Talk:English language

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the English language article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

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

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

Article milestones Date Process Result November 24, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted January 23, 2006 Good article nominee Listed February 25, 2007 Good article reassessment Delisted June 15, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed January 21, 2009 Good article nominee Not listed September 14, 2012 Peer review Reviewed April 14, 2015 Good article nominee Listed September 21, 2019 Good article reassessment Kept This article was on the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive for the week of November 30, 2019. Current status: Good article

This  level-3 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

English Language Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject English Language, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to the English language on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale. England Top‑importance England portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Languages Top‑importance Language portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

On 12 October 2025, it was proposed that this article be moved to English. The result of the discussion was not moved.

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

Section sizes Section size for English language (50 sections) Section name Byte count Prose size (words) Header Total Header Total (Top) 8,173 8,173 385 385 Classification 3,062 3,062 286 286 History 43 18,325 0 1,724 Proto-Germanic to Old English 4,116 4,116 383 383 Influence of Old Norse 1,512 1,512 172 172 Middle English 5,535 5,535 355 355 Early Modern English 2,973 2,973 386 386 Spread of Modern English 4,146 4,146 428 428 Geographical distribution 2,472 21,069 77 1,360 Three circles model 3,583 3,583 379 379 Pluricentric English 6,774 6,774 216 216 English as a global language 8,240 8,240 688 688 Phonology 663 21,817 62 1,339 Consonants 5,402 5,402 225 225 Vowels 4,499 4,499 257 257 Phonotactics 1,360 1,360 193 193 Stress, rhythm, and intonation 2,824 2,824 236 236 Regional variation 7,069 7,069 366 366 Grammar 2,767 34,895 212 3,843 Nouns and noun phrases 3,371 13,418 440 1,242 Adjectives 1,772 1,772 222 222 Determiners 658 658 51 51 Pronouns, case, and person 6,512 6,512 379 379 Prepositions 1,105 1,105 150 150 Verbs and verb phrases 2,155 7,141 221 803 Tense, aspect, and mood 3,259 3,259 337 337 Phrasal verbs 1,164 1,164 172 172 Adverbs 563 563 73 73 Syntax 756 11,569 79 1,586 Basic constituent order 1,990 1,990 211 211 Clause syntax 1,541 1,541 233 233 Auxiliary verb constructions 2,779 2,779 424 424 Questions 1,157 1,157 156 156 Discourse level syntax 3,346 3,346 483 483 Vocabulary 1,737 7,914 159 685 Word-formation processes 1,342 1,342 161 161 Word origins 3,530 3,530 210 210 English loans in other languages 1,305 1,305 155 155 Orthography 5,702 5,702 706 706 Dialects, accents, and varieties 553 28,547 62 2,172 Britain and Ireland 8,300 8,300 726 726 North America 8,171 8,171 567 567 Australia and New Zealand 2,610 2,610 181 181 Southeast Asia 1,960 1,960 71 71 Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia 5,563 5,563 507 507 Non-native varieties 1,390 1,390 58 58 See also 104 104 0 0 References 30 53,288 0 0 Bibliography 53,258 53,258 0 0 External links 1,611 1,611 0 0 Total 204,507 204,507 12,500 12,500

There is a request, submitted by Sdkb (talk), for an audio version of this article to be created. For further information, see WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. The rationale behind the request is: Subject is of particular interest to English language-learners, many of whom particularly benefit from spoken articles. Note: barnstar offered as reward.

Tweaks to meaning, some of them erroneous

@PuppyMonkey, please ask here first before making further edits to this article that change the meaning of prose cited to a reliable source. It is not clear you check what the cited source says or doesn't say when you make these kinds of edits, and that means you sometimes make errors when you're effectively citing either your own knowledge or possibly just another Wikipedia article (see WP:CIRCULAR) and adding claims the cited sources no longer verify.

Given your restatement in the edit summary, most recently you simply misunderstood what the passage about Latin script adoption said to begin with. I ask you in the strongest possible terms given how many of your edits are substantive changes to cited prose in our most important articles, that you make an effort to follow those sources when you do so. If you cannot access sources, you cannot decide they are wrong or decide you knew what they probably said instead. Remsense 🌈 论 20:50, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do my best, @Remsense. PuppyMonkey (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Non-native English reading by Spanish native speaker 001.ogg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:36, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 4 December 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Remove United States from the list of countries where English is dominant without being legally defined, as Executive Order 14224 made English the official national language. ~2025-38158-22 (talk) 00:49, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now. There has never been a law that has actually been passed declaring English the official language. I would either wait for that to be passed, or establish a consensus. NotJamestack (✉️|📝) 01:00, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Classification and History

There are two unclear statements regarding the area of ​​distribution of the dialects from which Old English developed. The first statement restricts it to Frisia, the second extends it to Lower Saxony and Southern Jutland as well.

"Old English was one of several Ingvaeonic languages, which emerged from a dialect continuum spoken by West Germanic peoples during the 5th century in Frisia, on the coast of the North Sea."

"Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, sometimes identified as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic, that were originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes."

It may need to be adjusted, but I'm not familiar with this topic. ~2025-40420-16 (talk) 18:38, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Strange quirk in labels on map of English-speaking regions

I have found a strange quirk in the map of regions where English is the majority and/or official language, specifically with the labels for the colour codes. Viewing the article in my web browser (Brave 1.85.116 on MacOS 15.7.2), it appears correctly. However, viewing it in Apple’s Dictionary.app (2.3.0, on the same Mac), the colours are swapped. I am baffled. LincMad (talk) 19:53, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 21 December 2025

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Please replace the URL from reference 11 in the lede to this one: https://archive.org/details/englishonetongue0000svar_y3z3

the reason being that the current url is dead. Thanks ~2025-38360-06 (talk) 11:54, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done jolielover♥talk 14:03, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Claim about alphabets in lead

Hello @Publicmember. I saw that you asked for reasoning before reverting your edit, so I wanted to bring the discussion here. Edit descriptions are maybe too short for the discussion you want to have.

You made an edit linked here where you added this to the lead: "which contrarily to all other Germanic Languages including German, Swiss-German Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Dutch which were created using a Germanic Alphabet, English was created from the Latin alphabet along with the Romanesque Languages of French, Portuguese and Italian". First off, this has nothing in the article's main body which backs it up. See MOS:LEAD to learn more about what lead sections should do, but in particular it says "Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article."

Secondly, I simply want to know more about what you're trying to say. What do you mean about the language being created with an alphabet? This is a strange thing to say, given that languages largely exist independently of the alphabet. Furthermore, English has been documented as using runes before the Latin alphabet, and all the other languages you mentioned use the Latin alphabet today. Is there some other distinction you're making? And what makes it important enough to put in the lead? IndigoManedWolf (talk) 01:16, 16 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]