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The next day, Union forces crossed the river at Bruinsburg, Mississippi. A Union victory in the Battle of Port Gibson on May 1 secured the beachhead and forced the abandonment of the position at Grand Gulf, which became a Union supply point. Grant's command moved inland, and after defeating Confederate forces in the Battle of Champion Hill on May 16, began the Siege of Vicksburg two days later. Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, marking a major Confederate defeat and a turning point in the war. The Grand Gulf battlefield is preserved in Grand Gulf Military State Park, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Early in the American Civil War, the Union military leadership developed the Anaconda Plan, which was a strategy to defeat the Confederate States of America. A significant component of this strategy was controlling the Mississippi River.[1] Much of the Mississippi Valley fell under Union control in early 1862 after the capture of New Orleans, Louisiana, and several land victories.[2] The strategically important city of Vicksburg, Mississippi was still in Confederate hands, serving as a strong defensive position that commanded the river and prevented the Union from separating the two halves of the Confederacy.[3] Union Navy elements were sent upriver from New Orleans in May to try to take the city, a move that was unsuccessful.[4] In late June, a joint army-navy expedition returned to make another campaign against Vicksburg.[5] Union Navy leadership decided that the city could not be taken without more infantrymen, who were not forthcoming. An attempt to cut Williams's Canal across a meander of the river in June and July, bypassing Vicksburg, failed.[6][7]

In late November, about 40,000 Union infantry commanded by Major General Ulysses S. Grant began moving south towards Vicksburg from a starting point in Tennessee. Grant ordered a retreat after a supply depot and part of his supply line were destroyed during the Holly Springs Raid on December 20 and Forrest's West Tennessee Raid. Meanwhile, another arm of the expedition under the command of Major General William T. Sherman left Memphis, Tennessee, on the same day as the Holly Springs Raid and traveled down the Mississippi River. After diverting up the Yazoo River, Sherman's men began skirmishing with Confederate soldiers defending a line of hills above the Chickasaw Bayou. A Union attack on December 29, was defeated decisively at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, and Sherman's men withdrew on January 1, 1863.[8]

By late March, further attempts to bypass Vicksburg had failed.[9] Grant then considered three plans: to withdraw to Memphis and retry the overland route through northern Mississippi; to move south along the west side of the Mississippi River, cross below Vicksburg, and then strike for the city; or to make an amphibious assault across the river directly against Vicksburg. An assault across the river risked heavy casualties, and a withdrawal to Memphis could be politically disastrous if the public perceived such a movement as a retreat. Grant then decided upon the downstream crossing.[10] The advance along the west bank of the Mississippi began on March 29, and was spearheaded by Major General John A. McClernand's troops.[11] The movement down the river was masked by decoy operations such as Steele's Greenville expedition,[12] Streight's Raid, and Grierson's Raid.[13] Confederate regional commander John C. Pemberton fell for the Union decoys (especially Grierson's Raid), and lost touch with the true tactical situation, believing Grant was withdrawing.[14]

On multiple occasions in mid-1862, Confederate field artillery harassed Union Navy vessels from Grand Gulf, Mississippi, which was located along the Mississippi River to the south of Vicksburg. The town was largely burned by Union troops attempting to suppress the Confederate guns.[15] In early March 1863, the Confederates decided to rebuild fortifications at Grand Gulf, and the brigade of Brigadier General John S. Bowen was transferred there. By the middle of the month, Bowen's troops and several slaves were working on building new defenses and strengthening the existing ones. Heavy cannons were transferred to the position, but before those guns could arrive, a skirmish occurred on March 19, between the Confederate defenders and two Union Navy ships: the sloop-of-war USS Hartford and the schooner USS Albatross. The exchange was not protracted and the Confederates suffered no loss; the Union had eight men killed or wounded on Hartford. Soon afterwards, five heavy guns arrived at Grand Gulf: two 8-inch (203 mm) pieces and three 32-pounder rifled cannons.[16][17]

