Talk:English

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Please remember to Sign your posts on talk pages   RedWolf 21:51, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

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I'm somewhat bemused by some of these distinctions: 'British English'? I can understand Irish English, Scottish English etc. Likewise 'American English' - beneath it is 'Canadian English', there was me thinking Canada was IN America.

Eh? Canada is in North America, or The Americas - no Canadian would ever agree that Canada is in America, and I suspect most could easily be pushed to violence on the issue WilyD 15:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make more sense to have 'English' - as spoken by the residents of England, then pre-fix with the appropriate country name: Australian English, South African English, U.S.A. English etc.

Contents 1 True or false?? 2 Disambiguation for the English language 3 Protected? 4 Polite notice 5 A very in intresting word

[edit] True or false??

True or false: there is a good advantage of having this article as it is as opposed to having it be used for the language and having all the other links moved to English (disambiguation). 66.245.115.123 16:00, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To the user above YOU MISS THE POINT!

For English people, you put "English People", and for English languages, you put "English language", you don't call the French spoken in France "French French" or "Gallic French" or anything else,

all francophone dialects outside France have the prefix.

Same should obviously apply to English. You can have all the others under one category "English Dialects". American-English is a dialect of English; English is the language of England.

There is no such thing as "British English", it simply doesn't exist.

In fact, I'd like to complain about the use of the word "English" used to describe the language that most Wikipedia articles are available in. The language is actually "American English", and that's what it should be called.

The only language that can justifiable and correctly be called English is the language of the nation of England. It is frankly offensive for American English to be called English, and for English to be called "British English". There is no such thing as "British English". There is English English, (and as mentioned) Scots English, Hiberno-English etc... but there is no such thing as "British English", or even the absurd appellation of "English English". American English is, like the many others, a dialect of English. The use of the term "British English" disingenuously implies that the opposite is true: which is a lie.

It is apparently in the spirit of concepts such as Wikipedia (and Google as it goes) to provide information in real languages of the users, and in the case of Wikipedia, to aim to act as a resource of truthful and accurate information, as best it can.

It is misinformation to call American English, English, and to call English "British English", and I implore Wikipedia to make this amendment: on the language selection page and in the code, make "EN" mean only English, the Americans can have "AM-EN", that's the way it should be; it's disgrace that html will not accept tags in English like "<centre>" as it was invented by someone from England! Likewise, this page address whould perhaps read: http://AM-EN.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:English&action=edit Otherwise, someone should correct the spelling and grammar in order to make sure that it can truthfully be called English.

Call your language whatever you like, but don't call it English - that is theft of the truth.

For those who are interested visit SIL for some factual data about languages.

1. Common usage - English is understood to mean the language as a whole. Americans, Irish, British, Australians etc speak a mutually intelligible language. Which is very convenient.

2. Split up Wikipedia into different varieties of English?! What a loss of functionality and increase in work for editors, for the sake of language purity (that most users of the language don't care about anyway).

3. Languages naturally evolve over time. Also, changes can be deliberately made to make an official language easier to use (as was done, twice, with [Indonesian], and as with [George Bernard Shaw]'s push to simplify English spelling.)

Here endeth the rant.

Singkong2005 11:02, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I would say 'false,' myself, and I think Singkong2005 misunderstands the question. See [[1]] --Etaonsh 22:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation for the English language

"Keep in mind that the primary purpose of the disambiguation page is to help people find the page they want quickly and easily." - from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)

So I am changing the entry for English language from "a West Germanic language" to "spoken mainly in the United States, the UK as well as its former colonies."

Also, "Unlike a regular article page, don't wikilink any other words in the line, unless they may be essential to help the reader determine which page they are looking for", so I am removing excess wikilinks as well.

Singkong2005 12:18, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Come to think of it, just having "the English language", with no description is probably clearest of all. Nice and uncluttered. What think ye? Singkong2005 12:34, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right, it is better as just "the English language". For one thing, we have just "the English people", and if that's good enough without going into detail then so too should the language stand on its own. (Warning: now that I've answered the question, it's time to rant...)

Furthermore, the current phrasing, splitting as it does the English-speaking world (occasionally referred to by the bloody stupid neologism "the anglosphere") into "the US" and "the UK and former colonies" is frankly offensive, so any move to get rid of it is very welcome. I don't mean to sound like our oversensitive ranting friend higher up the page, but what makes my homeland a "former colony" but that other notorious prison a fully-fledged nation in its own right? What is it about the USA that makes it special in a way that the other "former colonies" are not? And what gets me, what absolutely maddens me (and many others who embarrass themselves on talkpages such as this complaining about systemic bias) is that it never even occurs to you lot that this sort of thing could be a problem! Gah!! --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 15:03, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

On behalf of my fellow inmates, I apologize most sincerely.Petershank 21:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protected?

Should this page be protected since anonymous IPs mainly deteriorate it? 16@r 11:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polite notice

Please could people avoid placing upon the page unproven assertions without any evidence to support them - such as "English is the most flexible and easiest language in the world".

Thank you

Human@home 22:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A very in intresting word

Bold text

Does anybody know what verisemilitude because I do it means realistic i am 10 and i know what it means and my teacher didn't until he was in six-form, I also asked my mum she is 41 and she didn't know what it meant.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.104.45.66 (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC).