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116-495: The dual had disappeared from it. The written Palmyrene language was composed in a rounded script that later exhibited resemblances to the Syriac Estrangela script. This Semitic languages -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Dual (grammatical number) Dual ( abbreviated DU ) is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural . When

232-546: A mixed language or a creole —a theory called the Middle English creole hypothesis . Although the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern English is widely acknowledged, most specialists in language contact do not consider English to be a true mixed language. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages including Dutch , German , and Swedish . These shared innovations show that

348-460: A ت ta . When the dual noun or adjective is rendered in the genitive or accusative cases, the ان -ān becomes ين -ain . Besides the noun and adjective dual, there are also dual verb forms of compulsory use for second and third person, together with their pronouns, but none for the first person. The use of dual in spoken Arabic varies widely and is mostly rendered as ين -ain even when in nominative context. Whereas its use

464-635: A 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a member of the EU), 38 percent of the EU respondents outside the countries where English is an official language said they could speak English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in conversation by 12 percent of respondents. A working knowledge of English has become

580-651: A distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms , and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns ( he , him , his ) and has a few verb inflections ( speak , speaks , speaking , spoke , spoken ), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings. Its closest relative

696-485: A distinction between singular and plural : English, for example, distinguishes between man and men , or house and houses . In some languages , in addition to such singular and plural forms, there is also a dual form, which is used when exactly two people or things are meant. In many languages with dual forms, the use of the dual is mandatory as in some Arabic dialects using dual in nouns as in Hejazi Arabic , and

812-586: A dual number, though its use was confined to standard phrases like "two hands", "two eyes", and "two arms". The dual in Hebrew has also atrophied, generally being used for only time, number, and natural pairs (like body parts) even in its most ancient form . Inuktitut and the related Central Alaskan Yup'ik language use dual forms; however, the related Greenlandic language does not (though it used to have them). Khoekhoegowab and other Khoe languages mark dual number in their person-gender-number enclitics , though

928-629: A few modern Indo-European languages such as Irish , Scottish Gaelic , Lithuanian , Slovene , and Sorbian languages . The majority of modern Indo-European languages, including modern English, have lost the dual number through their development. Its function has mostly been replaced by the simple plural. They may however show residual traces of the dual, for example in the English distinctions: both vs. all , either vs. any , neither vs. none , and so on. A commonly used sentence to exemplify dual in English

1044-484: A foreign language, make up the "expanding circle". The distinctions between English as a first language, as a second language, and as a foreign language are often debatable and may change in particular countries over time. For example, in the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe, knowledge of English as a second language is nearly universal, with over 80 percent of the population able to use it, and thus English

1160-520: A more standard version of English. They have many more speakers of English who acquire English as they grow up through day-to-day use and listening to broadcasting, especially if they attend schools where English is the medium of instruction. Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar, by the other languages spoken by those learners. Most of those varieties of English include words little used by native speakers of English in

1276-666: A noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities (objects or persons) identified by the noun or pronoun acting as a single unit or in unison. Verbs can also have dual agreement forms in these languages. The dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European and persisted in many of its descendants , such as Ancient Greek and Sanskrit , which have dual forms across nouns, verbs, and adjectives; Gothic , which used dual forms in pronouns and verbs; and Old English (Anglo-Saxon), which used dual forms in its pronouns . It can still be found in

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1392-688: A number of other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian dialect and Yola language of Ireland. Like Icelandic and Faroese , the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, as it differs in vocabulary , syntax , and phonology . However, some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages. Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated,

1508-629: A requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine and computing. English has become so important in scientific publishing that more than 80 percent of all scientific journal articles indexed by Chemical Abstracts in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 percent of all articles in natural science publications by 1996 and 82 percent of articles in humanities publications by 1995. International communities such as international business people may use English as an auxiliary language , with an emphasis on vocabulary suitable for their domain of interest. This has led some scholars to develop

1624-407: A rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order . Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses , aspects and moods , as well as passive constructions , interrogatives , and some negation . The earliest form of English

1740-744: A significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), South Africa (4.8 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages and new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. The inner-circle countries provide

1856-447: A verb ending ( present plural): From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Old English gradually transformed through language contact with Old Norse in some regions. The waves of Norse (Viking) colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in