In early April, Bowen became aware of Grant's movement down the west side of the Mississippi River, and sent part of his force under the command of Francis Cockrell across the river on April 4, to counter the Union movement.[18] Bowen informed Pemberton of Grant's advance, but the latter officer disregarded the information.[19] The Union Navy forces cooperating with Grant, which were commanded by David Dixon Porter and known as the Mississippi Squadron, were positioned north of Vicksburg, but there was a need for vessels to move south for operations near Port Hudson, Louisiana,[20][21] as well as to provide a stronger protecting force for the transports that would ferry troops in Grant's planned crossing of the Mississippi River.[21] Beginning two hours after nightfall on April 16, Porter ran several vessels past the batteries at Vicksburg, with the loss of only a transport and a barge.[22] Pemberton learned of the passing of the batteries, and began to develop a clearer picture of the true strategic situation.[23] Grand Gulf was reinforced by Brigadier General Martin E. Green's brigade; when this unit arrived Pemberton elevated the concentration at Grand Gulf to divisional status with Bowen in command. With the addition of a miscellaneous command of 800 men and a four-gun battery sent from Jackson, Mississippi, there were about 4,200 Confederate troops around Grand Gulf.[24]

After dark on April 22, more transports were run down the river past Vicksburg: one transport and several barges were lost, and all of the surviving transports were damaged.[25] Porter had been prepared to bombard Grand Gulf on April 23, with McClernand providing an infantry force to land there afterwards, but believing a false report of the Confederates having 12,000 men at Grand Gulf, called off the attack. McClernand observed Grand Gulf later that day, as did Grant the next day. Both determined the Confederate position was not as strong as had been reported. Union forces moved further downriver, and opened a base of operations at Hard Times Landing. By April 28, most of McClernand's men had been loaded onto transports in preparation for the river crossing.[26] Hoping to further distract the Confederates, Grant suggested another feint: this one to be made by Sherman up the Yazoo River.[27] Grant had some hesitations about such a feint, believing that reports of it might be misconstrued by the Union public as another Chickasaw Bayou-style defeat, but Sherman continued with the operation.[28] Sherman's movement resulted in the Battle of Snyder's Bluff, which saw Union warships and transports loaded with infantry move up the Yazoo River on April 29, and skirmish with Confederate forces during the next two days.[29] Overall, it was not particularly effective as a distraction.[30]

On April 28, Pemberton finally realized the importance of the Union buildup near Grand Gulf. He ordered Carter L. Stevenson to prepare a 5,000-man force to be sent to Grand Gulf at Bowen's discretion, but Stevenson still regarded the Union move south as a feint in preparation for an assault directly against Vicksburg.[31] Bowen lacked a cavalry force for scouting, as the cavalry at Grand Gulf had been sent elsewhere to chase down Grierson's Raid.[32] The work on the defenses at Grand Gulf had resulted in a much stronger position than had been there at the beginning of March.[33] Two forts were the strongpoints of the fortification. The stronger was known as Fort Cobun, and the other as Fort Wade.[34]

Fort Cobun was positioned on a 40-foot (12 m) tall bluff known as Point of Rock and had a parapet that was about 40 feet (12 m) in width. It mounted four cannons – two 32-pounder guns, an 8-inch Dahlgren gun, and a 30-pounder Parrott rifle – which were crewed by Battery A, 1st Louisiana Heavy Artillery. Fort Wade was located 0.75 miles (1 km) downriver, on a point 20 feet (6.1 m) above the level of the river and 0.25 miles (0.4 km) away from it. This fort mounted a 100-pounder Blakely rifle, another 8-inch Dahlgren piece, and two more 32-pounders. These pieces were worked by Wade's Missouri Battery and Guibor's Missouri Battery. In between the two forts were two rows of rifle pits and a covered passageway. The 3rd Missouri Infantry Regiment held this position. A secondary line of rifle pits to the rear on a ridge was defended by five smaller Parrott rifles and the 6th Missouri Infantry Regiment. Two more cannons and the 1st Confederate Battalion were positioned on a bluff to guard the mouth of the Big Black River, with some sharpshooters from Arkansas, Dawson's Missouri Battery, and a dismounted cavalry unit positioned further up the Big Black River.[35] Porter believed the Confederates were too well-prepared for an attack against Grand Gulf to be worthwhile, and instead suggested that the army march further south, accompanied by the navy's ironclad warships to cover the movement of its transports. Grant had the area north of Grand Gulf assessed for suitable crossing points, but none could be found. Grant believed that the position would not be difficult to take, so the assault against Grand Gulf would occur as planned.[36]

