, for one reason or another, are not fluent. It can also marginalise populations whose first language is not the global language, and lead to a cultural hegemony of the populations speaking the global language as a first language. Most of these arguments hold for any candidate for a global language, though the last two counter-arguments do not hold for languages not belonging to any ethnic group (like Esperanto). A secondary concern with respect to the spread of global languages (English, Spanish, etc.) is the resulting disappearance of minority languages, often along with the cultures and religions that are primarily transmitted in those languages. English has been implicated in a number of historical and ongoing so-called "language deaths" and "linguicides" around the world, many of which have also led to the loss of cultural heritage. In the Americas, Native American nations have been most strongly affected by this phenomenon.

Dialects and regional variants

The expansiveness of the British and the Americans has spread English throughout the globe. Because of its global spread, it has bred a variety of English dialects and English-based creoles and pidgins. The major varieties of English in most cases contain several subvarieties, such as Cockney within British English, Newfoundland English within Canadian English, and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") within American English. English is considered a pluricentric language, with no variety being clearly considered the only standard. Some consider Scots as an English dialect. Pronunciation, grammar and lexis differ, sometimes substantially. The Scottish dialect retains many German aspects including guttural pronunciations. Because of English's wide use as a second language, English speakers can have many different accents, which may identify the speaker's native dialect or language. For more distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English speakers. For more distinctive characteristics of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language. Many countries around the world have blended English words and phrases into their everyday speech and refer to the result by a colloquial name that implies its bilingual origins, which parallels the English language's own addiction to loan words and borrowings. Named examples of these ad-hoc constructions, distinct from pidgin and creole languages, include Engrish, Wasei-eigo, Franglais and Spanglish. (See List of dialects of the English language for a complete list.) Europanto combines many languages but has an English core.

Constructed variants of English


- Basic English is simplified for easy international use. It is used by some aircraft manufacturers and other international businesses to write manuals and communicate. Some English schools in the Far East teach it as an initial practical subset of English.
- Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of 1500 words.
- English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.
- Seaspeak and the related Airspeak and Policespeak, all based on restricted vocabularies, were designed by Edward Johnson in the 1980s to aid international co-operation and communication in specific areas.
- European English is a new variant of the English language created to become the common language in Europe.

Sounds

Vowels

Notes: It is the vowels that differ most from region to region. Where symbols appear in pairs, the first corresponds to the sounds used in North American English, the second corresponds to English spoken elsewhere. #North American English lacks this sound; words with this sound are pronounced with or . According to The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (1998), this sound is present in Standard Canadian English. #Many dialects of North American English do not have this vowel. See cot-caught merger. #The North American variation of this sound is a rhotic vowel. #Many speakers of North American English do not distinguish between these two unstressed vowels. For them, roses and Rosa's are pronounced the same, and the symbol usually used is schwa . #This sound is often transcribed with or with . #The letter U can represent either /u/ or the iotated vowel /ju/.

Consonants

This is the English Consonantal System using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). #The velar nasal is a non-phonemic allophone of /n/ in some northerly British accents, appearing only before /g/. In all other dialects it is a separate phoneme, although it only occurs in syllable codas. #The alveolar flap is an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in unstressed syllables in North American English and increasingly in Australian English. This is the sound of "tt" or "dd" in the words latter and ladder, which are homophones in North American English. This is the same sound represented by single "r" in some varieties of Spanish. #In some dialects, such as Cockney, the interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ are usually merged with /f/ and /v/, and in others, like African American Vernacular English, /ð/ is merged with /d/. In some Irish varieties, /θ/ and /ð/ become the corresponding dental plosives, which then contrast with the usual alveolar plosives. #The sounds are labialised in some dialects. Labialisation is never contrastive in initial position and therefore is sometimes not transcribed. #The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is used only by Scottish or Welsh speakers of English for Scots/Gaelic words such as loch or by some speakers for loanwords from German and Hebrew like Bach or Chanukah /xanuka/, or in some dialects such as Scouse (Liverpool) where the affricate [kx] is used instead of /k/ in words such as docker . Most native speakers have a great deal of trouble pronouncing it correctly when learning a foreign language. Most speakers use the sounds [k] and [h] instead. #Voiceless w is found in Scottish, Irish, some upper-class British, some eastern United States, and New Zealand accents. In all other dialects it is merged with /w/.