1972-552: Is Old Frisian , but even some centuries after the Anglo-Saxon migration, Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility with other Germanic varieties. Even in the 9th and 10th centuries, amidst the Danelaw and other Viking invasions, there is historical evidence that Old Norse and Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility, although probably the northern dialects of Old English were more similar to Old Norse than

2088-494: Is lenited . Masculine nouns take no special inflection, but feminine nouns have a slenderized dual form, which is in fact identical to the dative singular. Languages of the Brythonic branch do not have dual number. As mentioned above for Middle Welsh, some nouns can be said to have dual forms, prefixed with a form of the numeral "two" (Breton daou- / div- , Welsh dau- / deu- / dwy- , Cornish dew- / diw- ). This process

2204-476: Is " Both go to the same school. " where both refers to two specific people who had already been determined in the conversation. Many Semitic languages have dual number. For instance, in Hebrew יים ‎- ( -ayim ) or a variation of it is added to the end of some nouns, e.g. some parts of the body (eye, ear, nostril, lip, hand, leg) and some time periods (minute, hour, day, week, month, year) to indicate that it

2320-459: Is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the United States as a world power. As of 2016 , 400 million people spoke English as their first language , and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language. English is the largest language by number of speakers . English

2436-603: Is also widely used in media and literature, and the number of English language books published annually in India is the third largest in the world after the US and UK. However, English is rarely spoken as a first language, numbering only around a couple hundred-thousand people, and less than 5% of the population speak fluent English in India. David Crystal claimed in 2004 that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in

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2552-407: Is an official language of countries populated by few descendants of native speakers of English. It has also become by far the most important language of international communication when people who share no native language meet anywhere in the world. The Indian linguist Braj Kachru distinguished countries where English is spoken with a three circles model . In his model, Kachru based his model on

2668-528: Is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon ( c.  450–1150 ). Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic , and 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 . From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as

2784-461: Is dual (regardless of how the plural is formed). A similar situation exists in classical Arabic, where ان -ān is added to the end of any noun to indicate that it is dual (regardless of how the plural is formed). It is also present in Khoisan languages that have a rich inflectional morphology , particularly Khoe languages , as well as Kunama , a Nilo-Saharan language . Many languages make

2900-576: Is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as India , Ireland , and Canada ). In some other countries, it is the sole or dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law (such as in the United States and United Kingdom ). It is a co-official language of the United Nations , the European Union , and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become

3016-416: Is not fully productive, however, and the prefixed forms are semantically restricted. For example, Breton daouarn (< dorn "hand") can only refer to one person's pair of hands, not any two hands from two different people. Welsh deufis must refer to a period of two consecutive months, whereas dau fis can be any two months (compare "fortnight" in English as opposed to "two weeks" or "14 days";

3132-600: Is quite common in Levantine Arabic , for instance كيلوين kilowain meaning "two kilograms", dual forms are generally not used in Maghrebi Arabic , where two units are commonly expressed with the word زوج zuʒ , as in زوج كيلو zuʒ kilu meaning "a pair of kilograms", with the noun appearing in singular. In Biblical , Mishnaic , and Medieval Hebrew , like Arabic and other Semitic languages , all nouns can have singular, plural or dual forms, and there

3248-424: Is routinely used to communicate with foreigners and often in higher education. In these countries, although English is not used for government business, its widespread use puts them at the boundary between the "outer circle" and "expanding circle". English is unusual among world languages in how many of its users are not native speakers but speakers of English as a second or foreign language. Many users of English in

3364-413: Is shown in pointed text with a pathach; in a purely consonantal text, masculine dual is not indicated at all by the consonants. The dual for (two) days is יוֹמַ֫יִם ‎ with pathach under the mem. An example of the dual form is יום / יומיים / ימים ‎ yōm / yomạyim / yāmīm "day / two days / [two or more] days". Some words occur so often in pairs that the form with the dual suffix -ạyim

3480-517: Is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans. The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle" countries with many native speakers of English share an international standard of written English and jointly influence speech norms for English around the world. English does not belong to just one country, and it does not belong solely to descendants of English settlers. English

3596-491: Is still a debate whether there are vestiges of dual verbal forms and pronouns. However, in practice, most nouns use only singular and plural forms. Usually ־ים ‎ -īm is added to masculine words to make them plural for example ספר / ספרים ‎ sēfer / səfārīm "book / books", whilst with feminine nouns the ־ה ‎ -ā is replaced with ־ות ‎ -ōṯ . For example, פרה / פרות ‎ pārā / pārōṯ "cow / cows". The masculine dual form

