THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1.

Current Status Geographically the most widespread language on Earth is English, and it is second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. English is the national language of the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. It is one of the two national languages of Canada. It is an official or semiofficial language in many former and present British possessions such as South Africa, India, and Hong Kong. The existence of 1.9 billion speakers of English, including some 350 million of native speakers, makes this language the largest global lingua franca in use in our global village. 2. Classification English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is, therefore, related to most of the languages spoken in an area stretching from Iceland across Europe to India. The language most closely resembling Modern English is Frisian, which is spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland. Icelandic, on the other hand, has changed little in more than 1,000 years. It is the living language most closely resembling Old English. 3. Inflection German, Latin, Russian, Greek, French and Romanian are inflected languages. This means that many words undergo changes of spelling - and often of pronunciation - to mark changes in tense of verbs, gender of nouns, case or plurality of nouns, mood of verbs, agreement of adjectives, and other distinctions. For example, the French word for "beautiful" or "fine" is beau. When used to modify the plural noun arts, it becomes beaux, as in the expression beaux-arts, meaning "fine arts." When used before a vowel, it becomes bel, as in le bel age, an idiom for "youth." When used to modify a noun of the feminine gender, it becomes belle, as in la belle dame, or "beautiful lady." English, on the other hand, is relatively uninflected. Adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections are invariable. They are spelled the same way no matter how they are used. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs, however, are inflected. Most English nouns show a plural by adding an s or an es: cow, cows; box, boxes. Some nouns have what are called mutated, or changed, plurals: man, men; woman, women; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; goose, geese; mouse, mice; louse, lice. A very few nouns - for example, ox, oxen - have plurals ending in en. A few nouns remain unchanged in the plural: deer, sheep, moose, and grouse. Five of the seven personal pronouns have distinctive forms for subject or object use: I, me; he, him; she, her; we, us; and they, them. And there are also distinctive possessive pronouns: mine, his, hers, ours, theirs. Verb forms, while inflected, are not as complicated as they are in Latin, Greek, German or Romanian. The one English verb with the most forms is "to be" (be, am, is, are, was, were, been, and being). Weak, or regular, verbs have only four forms: talk, talks, talked, and talking, for example. Strong, or irregular, verbs have five forms: sing, sings, sang, sung, and singing. A few verbs that end in a t or d have only three forms: cut, cuts, cutting. These verb inflections are in marked contrast to Old English, in which ridan, or "ride," had 13 forms, and to Modern German, in which reiten has 16.

4. Flexibility Along with a loss of inflection came a flexibility of use. Words that were once distinguished as nouns or verbs by their inflections are now used both ways. It is possible to "run a race" (noun usage) or "race someone to the corner" (verb usage). It is also possible in English to use nouns as adjectives: automobile show, state fair, hot dog stand. Pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs can also function as nouns. English adopts or adapts any word as needed to name a new object or describe a new process. 5. Word Formation New words have been frequently formed by adding a prefix or suffix, by combining words, or by blending words. A prefix is attached to the front of a word: sub + way, subway; over + do, overdo. Sometimes a foreign prefix is added such as the Greek macro- or micro-: macroeconomics, microbiology. One of the most common suffixes is - er, which usually means someone who engages in the act that the verb suggests: singer, player, seeker, writer. Other suffixes also denote activity: actor, hatmaker, merchant, scientist. Combining words to form new ones is common: cloverleaf, gentleman, dateline. Some words in combination alter their meanings slightly: already is not quite the same as all ready, and a gentleman is not quite the same as a gentle man. Blackbird is a specific kind of fowl, but black bird suggests a bird of a particular color. Blends of words fall into two categories - a coalescence or a telescoped word. One of the most commonly used coalescent forms is smog, a blend of the words smoke and fog. A telescoped form is motorcade, made by combining motor with a remnant of cavalcade. In the same way a travel monologue becomes a travelogue, and a cable telegram a cablegram. 6. Vocabulary There are an estimated 750,000 words in the English language. Nearly half of these are of Germanic (or Teutonic) origin, and nearly half from the Romance languages (languages of Latin origin--such as French, Spanish, and Italian--or Latin itself). There also have been generous borrowings from other languages, including Greek, Dutch, Modern German, and Arabic. Among the many words that come from the Germanic are the nouns father, mother, brother, man, wife, ground, land, tree, grass, summer , and winter. Germanicbased verbs include bring, come, get, hear, meet, see, sit, stand, and think. From French have come such political terms as constitution, president, parliament, congress, and representative. Also borrowed from French are city, place, village, court, palace, manor, mansion, residence, domicile, cuisine, diner, cafe, liberty, veracity, carpenter, draper, haberdasher, mason, painter, plumber, and tailor. Many terms relating to cooking, fashion, drama, winemaking, literature, art, diplomacy, and ballet also come from France. English has acquired many words from Spanish. Some of these have been borrowed directly: cigar, armada, guerrilla, matador, mosquito , and tornado. Others have come to Spanish from one of the Indian languages of the Americas: potato and tomato, for example. Many Spanish words have come directly into the United States from Latin America: canyon, lasso, mustang, pueblo, and rodeo. Borrowings from Latin have been especially numerous. Many of these represent combinations of Latin words: malnutrition, transfer, circumference, supernatural, submarine, suburb, substantial, contemporary, multilingual, conjunction, compassion, and hundreds more.

