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78-458: The equivalent term in British English is Joe Public . There are various similar terms for the average Joe , including John Q. Citizen and John Q. Taxpayer , or Jane Q. Public , Jane Q. Citizen , and Jane Q. Taxpayer for a woman. The name John Doe is used in a similar manner. The term Tom, Dick, and Harry is often used to denote multiple hypothetical persons. An equivalent term

156-565: A West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into

234-588: A "soft" ⟨g⟩ inherent in the verb's root, similar to the significance of a cedilla to ⟨c⟩ . Some exceptions apply to the rules governing the pronunciation of word-final consonants. See Liaison (French) for details. Ø au x quels, au x quelles / o / curaç ao / e / e t, pi e ds (and any other noun plural ending in (consonant other than t)+s) / a / f e mme, sol e nnel, fréqu e mment, (and other adverbs ending in - e mment) / œ / G e nnevilliers (see also -er ) (see also ae ) The spelling of French words of Greek origin

312-549: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in

390-581: A debate. Presidential candidate John McCain referenced a similar symbol, this time represented by an actual person, saying that Senator Obama 's tax plan would hurt Joe the Plumber 's bottom line. A fifteen-minute debate on this issue ensued, with both candidates speaking directly to "Joe". John, Quisquam and "The Public" first appears in the formation of the United States in the later 1700s. Many new Americans of Lutheran German heritage also spoke Latin and used

468-501: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating

546-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of

624-648: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside

702-425: A reasonable degree of accuracy when pronouncing French words from their written forms. The reverse operation, producing written forms from pronunciation, is much more ambiguous. The French alphabet uses a number of diacritics , including the circumflex , diaeresis , acute , and grave accents, as well as ligatures . A system of braille has been developed for people who are visually impaired. The French alphabet

780-511: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In

858-603: Is Joe Public which is used in the United Kingdom . Roughly equivalent are the names Joe Blow , Joe Six-pack , and the nowadays rather less popular Joe Doakes and Joe Shmoe , the last of which implies a lower-class citizen (from the Yiddish שמאָ schmo : simpleton, or possibly Hebrew שמו sh'mo : (what's)-his-name). On a higher plane, the Talmudic generic place-marker name Plony (which can be translated to Mr. X. or Anonymous)

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936-416: Is a mandatory contraction of ⟨oe⟩ in certain words. Some of these are native French words, with the pronunciation /œ/ or /ø/ , e.g. chœur "choir" /kœʁ/ , cœur "heart" /kœʁ/ , mœurs "moods (related to moral)" /mœʁ, mœʁs/ , nœud "knot" /nø/ , sœur "sister" /sœʁ/ , œuf "egg" /œf/ , œuvre "work (of art)" /œvʁ/ , vœu "vow" /vø/ . It usually appears in

1014-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in

1092-400: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. French orthography French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of

1170-519: Is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet , uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures . ⟨w⟩ and ⟨k⟩ are rarely used except in loanwords and regional words. /w/ is usually written ⟨ou⟩ ; /k/ is usually written ⟨c⟩ anywhere but before ⟨e, i, y⟩ , ⟨qu⟩ before ⟨e, i, y⟩ , and sometimes ⟨que⟩ at

1248-651: Is complicated by a number of digraphs which originated in the Latin transcriptions. The digraphs ⟨ph, th, ch⟩ normally represent /f, t, k/ , respectively, in Greek loanwords; and the ligatures ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ in Greek loanwords represent the same vowel as ⟨é⟩ ( / e / ). Further, many words in the international scientific vocabulary were constructed in French from Greek roots and have kept their digraphs (e.g. stratosphère , photographie ). The Oaths of Strasbourg from 842

1326-516: Is conspicuous in verbs: parles (you speak), parle (I speak / one speaks) and parlent (they speak) all sound like [paʁl] . Later attempts to respell some words in accordance with their Latin etymologies further increased the number of silent letters (e.g., temps vs. older tans – compare English "tense", which reflects the original spelling – and vingt vs. older vint ). Nevertheless, there are rules governing French orthography which allow for