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3712-465: Is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations ) and the United States . English is the third-most spoken native language , after Standard Chinese and Spanish ; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English

3828-777: Is the third person pronoun group beginning with th- ( they, them, their ) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h- ( hie, him, hera ). Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of Old English, particularly northern ones. Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting. Although, from

3944-448: Is used in practice for the general plural, such as עין / עינים ‎ ʿạyin / ʿēnạyim "eye / eyes", used even in a sentence like "The spider has eight eyes." Thus words like ʿēnạyim only appear to be dual, but are in fact what is called "pseudo-dual", which is a way of making a plural. Sometimes, words can change meaning depending on whether the dual or plural form is used, for example; ʿayin can mean eye or water spring in

4060-574: Is used to form the plural of some body parts, garments, etc., for instance: In this case, even if there are more than two, the dual is still used, for instance יש לכלב ארבע רגליים yesh lə-ḵélev arbaʿ ragláyim ("a dog has four legs "). Another case of the pseudo-dual is duale tantum (a kind of plurale tantum ) nouns: In Nama , nouns have three genders and three grammatical numbers . The non-Khoe Khoesan languages ( Tuu and Kx'a ), do not have dual number marking of nouns. The category of dual can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European ,

4176-460: Is widely used in Sanskrit, as noted above. Its use is mandatory when the number of objects is two, and the plural is not permitted in this case, with one exception (see below). It is always indicated by the declensional suffix (and some morphophonemic modifications to the root resulting from addition of the suffix). For nouns, the dual forms are the same in the following sets of cases, with examples for

4292-943: The Anglic languages in the British Isles , and into the Frisian languages and Low German /Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages , are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the North Sea Germanic languages, though this grouping remains debated. Old English evolved into Middle English , which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into

4408-587: The Anglo-Norman language . Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking English, the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases

4524-594: The Anglo-Saxons . Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse , a North Germanic language . Then, Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects , which are the source of approximately 28% of Modern English words , and from Latin , which is the source of an additional 28% . As such, though most of its total vocabulary comes from Romance languages , Modern English's grammar, phonology, and most commonly used words in everyday use keep it genealogically classified under

4640-479: The Augustinian canon Orrm , which highlights the blending of both Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in English for the first time. In Wycliff'e Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis . Here the plural suffix -n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English

4756-537: The Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English . The centre of Norsified English was in the Midlands around Lindsey . After 920 CE, when Lindsey was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today

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4872-532: The European Free Trade Association , Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) set English as their organisation's sole working language even though most members are not countries with a majority of native English speakers. While the European Union (EU) allows member states to designate any of the national languages as an official language of

4988-584: The United Nations at the end of World War II , English had become pre-eminent and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations. Many other worldwide international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee , specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations such as

5104-577: The conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1150 to 1500. With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the now-Norsified Old English language was subject to another wave of intense contact, this time with Old French , in particular Old Norman French , influencing it as a superstrate. The Norman French spoken by the elite in England eventually developed into

5220-559: The genitive forms of uncer for first person and incer for second person. The dual lasted beyond Old English into the Early Middle English period in the Southern and Midland dialects. Middle English saw git evolve into ȝit , and inc can be seen in various different forms including ȝinc , ȝunc , unk , hunk , and hunke . The dual mostly died out in the early 1200s, surviving to around 1300 only in

5336-875: The neuter gender does not have a dual form. Austronesian languages , particularly Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian , Niuean , and Tongan , possess a dual number for pronouns but not for nouns, as nouns are generally marked for plural syntactically and not morphologically. Other Austronesian languages, particularly those spoken in the Philippines , have a dual first-person pronoun; these languages include Ilokano ( data ), Tausug ( kita ), and Kapampangan ( ìkatá ). These forms mean "we", but specifically "you and I". This form once existed in Tagalog ( katá or sometimes kitá ) but has disappeared from standard usage (save for certain dialects such as in Batangas ) since

5452-511: The palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic (see Phonological history of Old English § Palatalization ). The earliest varieties of an English language, collectively known as Old English or "Anglo-Saxon", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Britain in the 5th century. Old English dialects were later influenced by Old Norse -speaking Viking invaders and settlers , starting in