At 7:00 a.m. on April 29, seven Union Navy ironclads led by Porter moved down the river from Hard Times Landing towards the positions at Grand Gulf. Roughly 30,000 Union infantry were in the Hard Times Landing area, of whom about 10,000 were on transports. The men on the transports, which had pulled away from the landing and were sheltered behind a spit of land named Point Coffee, were intended to cross the river and occupy Grand Gulf once the Confederate batteries were subdued.[34][37] Porter instructed his ironclad commanders to take care to avoiding running aground in shallow water. Men from detachments of the 58th Ohio Infantry Regiment and the 29th Illinois Infantry Regiment were stationed on board the ironclads to serve as marines and, if necessary, as a landing force.[38] Of Porter's ironclads, USS Pittsburgh was in the lead, followed by USS Louisville, USS Carondelet, and USS Mound City. A second wave composed of USS Benton, USS Tuscumbia, and USS Lafayette followed. A total of 81 cannons were carried by these vessels, compared to 13 in the Confederate positions. The naval forces also had the advantage in size of artillery: the majority of the Confederate guns were 30-pounders or smaller, as opposed to the median Union piece being a 42-pounder. The ironclads first targeted Fort Cobun, then Pittsburgh, Louisville, Carondelet, and Mound City moved to focus on Fort Wade; the other three remained focused on Fort Cobun. After passing Fort Cobun, the ships turned so that their bows pointed upstream.[39] The lead Union vessels opened fire at about 7:50 a.m., and Fort Cobun responded about 25 minutes later.[40] Currents in the river caught some of the Union vessels, forcing them to spin in circles while the Confederate fired upon them.[41] After the shooting started, the 12th Arkansas Sharpshooter Battalion was moved forward from a reserve position into rifle pits near Fort Cobun.[42]

Although Pittsburgh, Louisville, Carondelet, and Mound City each carried 13 guns, the positioning of the guns on the ships allowed a maximum of four guns at a time to be aimed at the Confederate fortifications, reducing the Union firepower. By 10:00 a.m., Fort Wade was knocked out of action. One of the large cannons in Fort Wade had exploded, the fortifications themselves had been severely damaged, and Colonel William F. Wade, commanding the post, had been decapitated by Union fire.[43] The surviving cannons at Fort Wade had been buried under earth from the damaged fortifications.[41] The four Union vessels that had silenced Fort Wade moved upriver to face the remaining Confederate fort, which fought on.[37] A Confederate shot struck Benton, destroying the ship's wheel.[44] Confederate troops in the rifle pits also fired into the Union vessels.[41] Around 1:00 p.m., Fort Cobun decreased its fire due to ammunition shortages. However, Porter and Grant decided not to attempt an amphibious landing against Grand Gulf due to the strength of the Confederate position.[44] Despite the damage and the ammunition shortage, the Confederate batteries were still capable of repulsing a landing from the transports.[45] During the action, Porter had been struck in the back of his head with a shell fragment; the painful wound caused him to use his sword as a cane.[44] The naval vessels had fired more than 2,300 shots during the bombardment.[46]

Confederate fire had focused the heaviest on Benton, Pittsburgh, and Tuscumbia.[41] The former vessel had taken 47 hits, Pittsburgh 35, and the latter over 80.[47] Tuscumbia was poorly built (for instance, the spikes holding the ship's iron plating on were not secured with nuts), and had been badly damaged and knocked out of the fighting[48] by engine damage.[49] Historians Michael B. Ballard and Ed Bearss state that the Union forces lost 18 men killed and 57 wounded, for a total of 75,[44][50] with historians William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel, along with the historian Timothy B. Smith instead placing Union casualties at 24 killed and 56 wounded, including a few men from the army serving on the warships in a volunteer capacity.[46][51] According to Ballard and Bearss, Confederate losses totaled 22: three dead and 19 wounded;[44][52] historian Donald L. Miller and Shea and Winschel state that the Confederates lost 18 men, the difference being in wounded.[53][46]

After the naval bombardment was unable to neutralize the Confederate position at Grand Gulf, the troops on the transports returned to dry land.[46] Later that day, the Union transports and barges were run downriver, under the covering fire of Porter's gunboats.[a] The vessels were able to make it downriver safely; Porter lost one man in the affair and the Confederates lost none.[54] Some of the Union vessels had been hit, but suffered little damage.[56] Grant's infantrymen marched downriver to Disharoon's plantation, where the transports had been gathered after passing Grand Gulf.[53] Two crossing points below Grand Gulf were considered by Grant: Rodney, Mississippi, or Bruinsburg, Mississippi. Bowen expected Union troops to cross at the former. Discussions between Union scouts and an African American, who was possibly named Bob, yielded the information that a usable road ran from Bruinsburg to Port Gibson, so Bruinsburg was selected as the crossing point.[57]