1404-769: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,

1482-437: Is merely a convenient way to expand the twenty-six-letter alphabet to cover all relevant phonemes, as in ⟨ch⟩ , ⟨on⟩ , ⟨an⟩ , ⟨ou⟩ , ⟨un⟩ , and ⟨in⟩ . Some cases are a mixture of these or are used for purely pragmatic reasons, such as ⟨ge⟩ for /ʒ/ in il mangeait ('he ate'), where the ⟨e⟩ serves to indicate

1560-508: Is the earliest text written in the early form of French called Romance or Gallo-Romance. The Celtic Gaulish language of the inhabitants of Gaul disappeared progressively over the course of Roman rule as the Latin language began to replace it. Vulgar Latin , a generally lower register of Classical Latin spoken by the Roman soldiers, merchants and even by patricians in quotidian speech, was adopted by

1638-710: Is used as a generic reference to a male. Also Seán and Síle Citizen ; Irish : Seán Ó Rudaí, from rud = thing(s). In Canada , during the 1960s, a person appeared in editorial cartoons called Uno Who , representing an average, downtrodden citizen. He was always shown wearing a bankruptcy barrel (as did Will Johnstone's earlier and similar character, "the Taxpayer", for the American New York World Telegram ). Québecers also use Monsieur-Madame-Tout-le-Monde ("Mr-and-Ms-Everybody") or Monsieur Untel ("Mr-So-and-so"). Jos Bleau ( Joe Blow , spelled according to

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1716-446: Is used as a generic soldier's name. In Australia and New Zealand , John (or Jane ) Citizen is usually seen as a placeholder in credit card advertisements, while Joe (or Jane ) Bloggs is also commonly used in speech. Joe Blow is also used, often to suggest a possibly undesirable person. For example: "You left the door open so any Joe Blow could have walked in." Also used: Fred Nurk , Joe Farnarkle . In Ireland Joe Soap

1794-464: Is used as a reference in any case which is applicable to anyone – Sanhedrin 43a provides an example. In the United States, the term John Q. Public is used by law enforcement officers to refer to an individual with no criminal bent, as opposed to terms like perp (short for perpetrator) or skell to qualify unsavory individuals. 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin infamously referred to "Joe Sixpack and Hockey moms " during

1872-505: The langue d'oil variety then in usage in the Île-de-France (region around Paris), took, little by little, over the other languages and evolved toward Classic French. These languages continued to evolve until Middle French ( moyen français ) emerged, in the 14th century to the 16th century. During the Middle French period ( c.  1300 –1600), modern spelling practices were largely established. This happened especially during

1950-530: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and

2028-463: The ⟨c⟩ can be pronounced /k/ in some cases ( cœur ), or /s/ in others ( cœlacanthe ). ⟨œ⟩ is not used when both letters contribute different sounds. For example, when ⟨o⟩ is part of a prefix ( coexister ), or when ⟨e⟩ is part of a suffix ( minoen ), or in the word moelle and its derivatives. French digraphs and trigraphs have both historical and phonological origins. In

2106-476: The Académie française , there were attempts to reform French orthography . This has resulted in a complicated relationship between spelling and sound, especially for vowels; a multitude of silent letters ; and many homophones , e.g. saint / sein / sain / seing / ceins / ceint (all pronounced [sɛ̃] ) and sang / sans / cent (all pronounced [sɑ̃] ). This

2184-637: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of

2262-470: The French language . It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c.  1100 –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years. Even in the late 17th century, with the publication of the first French dictionary by

2340-484: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over

2418-486: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),

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2496-627: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England , or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all

2574-560: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout

2652-601: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This

2730-412: The diaeresis ( ⟨◌̈⟩ ; tréma ), and the cedilla ( ⟨◌̧⟩ ; cédille ). Diacritics have no effect on the primary alphabetical order. A tilde ( ⟨◌̃⟩ ) above ⟨n⟩ is occasionally used in French for words and names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated into the language (e.g., El Ni ñ o , pi ñ ata ). Like the other diacritics,