5568-558: The "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines , Jamaica , India , Pakistan , Singapore , Malaysia and Nigeria with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government. Those countries have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to

5684-596: The 8th and 9th centuries. Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman Conquest of England, when a considerable amount of Old French vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three centuries. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots, concurrent with

5800-595: The Angles. English may have a small amount of substrate influence from Common Brittonic, and a number of possible Brittonicisms in English have been proposed, but whether most of these supposed Brittonicisms are actually a direct result of Brittonic substrate influence is disputed. Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects ( Mercian and Northumbrian ) and the Saxon dialects ( Kentish and West Saxon ). Through

5916-463: The British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language policies. For example, the view of the English language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India. English

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6032-537: The Early Modern period includes the works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I . Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn sw/ in knight , gnat , and sword were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent

6148-506: The East Midland dialect. In a small number of modern English dialects, dual pronouns have independently returned. These include: Gothic retained the dual more or less unchanged from Proto-Germanic. It had markings for the first and second person for both the verbs and pronouns, for example wit "we two" as compared to weis "we, more than two". Old Norse and other old Germanic languages, like Old English, had dual marking only in

6264-628: The English Language , which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of

6380-543: The English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koineised forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers. English has ceased to be an "English language" in

6496-676: The Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and is then most closely related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages . English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into

6612-550: The Roman economy and administration collapsed . By the 7th century, this Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in Britain , replacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): Common Brittonic , a Celtic language , and British Latin , brought to Britain by the Roman occupation. At this time, these dialects generally resisted influence from the then-local Brittonic and Latin languages. England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc ) are both named after

6728-490: The Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations. Although in most countries English is not an official language, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language . In the countries of the EU, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in nineteen of the twenty-five member states where it is not an official language (that is, the countries other than Ireland and Malta ). In

6844-656: The ancestor of all Indo-European languages , and it has been retained as a fully functioning category in the earliest attested daughter languages. The best evidence for the dual among ancient Indo-European languages can be found in Old Indo-Iranian ( Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan ), Homeric Greek and Old Church Slavonic , where its use was obligatory for all inflected categories including verbs, nouns, adjectives, pronouns and some numerals. Various traces of dual can also be found in Gothic , Old Irish , and Latin (more below). Due to

6960-407: The base from which English spreads to other countries in the world. Estimates of the numbers of second language and foreign-language English speakers vary greatly from 470 million to more than 1 billion, depending on how proficiency is defined. Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. In Kachru's three-circles model,

7076-449: The basis for the required controlled natural languages Seaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring and aviation. English used to have parity with French and German in scientific research, but now it dominates that field. It achieved parity with French as a language of diplomacy at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919. By the time of the foundation of

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7192-404: The beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing. Middle English is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with

7308-465: The concept of "we two here" as contrasted to "we". Nenets , two closely-related Samoyedic languages , features a complete set of dual possessive suffixes for two systems, the number of possessors and the number of possessed objects (for example, "two houses of us two" expressed in one word). The dual form is also used in several modern Indo-European languages, such as Irish , Scottish Gaelic , Slovene , and Sorbian (see below for details). The dual

7424-638: The consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation. American listeners readily understand most British broadcasting, and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting. Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes, television programmes, and films from many parts of the English-speaking world. Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and use both technical and non-technical registers. The settlement history of

7540-461: The de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science , technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the Internet . English accounts for at least 70% of total speakers of the Germanic language branch, and as of 2021 , Ethnologue estimated that there were over 1.5 billion speakers worldwide. Old English emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by

7656-476: The development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, particularly Old Norse and French dialects . These left a profound mark of their own on the language, so that English shows some similarities in vocabulary and grammar with many languages outside its linguistic clades —but it is not mutually intelligible with any of those languages either. Some scholars have argued that English can be considered

7772-467: The distinct characteristics of Early Modern English. In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, "The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests." This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject–verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and

7888-662: The dual in Ancient Greek. In classical Greek, the dual was lost, except in the Attic dialect of Athens , where it persisted until the fifth century BC. Even in this case, its use depended on the author and certain stock expressions. In Koine Greek and Modern Greek , the only remnant of the dual is the numeral for "two", δύο , dýo , which has lost its genitive and dative cases (both δυοῖν , dyoīn ) and retains its nominative/accusative form. Thus it appears to be undeclined in all cases. Nevertheless, Aristophanes of Byzantium ,

8004-455: The dual number of the present tense, called laṭ lakāra: (In Sanskrit, the order of the persons is reversed.) The one exception to the rigidness about dual number is in the case of the pronoun asmad (I/we): Sanskrit grammar permits one to use the plural number for asmad even if the actual number of objects denoted is one or two (this is similar to the "royal we"). For example, while ahaṃ bravīmi , āvāṃ brūvaḥ and vayaṃ brūmaḥ are respectively

8120-487: The dual was also present in verbal inflection where the syncretism was much lower. Of living Indo-European languages, the dual can be found in dialects of Scottish Gaelic , but fully functioning as a paradigmatic category only in Slovene , and Sorbian . Remnants of the dual can be found in many of the remaining daughter languages, where certain forms of the noun are used with the number two (see below for examples). The dual

8236-401: The early period of Old English were written using a runic script . By the 6th century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms . It included the runic letters wynn ⟨ ƿ ⟩ and thorn ⟨ þ ⟩ , and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ ð ⟩ , and ash ⟨ æ ⟩ . Old English is essentially

8352-539: The educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex , the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety . The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon's Hymn , is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from

8468-408: The expanding circle use it to communicate with other people from the expanding circle, so that interaction with native speakers of English plays no part in their decision to use the language. Non-native varieties of English are widely used for international communication, and speakers of one such variety often encounter features of other varieties. Very often today a conversation in English anywhere in

8584-509: The expression beide ("both") is equivalent to, though more commonly used than, alle zwei ("all two"). Norwegian Nynorsk also retains the conjunction korgje ("one of two") and its inverse korkje ("neither of two"). A remnant of a lost dual also survives in the Icelandic and Faroese ordinals first and second, which can be translated two ways: First there is fyrri / fyrri / fyrra and seinni / seinni / seinna , which mean

8700-524: The first and second of two respectively, while fyrsti / fyrsta / fyrsta and annar / önnur / annað mean first and second of more than two. In Icelandic the pronouns annar / önnur / annað ("one") and hinn / hin / hitt ("other") are also used to denote each unit of a set of two in contrast to the pronouns einn / ein / eitt ("one") and annar / önnur / annað ("second"). Therefore in Icelandic "with one hand" translates as með annarri hendi not með einni hendi , and as in English "with

8816-409: The first must, but the second and third need not, be a single consecutive period). The modern Welsh term dwylo (= hands) is formed by adding the feminine (and conjoining) form of 'two' ( dwy ) with the word for 'hand' — llaw becoming lo as it is no longer in a stressed syllable. In Proto-Germanic , the dual had been entirely lost in nouns, and since verbs agreed with nouns in number,

8932-509: The foremost authority of his time (early 2nd century BC) on grammar and style, and a staunch defender of "proper" High Attic tradition, admonishes those who write δυσί ( dysí ) (dative, plural number) rather than the "correct" δυοῖν ( dyoīn ) (dative, dual number). The dual was lost in Latin and its sister Italic languages . However, certain fossilized forms remained, for example, viginti (twenty), but triginta (thirty),

9048-710: The growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been. As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of

9164-479: The history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift , meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised , and close vowels were broken into diphthongs . For example,

9280-407: The history of how English spread in different countries, how users acquire English, and the range of uses English has in each country. The three circles change membership over time. Countries with large communities of native speakers of English (the inner circle) include Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English, and South Africa, where

9396-403: The inner-circle countries, and they may show grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties as well. The standard English of the inner-circle countries is often taken as a norm for use of English in the outer-circle countries. In the three-circles model, countries such as Poland, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries where English is taught as

9512-524: The introduction of loanwords from French ( ayre ) and word replacements ( bird originally meaning "nestling" had replaced OE fugol ). By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. English

9628-467: The introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare . The printing press greatly standardised English spelling, which has remained largely unchanged since then, despite a wide variety of later sound shifts in English dialects. Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of

9744-431: The languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic . Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs , and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm's and Verner's laws . English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as

9860-409: The masculine noun bāla (boy): In Sanskrit, adjectives are treated the same as nouns as far as case declensions are concerned. As for pronouns, the same rules apply, except for a few special forms used in some cases. Verbs have distinct dual forms in the three persons in both the ātmanepada and parasmaipada forms of verbs. For instance, the root pac meaning "to cook", takes the following forms in