Borrowings from Greek are heavy in the sciences and technology. In addition to macro- and micro-, often-used prefixes include poly- and tele-. Among the wellknown English words from Greek are alphabet, geometry, geology, photography, psychology, psychiatry, pathology, biology, philosophy, telephone, logistics, and metamorphosis. Arabic words have usually come into English by way of another European language, especially Spanish. Arabic was spoken in Spain during the period of the Muslim domination. Among the common English words that have come from Arabic are: alcohol, alchemy, algebra, alkali, almanac, arsenal, assassin, cipher, elixir, mosque, naphtha, sugar, syrup, zenith, and zero. Common words borrowed from other languages are: coffee (Turkish); gull (Cornish); flannel (Welsh); brogue, blarney, shamrock, clan, and plaid (Gaelic and Irish); mammoth, soviet, and vodka (Russian); robot (Czech); paprika (Hungarian); jungle, thug, shampoo, dungarees, loot, pajamas, and polo (Hindi); paradise, lilac, bazaar, caravan, chess, shawl, and khaki (Persian); marmalade, flamingo, and veranda (Portuguese); ketchup, bamboo, and orangutan (Malay); taboo and tattoo (Polynesian); and ukulele (Hawaiian). Other words from native languages include hammock, hurricane, tobacco, and maize (Caribbean) and voodoo and chimpanzee (African). 7. Phonetics Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and their physiological production and acoustic qualities. It deals with the configurations of the vocal tract used to produce speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), the acoustic properties of speech sounds (acoustic phonetics), and the manner of combining sounds so as to make syllables, words, and sentences (linguistic phonetics). British Received Pronunciation (RP), by definition, the usual speech of educated people living in London and southeastern England, and the American Inland Northern pronunciation are two of the many forms of standard speech. 7.1. The English Speech Sounds This list contains the principal sounds of standard British English (the pronunciation associated with southern England which is often called Received Pronunciation). Symbols for the sounds are given in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The IPA scheme is similar to that employed by Oxford Dictionaries. Consonants: IPA Examples get, go jam, judge sing, ring then, this pleasure, vision IPA Examples chip, chin Scots loch thin, thick she, ship yet, use, beauty

Short Vowels:

IPA

Examples cat, bad, trap about, comma happy, glorious dug, run, strut Examples cart, arm her, nurse port, saw Examples bite, my, price fate, day pier, near tour, poor sour

IPA

Examples bed, net, dress kit, bid, hymn hot, odd, wash book, put, foot Examples hair, dare, various meet, see, fleece boot, too Examples brow, how goat, show, no boil, choice, boy square, fair fire

Long Vowels: IPA IPA

Diphthongs/Triphthongs: IPA IPA

Other Symbols: IPA Purpose Precedes the syllable which has the primary stress Precedes a syllable which has a secondary stress Surround an optional sound

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Other means to phonemic differentiation in English, apart from the pronunciation of distinct vowels and consonants, are stress, pitch, and juncture. Stress is the sound difference achieved by pronouncing one syllable more forcefully than another, for example, the difference between record (noun) and record (verb). Pitch is, for example, the difference between the pronunciation of John and John? Juncture or transition of words causes such differences in sound as that created by the pronunciation of blackbird (one word) and black bird (two words). 7.2. Stress Four degrees of stress may be differentiated: primary, secondary, tertiary, and weak, which may be indicated, respectively, by acute ( ), circumflex ( ), and grave ( ` ) accent marks and by the underline ( _ ). Thus, Tll m the trth (the whole truth, and nothing but the truth) may be contrasted with Tll m the trth (whatever you may tell other people); blck brd (any bird black in color) may be contrasted with blckbrd (that particular bird Turdus merula). The verbs permt and recrd (henceforth only primary stresses are marked) may be contrasted with their corresponding nouns prmit and rcord. A feeling for antepenultimate (third syllable from the end) primary stress, revealed in such five-syllable words as equanmity, longitdinal, notorety, opportnity, parsimnious, pertincity, and vegetrian, causes stress to shift when extra syllables are added, as in histrical, a derivative of hstory and theatriclity, a derivative of thetrical. Vowel qualities are also changed here and 4

in such word groups as priod, peridical, periodcity; phtograph, photgraphy, photogrphical. French stress may be sustained in many borrowed words; e.g., bizrre, critque, durss, hotl, prestge, and technque._ 7.3. Pitch Pitch, or musical tone, determined by the rate of vibration of the vocal cords, may be level, falling, rising, or fallingrising. In counting one, two, three, four, one naturally gives level pitch to each of these cardinal numerals. But if a person says, I want two, not one, he naturally gives two falling pitch and one fallingrising. In the question One? rising pitch is used. Word tone is called pitch, and sentence tone is referred to as intonation. The end-of-sentence cadence is important for meaning, and it therefore varies least. Three main end-of-sentence intonations can be distinguished: falling, rising, and fallingrising. Falling intonation is used in completed statements, direct commands, and sometimes in general questions unanswerable by yes or no; e.g..: I have nothing to add. Keep to the right. Who told you that? Rising intonation is frequently used in open-ended statements made with some reservation, in polite requests, and in particular questions answerable by yes or no: I have nothing more to say at the moment. Let me know how you get on . Are you sure? The third type of endof-sentence intonation, first falling and then rising pitch, is used in sentences that imply concessions or contrasts: Some people do like them (but others do not). Don't say I didn't warn you (because that is just what I'm now doing). 7.4. Juncture The transition from one given phoneme to another may be of two kinds: an open transition (symbolized by /+/ ), which implies a slight, hardly perceptible pause such as we find at the boundary of two words or between two meaningful parts of a compound word, and a close transition (unmarked) which represents the usual manner in which phonemes are joined together within a word.