2808-499: The 16th century, under the influence of printers. The overall trend was towards continuity with Old French spelling, although some changes were made under the influence of changed pronunciation habits; for example, the Old French distinction between the diphthongs ⟨eu⟩ and ⟨ue⟩ was eliminated in favor of consistent ⟨eu⟩ , as both diphthongs had come to be pronounced /ø/ or /œ/ (depending on

2886-603: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,

2964-617: The Académie française, which endorsed them unanimously, saying: "Current orthography remains that of usage, and the 'recommendations' of the High Council of the French language only enter into play with words that may be written in a different manner without being considered as incorrect or as faults." The changes were published in the Journal officiel de la République française in December 1990. At

3042-816: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication

3120-595: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;

3198-576: The High Council of the French Language ( Conseil supérieur de la langue française ) in Paris. He designated experts – among them linguists, representatives of the Académie française and lexicographers – to propose standardizing several points, a few of those points being: Quickly, the experts set to work. Their conclusions were submitted to Belgian and Québécois linguistic political organizations. They were likewise submitted to

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3276-427: The Latin rendering of the Greek diphthong ⟨οι⟩ , e.g. cœlacanthe " coelacanth ". These words used to be pronounced with /e/ , but in recent years a spelling pronunciation with /ø/ has taken hold, e.g. œsophage /ezɔfaʒ/ or /øzɔfaʒ/ , Œdipe /edip/ or /ødip/ etc. The pronunciation with /e/ is often seen to be more correct. When ⟨œ⟩ is found after ⟨c⟩ ,

3354-891: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English

3432-701: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to

3510-537: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since

3588-621: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with

3666-458: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in

3744-410: The adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to

3822-438: The ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas

3900-481: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with

3978-558: The character was described as "bespectacled, mustachioed, fedora-wearing". In 2006 the Oklahoma State Senate voted to make this character the "state's official editorial cartoon." The equivalent in the United Kingdom is Joe (or Jane ) Public , John Smith , or Fred Bloggs or Joe Bloggs . Also, the man in the street, the man on the Clapham omnibus , and the aforementioned Tom, Dick and Harry. Tommy or Tommy Atkins

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4056-423: The combination ⟨œu⟩ ; œil /œj/ "eye" is an exception. Many of these words were originally written with the digraph ⟨eu⟩ ; the ⟨o⟩ in the ligature represents a sometimes artificial attempt to imitate the Latin spelling: Latin : bovem > Old French buef / beuf > Modern French bœuf . ⟨œ⟩ is also used in words of Greek origin, as

4134-404: The correct origin of savoir ) with scire ("to know"). Modern French spelling was codified in the late 17th century by the Académie française, based largely on previously established spelling conventions. Some reforms have occurred since then, but most have been fairly minor. The most significant changes have been: In October 1989, Michel Rocard, then-Prime Minister of France, established

4212-613: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing

4290-564: The east. In the 9th century, the Romance vernaculars were already quite far from Latin. For example, to understand the Bible , written in Latin, footnotes were necessary. The languages found in the manuscripts dating from the 9th century to the 13th century form what is known as Old French ( ancien français ). With consolidation of royal power, beginning in the 13th century, the Francien vernacular,

4368-449: The ends of words. However, ⟨k⟩ is common in the metric prefix kilo- (originally from Greek χίλια khilia "a thousand"), e.g. kilogramme , kilomètre , kilowatt , kilohertz . The diacritics used in French orthography are the acute accent ( ⟨◌́⟩ ; accent aigu ), the grave accent ( ⟨◌̀⟩ ; accent grave ), the circumflex ( ⟨◌̂⟩ ; accent circonflexe ),

4446-462: The first case, it is a vestige of the spelling in the word's original language (usually Latin or Greek) maintained in modern French, e.g. the use of ⟨ph⟩ in téléphone , ⟨th⟩ in théorème , or ⟨ch⟩ in chaotique . In the second case, a digraph is due to an archaic pronunciation, such as ⟨eu⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨oi⟩ , ⟨ai⟩ , and ⟨œu⟩ , or

4524-453: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or

4602-511: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by

4680-508: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of

4758-452: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is

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4836-458: The modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting

4914-561: The natives and evolved slowly, taking the forms of different spoken Roman vernaculars according to the region of the empire. Eventually the different forms of Vulgar Latin in what is now France evolved into three branches in the Gallo-Romance language sub-family, the langues d'oïl north of the Loire , the langues d'oc in the south, and the Franco-Provençal languages in part of

4992-575: The punctuation mark and the material it adjoins. Outside of France and Belgium, this rule is often ignored. Computer software may aid or hinder the application of this rule, depending on the degree of localisation , as it is marked differently from most other Western punctuation. The hyphen in French has a particular use in geographic names that is not found in English. Traditionally, the "specific" part of placenames, street names, and organization names are hyphenated (usually namesakes ). For instance, la place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad (Square of

5070-461: The rules of French ) and G. Raymond are also used in Canada. Occasionally, names which are invariant when translated between English and French are favoured in advertising material (such as "Nicole Martin" or "Carole Martin" on packets of retail coupons). British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to

5148-601: The sequences ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ respectively. ⟨æ⟩ ( French : e dans l'a , a-e entrelacé or a, e collés/liés ) is rare, appearing only in some words of Latin and Greek origin like tænia , ex æquo , cæcum , æthuse (as named dog’s parsley ). It generally represents the vowel /e/ , like ⟨é⟩ . The sequence ⟨ae⟩ appears in loanwords where both sounds are heard, as in maestro and paella . ⟨œ⟩ ( French : e dans l'o , o-e entrelacé or o et e collés/liés )

5226-401: The spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is

5304-408: The surrounding sounds). However, many other distinctions that had become equally superfluous were maintained, e.g. between ⟨s⟩ and soft ⟨c⟩ or between ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨ei⟩ . It is likely that etymology was the guiding factor here: the distinctions ⟨s/c⟩ and ⟨ai/ei⟩ reflect corresponding distinctions in the spelling of

5382-589: The term "quisquam" with a gender neutral meaning of "anyone" where, in English, John was the generic male term for a person. The term John Q. Public was the name of a character created by Vaughn Shoemaker , an editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Daily News , in 1922. Jim Lange , the editorial cartoonist for The Oklahoman for 58 years, was closely identified with a version of the John Q. Public character, whom he sometimes also called "Mr. Voter". Lange's version of

5460-587: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All

5538-775: The tilde has no impact on the primary alphabetical order. Diacritics are often omitted on capital letters, mainly for technical reasons (not present on AZERTY keyboards). However both the Académie française and the Office québécois de la langue française reject this usage and confirm that "in French, the accent has full orthographic value", except for acronyms but not for abbreviations (e.g., CEE , ALENA , but É.-U. ). Nevertheless, diacritics are often ignored in word games, including crosswords , Scrabble , and Des chiffres et des lettres . The ligatures ⟨ æ ⟩ and ⟨ œ ⟩ are part of French orthography. For collation , these ligatures are treated like

5616-451: The time the proposed changes were considered to be suggestions. In 2016, schoolbooks in France began to use the newer recommended spellings, with instruction to teachers that both old and new spellings be deemed correct. In France and Belgium, the exclamation mark , question mark , semicolon , colon , percentage mark, currency symbols, hash , and guillemet all require a thin space between

5694-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with

5772-423: The underlying Latin words, whereas no such distinction exists in the case of ⟨eu/ue⟩ . This period also saw the development of some explicitly etymological spellings, e.g. temps ("time"), vingt ("twenty") and poids ("weight") (note that in many cases, the etymologizing was sloppy or occasionally completely incorrect; vingt reflects Latin viginti , with the ⟨g⟩ in

5850-733: The varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it

5928-560: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows

6006-400: The wrong place, and poids actually comes from Latin pensum , with no ⟨d⟩ at all; the spelling poids is due to an incorrect derivation from Latin pondus ). The trend towards etymologizing sometimes produced absurd (and generally rejected) spellings such as sçapvoir for normal savoir ("to know"), which attempted to combine Latin sapere ("to be wise",

6084-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like

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