9976-505: The middle of the 20th century, with kitá as the only surviving form (e.g. Mahál kitá , loosely "I love you"). The dual was a standard feature of the Proto-Uralic language , and lives on in the Samoyedic branch and in most Sami languages , while other members of the family like Finnish , Estonian , and Hungarian have lost it. Sami languages also feature dual pronouns, expressing

10092-453: The numeral two: e.g. deulin (from glin "knee"), dwyglust (from clust "ear"). In the modern languages, there are still significant remnants of dual number in Irish and Scottish Gaelic in nominal phrases containing the numeral dhá or dà (including the higher numerals 12, 22, etc.). As the following table shows, dhá and dà combines with a singular noun, which

10208-490: The other hand" is með hinni hendinni . An additional element in Icelandic worth mentioning are the interrogative pronouns hvor / hvor / hvort ("who / which / what" of two) and hver / hver / hvert ("who / which / what" of more than two). Among the Baltic languages , the dual form existed but is now nearly obsolete in standard Lithuanian . The dual form Du litu was still used on two- litas coins issued in 1925, but

10324-492: The personal pronouns and not in the verbs. The dual has disappeared as a productive form in all the living languages, with loss of the dual occurring in North Frisian dialects only quite recently. In Austro-Bavarian , the old dual pronouns have replaced the standard plural pronouns: nominative es , accusative enk (from Proto-Germanic * jut  and * inkw , * inkwiz ). A similar development in

10440-459: The plural form ( 2 litai ) is used on later two-litas coins. English language English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , whose speakers, called Anglophones , originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain . The namesake of the language is the Angles , one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain . It

10556-444: The plural is used only for groups greater than two. However, the use of the dual is optional in some languages such as other modern Arabic dialects including Egyptian Arabic . In other languages such as Hebrew , the dual exists only for words naming time spans (day, week, etc.), a few measure words , and for words that naturally come in pairs and are not used in the plural except in rhetoric: eyes, ears, and so forth. In Slovene ,

10672-426: The prestige varieties among the middle classes. In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him , she and her , who and whom ), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support , have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word "do" as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it

10788-605: The pronoun obe / oba ('both'), the dual form that follows is mandatory. But the use of "obe (both)" is not mandatory since "očesi (two eyes)" as it is, implies that one means both eyes. Although relatively few languages have the dual number, using different words for groups of two and groups greater than two is not uncommon. English has words distinguishing dual vs. plural number, including: both / all , either / any , neither / none , between / among , former / first , and latter / last . Japanese , which has no grammatical number, also has words dochira ( どちら , 'which of

10904-723: The pronoun system can be seen in Icelandic and Faroese . Another remnant of the dual can be found in the use of the pronoun begge ("both") in the Scandinavian languages of Norwegian and Danish , bägge in Swedish and báðir / báðar / bæði in Faroese and Icelandic. In these languages, in order to state "all + number", the constructions are begge to / báðir tveir / báðar tvær / bæði tvö ("all two") but alle tre / allir þrír / allar þrjár / öll þrjú ("all three"). In German,

11020-657: The reign of Henry V . Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents , and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard , developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands . In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English. Literature from

11136-453: The scarcity of evidence, the reconstruction of dual endings for Proto-Indo-European is difficult, but at least formally according to the comparative method it can be ascertained that no more than three dual endings are reconstructible for nominal inflection. Mallory & Adams (2006) reconstruct the dual endings as: The Proto-Indo-European category of dual did not only denote two of something: it could also be used as an associative marker,

11252-464: The sense of belonging only to people who are ethnically English . Use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication. Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons. Many speakers of English in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries. As decolonisation proceeded throughout

11368-555: The singular, but in the plural eyes will take the dual form of ʿenayim whilst springs are ʿeynot . Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns have only singular and plural, with the plural forms of these being used with dual nouns. In Modern Hebrew as used in Israel , there is also a dual number, but its use is very restricted. The dual form is usually used in expressions of time and number. These nouns have plurals as well, which are used for numbers higher than two, for example: The pseudo-dual