Voicing and Aspiration

Voicing and aspiration of stop consonants in English depend on dialect and context, but a few general rules can be given:
- Voiceless plosives and affricates (//, //, //, and //) are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable and are not part of a consonant cluster—compare pin [] and spin [].
  - In some dialects, aspiration extends to unstressed syllables as well.
  - In other dialects, such as Indian English, most or all voiceless stops may remain unaspirated.
- Word-initial voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects.
- Word-terminal voiceless plosives may be unreleased or accompanied by a glottal stop in some dialects (e.g. many varieties of American English)—examples: tap [], sack [].
- Word-terminal voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects (e.g. some varieties of American English)—examples: sad [], bag []. In other dialects they are fully voiced in final position, but only partially voiced in initial position.

See also

International Phonetic Alphabet for English

Intonation

Tone groups

English is an Intonation language. This means that the pitch of the voice is used syntactically, for example, to convey surprise and irony, or to change a statement into a question. In English, intonation patterns are on groups of words, which are called tone groups, tone units, intonation groups or sense groups. Tone groups are said on a single breath and, as a consequence, are of limited length, more often being on average five words long or lasting roughly two seconds. The structure of tone groups can have a crucial impact on the meaning of what is said. For example: :- :- :-

Characteristics of intonation

Each tone group can be subdivided into syllables, which can either be stressed (strong) or unstressed (weak). There is always a strong syllable, which is stressed more than the others. This is called the nuclear syllable. For example: :That | was | the | best | thing | you | could | have | done! Here, all syllables are unstressed, except the syllables/words "best" and "done", which are stressed. "Best" is stressed harder and, therefore, is the nuclear syllable. The nuclear syllable carries the main point the speaker wishes to make. For example: :John had stolen that money. (... not I) :John had stolen that money. (... you said he hadn't) :John had stolen that money. (... he wasn't given it) :John had stolen that money. (... not this money) :John had stolen that money. (... not something else) The nuclear syllable is spoken louder than all the others and has a characteristic change of pitch. The changes of pitch most commonly encountered in English are the rising pitch and the falling pitch, although the fall-rising pitch and/or the rise-falling pitch are sometimes used. For example: :When do you want to be paid? :Nów? (rising pitch. In this case, it denotes a question: can I be paid now?) :Nòw (falling pitch. In this case, it denotes a statement: I choose to be paid now)

Grammar

English grammar is based on its Germanic roots, though some scholars during the 1700s and 1800s attempted to impose Latin grammar upon it, with little success. English is just slightly inflected, much less so than most Indo-European languages. It compensates for this by placing more grammatical information in auxiliary words and word order. Unlike most other Indo-European languages, modern nominal groups (nouns) in English do not carry gender, although an archaic form of gender is technically assigned as either masculine, feminine, neuter or common. Engendered nouns are only apparent in special cases, such as "I loved that ship as if she were my own", where the noun "ship" is referred to by its feminine pronoun.

Vocabulary

Almost without exception, Germanic words (which include all the basics such as pronouns and conjunctions) are shorter and more informal. Latinate words are often regarded as more elegant or educated. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is often mistaken for either pretentiousness (as in the stereotypical policeman's talk of "apprehending the suspect") or obfuscation (as in a military document which says "neutralise" when it means "kill"). George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language gives a thorough treatment of this feature of English. An English speaker is often able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: "come" or "arrive"; "sight" or "vision"; "freedom" or "liberty"—and sometimes also between a word inherited through French and a borrowing direct from Latin of the same root word: "oversee", "survey" or "supervise". The richness of the language is that such synonyms have slightly different meanings, enabling the language to be used in a very flexible way to express fine variations or shades of thought. List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents In everyday speech the majority of words will normally be Germanic. If a speaker wishes to make a forceful point in an argument in a very blunt way, Germanic words will usually be chosen. A majority of Latinate words (or at least a majority of content words) will normally be used in more formal speech and writing, such as a courtroom or an encyclopedia article. English is noted for the vast size of its active vocabulary and its fluidity. English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and imports new words which often come into common usage. In addition,