Late on April 29, expecting a Union crossing of the river, Bowen sent a detachment from his command to hold Port Gibson, and the next day sent reinforcements that had arrived from Vicksburg to that place as well.[58] On the morning of April 30, the Bruinsburg crossing began. McClernand's corps and a portion of Major General James B. McPherson's corps led the way. By the next morning, 24,000 Union soldiers had crossed the river without opposition.[59] More of McPherson's men crossed on May 1.[60] Early that morning, the Confederates near Port Gibson encountered McClernand's advancing troops.[61] The ensuing Battle of Port Gibson was a hard-fought Union victory. Winning the battle protected the Union beachhead and rendered Grand Gulf indefensible. Pemberton ordered Bowen to abandon the position, and the Confederates spiked the cannons there early on May 3. Union forces occupied the position after the Confederates withdrew, and it became a supply point during the ongoing campaign.[62] Portions of Sherman's corps crossed the river at Grand Gulf late on May 6 and into May 7.[63]

Grant's men swung inland towards the railroad supplying Vicksburg. After the Battle of Raymond on May 12, Grant decided to swing east to disperse the Confederate reinforcements gathering at Jackson.[64] Jackson was taken on May 14,[65] and two days later, Pemberton's attempt to defeat Grant outside of Vicksburg was defeated in the climactic Battle of Champion Hill.[66] The Siege of Vicksburg began on May 18, and ended in a Confederate surrender on July 4. The capture of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy along the Mississippi River, and with the Union victory at the Siege of Port Hudson, gave the Union control of the river. Together with a Confederate defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, the fall of Vicksburg marked a turning point in the war.[67] The war ended in 1865 with a Confederate defeat.[68]

The site of the battle is preserved by Grand Gulf Military State Park. The park contains the land where forts Wade and Cobun were located, as well as an observation tower, a museum, and the remains of the old town of Grand Gulf.[69] The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1972.[70]

The Battle of Grand Gulf was fought on April 29, 1863, during the American Civil War. Union Army forces commanded by Ulysses S. Grant had failed several times to bypass or capture the Confederate-held city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grant decided to move his army south of Vicksburg, cross the Mississippi River, and then advance on the city. A Confederate division under John S. Bowen prepared defenses—Forts Wade and Cobun—at Grand Gulf, Mississippi. To clear the way for a Union crossing, seven ironclad warships from the Mississippi Squadron of the Union Navy commanded by Admiral David Dixon Porter bombarded the Confederate defenses at Grand Gulf. Union fire silenced Fort Wade, but the overall Confederate position held. Grant decided to cross the river elsewhere. The next day, Union forces crossed the river at Bruinsburg, Mississippi. The position at Grand Gulf was abandoned and became a Union supply point. The Grand Gulf battlefield is preserved in Grand Gulf Military State Park. (Full article...)

Arsenal Women Football Club have played 36 domestic league seasons and remained in the English top flight since joining in 1992. Based in London, they are the most successful club in English women's football. They formed in 1987, 100 years after the inception of the Arsenal men's team, and were an amateur side for over a decade until the team became semi-professional in 2002. During the 1990s and 2000s, under the management of Vic Akers and other successive coaches, Arsenal experienced an unprecedented period of success dominating English competitions with no sustained opposition. Domestically, Arsenal have won 15 league titles, 14 FA Cups, 17 league cups and five FA Community Shields; the club holds the most titles of each individual domestic competition. Arsenal are the only English side to have won Europe's continental women's football competition, the UEFA Women's Champions League (formally the UEFA Women's Cup), after the club defeated the Swedish side Umeå in the 2007 final. (Full list...)

Sphalerite is a sulfide mineral with the chemical formula (Zn,Fe)S. It is found in a variety of deposit types, and is found in association with galena, chalcopyrite, pyrite (and other sulfides), calcite, dolomite, quartz, rhodochrosite, and fluorite. Sphalerite is an important ore of zinc, with around 95 percent of all primary zinc extracted from its ore. Due to its variable trace-element content, sphalerite is also an important source of several other metals such as cadmium, gallium, germanium and indium. The zinc in sphalerite is also used to produce brass. This sample was extracted in Creede, Colorado, and features black tetrahedral crystals of sphalerite up to 8 mm (0.31 in) in size, with minor chalcopyrite and calcite, in a 4.5 cm × 3.0 cm × 2.0 cm (1.77 in × 1.18 in × 0.79 in) matrix. This photograph was focus-stacked from 125 separate images.

Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects:

This Wikipedia is written in English. Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.

English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England.[4][5][6] The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain.

English 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 of America.[7] English is the third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish;[8] it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers.

English is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as in 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 or United Kingdom).[9] It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become the de facto lingua franca language of diplomacy, science, technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment and the internet.[10] English accounts for at least 70% of total speakers of the Germanic language branch, and as of 2005[update], it was estimated that there were over two billion speakers worldwide.[11]

Old English emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse, a North Germanic language.[12][13][14] Then, Middle English borrowed words extensively from French dialects, which make up about 28% of Modern English vocabulary, and from Latin, which also provides about 28%.[15] Thus, although most of its total vocabulary now comes from Romance languages, its grammar, phonology, and most commonly-used words keep it genealogically classified under the Germanic branch. English exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and then is 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.[16] Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into 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 (Ingvaeonic) languages, though this grouping remains debated.[13] Old English evolved into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English.[17] Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other Anglic languages, including Scots[18] and the extinct Fingallian dialect and Yola language of Ireland.[19]

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, differing in vocabulary, syntax, and phonology, although some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages.[20]

Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated, 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 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.[21][22]

English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German, and Swedish.[23] These shared innovations show that 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 the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic (see Phonological history of Old English § Palatalization).[24]

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 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.[25][26]

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 the introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare.[27][28] The printing press greatly standardised English spelling,[citation needed] 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 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.[4] Its modern grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern with 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.[29] 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 is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon (c. 550–1066). 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.[30] From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as 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.[31][32][33] 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 the Angles.[34]

Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects (Mercian and Northumbrian) and the Saxon dialects (Kentish and West Saxon).[35] Through 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.[36] The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon's Hymn, is written in Northumbrian.[37] Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from the early period of Old English were written using a runic script.[38] 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⟩.[38][39]

Old English is essentially 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.[40][41][42] Its closest relative 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,[43] although probably the northern dialects of Old English were more similar to Old Norse than 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.[43]

The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings (nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and 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 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 reincorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, English spread extensively throughout the region.

An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today is the third person pronoun group beginning with th- (they, them, their) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h- (hie, him, hera).[45] 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 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 the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1200 to 1450.

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. The Norman French spoken by the elite in England eventually developed into the Anglo-Norman language.[25] 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.[14] 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 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,[47] and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible.[48]

In Wycliff'e Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis.[49] 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 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.[50]

The next period in 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, 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.[51][52]

English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during 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.[53] Literature from 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 the distinct characteristics of Early Modern English.[54]

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."[44] 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 the introduction of loanwords from French (ayre) and word replacements (bird originally meaning "nestling" had replaced OE fugol).[44]

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.[27][4] English 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.[55][56][57] In the 20th century 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[58] and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster.[59][60] In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been.[61]

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 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 the prestige varieties among the middle classes.[62]

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.[62] 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 was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory.[63] 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 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.[64][65][66]

As of 2016[update], 400 million people spoke English as their first language, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language.[67] English is the largest language by number of speakers. English is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans.[68]

The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle"[69] 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 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.[69] In his model,

Kachru based his model on 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.[70]

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 a significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million),[71] the United Kingdom (60 million),[72][73][74] Canada (19 million),[75] Australia (at least 17 million),[76] South Africa (4.8 million),[77] Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million).[78] 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.[79] The inner-circle countries provide the base from which English spreads to other countries in the world.[70]

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.[9] Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[80] In Kachru's three-circles model, the "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines,[81] Jamaica,[82] India, Pakistan, Singapore,[83] Malaysia and Nigeria[84][85] 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.[86]

Those countries have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to 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.[79] Most of those varieties of English include words little used by native speakers of English in the inner-circle countries,[79] 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.[79]

In the three-circles model, countries such as Poland, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries where English is taught as a foreign language, make up the "expanding circle".[87] 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.[86] 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,[88] and thus English 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.[89]

Many users of English in 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.[90] Non-native varieties of English are widely used for international communication, and speakers of one such variety often encounter features of other varieties.[91] Very often today a conversation in English anywhere in 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.[92]

Pie chart showing the percentage of native English speakers living in "inner circle" English-speaking countries. Native speakers are now substantially outnumbered worldwide by second-language speakers of English (not counted in this chart).