11484-565: The singular, dual and plural forms of "I say" and "we say", vayaṃ brūmaḥ can be used in the singular and dual sense as well. The dual can be found in Ancient Greek Homeric texts such as the Iliad and the Odyssey , although its use is only sporadic, owing as much to artistic prerogatives as dictional and metrical requirements within the hexametric meter . There were only two distinct forms of

11600-504: The so-called elliptical dual . For example, the Vedic deity Mitrá , when appearing in dual form Mitrā́ , refers to both Mitra and his companion Varuṇa . Homeric dual Αἴαντε refers to Ajax the Greater and his fighting companion Teucer , and Latin plural Castorēs is used to denote both the semi-god Castor and his twin brother Pollux . Beside nominal (nouns, adjectives and pronouns),

11716-474: The southern dialects. Theoretically, as late as the 900s AD, a commoner from certain (northern) parts of England could hold a conversation with a commoner from certain parts of Scandinavia. Research continues into the details of the myriad tribes in peoples in England and Scandinavia and the mutual contacts between them. The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings ( nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and

11832-455: The study of English as an auxiliary language. The trademarked Globish uses a relatively small subset of English vocabulary (about 1500 words, designed to represent the highest use in international business English) in combination with the standard English grammar. Other examples include Simple English . The increased use of the English language globally has had an effect on other languages, leading to some English words being assimilated into

11948-479: The third person dual form of verbs was also lost. The dual therefore remained only in the first and second person pronouns and their accompanying verb forms. Old English further lost all remaining dual verbs, keeping only first and second person dual pronouns. The Old English first person dual pronoun was wit in the nominative and unc in the accusative , and the second person equivalents were git and inc respectively. The West Saxon dialect also had

12064-504: The two') and dore ( どれ , 'which of the three or more'), etc. Among living languages, Modern Standard Arabic has a mandatory dual number, marked on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. (First-person dual forms, however, do not exist; compare this to the lack of third-person dual forms in the old Germanic languages.) Many of the spoken Arabic dialects have a dual marking for nouns (only), and its use can be mandatory in some dialects, and not mandatory in others. Likewise, Akkadian had

12180-448: The use of the dual is mandatory except for nouns that are natural pairs, such as trousers, eyes, ears, lips, hands, arms, legs, feet, kidneys, breasts, lungs, etc., for which the plural form has to be used unless one wants to stress that something is true for both one and the other part. For example, one says oči me bolijo ('my eyes hurt'), but if they want to stress that both their eyes hurt, they say obe očesi me bolita . When using

12296-412: The vocabularies of other languages. This influence of English has led to concerns about language death , and to claims of linguistic imperialism , and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however the number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the world think that English provides them with opportunities for better employment and improved lives. Though some mention

12412-473: The word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages. English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during

12528-520: The words ambo / ambae (both, compare Slavic oba ), duo / duae with a dual declension. Reconstructed Proto-Celtic nominal and adjectival declensions contain distinct dual forms; pronouns and verbs do not. In Old Irish , nouns and the definite article still have dual forms, but only when accompanied by the numeral * da "two". Traces of the dual remain in Middle Welsh , in nouns denoting pairs of body parts that incorporate

12644-785: The world may include no native speakers of English at all, even while including speakers from several different countries. This is particularly true of the shared vocabulary of mathematics and the sciences. English is a pluricentric language , which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language. Spoken English, including English used in broadcasting, generally follows national pronunciation standards that are established by custom rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through their accents , but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English . The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by

12760-539: The world, but the number of English speakers in India is uncertain, with most scholars concluding that the United States still has more speakers of English than India. Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca , is also regarded as the first world language . English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy. English is, by international treaty,

12876-438: The worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media in these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation , and law. Its modern grammar is the result of a gradual change from a dependent-marking pattern typical of Indo-European with

12992-467: Was a common feature of all early Slavic languages around the year 1000. In Modern Standard Arabic , as well as in Classical Arabic , the use of dual is compulsory when describing two units. For this purpose, ان -ān is added to the end of any noun or adjective regardless of gender or of how the plural is formed. In the case of feminine nouns ending with ة ta marbuta , this letter becomes

13108-405: Was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Oceania, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century

13224-511: Was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , and Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur . In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer. The next period in

13340-500: Was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession . The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible. The transition from Old to Middle English can be placed during the writing of the Ormulum . The oldest Middle English texts that were written by

13456-533: Was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in -ing , appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt ), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of politer ). British English

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