English is a pluricentric language, which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language.[93][94][95][96] 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,[97] but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English. The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by the consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation.[98]

American listeners generally 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.[99] 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.[100]

The settlement history of 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.[101] 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,[71][102] and English has been given official or co-official status by 30 of the 50 state governments, as well as all five territorial governments of the US, though there has never been an official language at the federal level.[103][104]

English has ceased to be an "English language" in the sense of belonging only to people who are ethnically English.[107][108] Use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication. Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons.[109] Many speakers of English in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries.[110]

As decolonisation proceeded throughout 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.[56][57][111] 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.[112] English 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.[113] 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.[114][115] 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 the world,[116] 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.[117]

Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[59][118] is also regarded as the first world language.[119][120] English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy.[120] English is, by international treaty, the basis for the required controlled natural languages[121] Seaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring[122] and aviation.[123] English used to have parity with French and German in scientific research, but now it dominates that field.[124] It achieved parity with French as a language of diplomacy at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919.[125] By the time of the foundation of the United Nations at the end of World War II, English had become pre-eminent[126] and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations.[127] It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.[128] 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 the European Free Trade Association, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),[60] 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 the Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations.[129]

Although in most countries English is not an official language, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language.[59][60] 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 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.[130]

A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine[131] 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.[132]

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 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.[133] 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 the vocabularies of other languages. This influence of English has led to concerns about language death,[134] and to claims of linguistic imperialism,[135] 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.[136]

Though some mention a possibility of divergence of English dialects into mutually unintelligible languages, most think a more likely outcome is that English will continue to function as a koineised language, in which the standard form unifies speakers from around the world.[137] English is used as the language for wider communication in countries around the world.[138] Thus English has grown in worldwide use much more than any constructed language proposed as an international auxiliary language, including Esperanto.[139][140]

The phonetics and phonology of the English language differ from one dialect to another, usually without interfering with mutual communication. Phonological variation affects the inventory of phonemes (i.e. speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes.[141] This overview mainly describes the standard pronunciations of the United Kingdom and the United States: Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA). (See § Dialects, accents and varieties, below.)

The phonetic symbols used below are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).[142][143][144]

Most English dialects share the same 24 consonant phonemes. The consonant inventory shown below is valid for California English,[145] and for RP.[146]

* The sound /ŋ/ can only occur as a coda.

** Conventionally transcribed /r/

In the table, when obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives) appear in pairs, such as /p b/, /tʃ dʒ/, and /s z/, the first is fortis (strong) and the second is lenis (weak). Fortis obstruents, such as /p tʃ s/ are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as /b dʒ z/, and are always voiceless. Lenis consonants are partly voiced at the beginning and end of utterances, and fully voiced between vowels. Fortis stops such as /p/ have additional articulatory or acoustic features in most dialects: they are aspirated [pʰ] when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and often unreleased [p̚] or pre-glottalised [ʔp] at the end of a syllable. In a single-syllable word, a vowel before a fortis stop is shortened: thus nip has a noticeably shorter vowel (phonetically, but not phonemically) than nib [nɪˑb̥] (see below).[147]

In RP, the lateral approximant /l/, has two main allophones (pronunciation variants): the clear or plain [l], as in light, and the dark or velarised [ɫ], as in full.[148] GA has dark l in most cases.[149]

All sonorants (liquids /l, r/ and nasals /m, n, ŋ/) devoice when following a voiceless obstruent, and they are syllabic when following a consonant at the end of a word.[150]

The pronunciation of vowels varies a great deal between dialects and is one of the most detectable aspects of a speaker's accent. The table below lists the vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA), with examples of words in which they occur from lexical sets compiled by linguists. The vowels are represented with symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet; those given for RP are standard in British dictionaries and other publications.[151]

In RP, vowel length is phonemic; long vowels are marked with a triangular colon ⟨ː⟩ in the table above, such as the vowel of need [niːd] as opposed to bid [bɪd]. In GA, vowel length is non-distinctive.

In both RP and GA, vowels are phonetically shortened before fortis consonants in the same syllable, like /t tʃ f/, but not before lenis consonants like /d dʒ v/ or in open syllables: thus, the vowels of rich [rɪtʃ], neat [nit], and safe [seɪ̯f] are noticeably shorter than the vowels of ridge [rɪˑdʒ], need [niˑd], and save [seˑɪ̯v], and the vowel of light [laɪ̯t] is shorter than that of lie [laˑɪ̯]. Because lenis consonants are frequently voiceless at the end of a syllable, vowel length is an important cue as to whether the following consonant is lenis or fortis.[152]

The vowel /ə/ only occurs in unstressed syllables and is more open in quality in stem-final positions.[153][154] Some dialects do not contrast /ɪ/ and /ə/ in unstressed positions, such that rabbit and abbot rhyme and Lenin and Lennon are homophonous, a dialectal feature called the weak vowel merger.[155] GA /ɜr/ and /ər/ are realised as an r-coloured vowel [ɚ], as in further [ˈfɚðɚ] (phonemically /ˈfɜrðər/), which in RP is realised as [ˈfəːðə] (phonemically /ˈfɜːðə/).[156]

An English syllable includes a syllable nucleus consisting of a vowel sound. Syllable onset and coda (start and end) are optional. A syllable can start with up to three consonant sounds, as in sprint /sprɪnt/, and end with up to five, as in (for some dialects) angsts /aŋksts/. This gives an English syllable the following structure, (CCC)V(CCCCC), where C represents a consonant and V a vowel; the word strengths /strɛŋkθs/ is thus close to the most complex syllable possible in English. The consonants that may appear together in onsets or codas are restricted, as is the order in which they may appear. Onsets can only have four types of consonant clusters: a stop and approximant, as in play; a voiceless fricative and approximant, as in fly or sly; s and a voiceless stop, as in stay; and s, a voiceless stop, and an approximant, as in string.[157] Clusters of nasal and stop are only allowed in codas. Clusters of obstruents always agree in voicing, and clusters of sibilants and of plosives with the same point of articulation are prohibited. Several consonants have limited distributions: /h/ can only occur in syllable-initial position, and /ŋ/ only in syllable-final position.[158]

Stress plays an important role in English. Certain syllables are stressed, while others are unstressed. Stress is a combination of duration, intensity, vowel quality, and sometimes changes in pitch. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer and louder than unstressed syllables, and vowels in unstressed syllables are frequently reduced while vowels in stressed syllables are not.[159] Some words, primarily short function words but also some modal verbs such as can, have weak and strong forms depending on whether they occur in stressed or non-stressed position within a sentence.

Stress in English is phonemic, and some pairs of words are distinguished by stress. For instance, the word contract is stressed on the first syllable (/ˈkɒntrækt/ KON-trakt) when used as a noun, but on the last syllable (/kənˈtrækt/ kən-TRAKT) for most meanings (for example, "reduce in size") when used as a verb.[160][161][162] Here stress is connected to vowel reduction: in the noun "contract" the first syllable is stressed and has the unreduced vowel /ɒ/, but in the verb "contract" the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to /ə/. Stress is also used to distinguish between words and phrases, so that a compound word receives a single stress unit, but the corresponding phrase has two: e.g. a burnout (/ˈbɜːrnaʊt/) versus to burn out (/ˈbɜːrn ˈaʊt/), and a hotdog (/ˈhɒtdɒɡ/) versus a hot dog (/ˈhɒt ˈdɒɡ/).[163]

In terms of rhythm, English is generally described as a stress-timed language, meaning that the amount of time between stressed syllables tends to be equal.[164] Stressed syllables are pronounced longer, but unstressed syllables (syllables between stresses) are shortened. Vowels in unstressed syllables are shortened as well, and vowel shortening causes changes in vowel quality: vowel reduction.[165]

Varieties of English vary the most in pronunciation of vowels. The best-known national varieties used as standards for education in non-English-speaking countries are British (BrE) and American (AmE). Countries such as Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa have their own standard varieties which are less often used as standards for education internationally. Some differences between the various dialects are shown in the table "Varieties of Standard English and their features".[166]

English has undergone many historical sound changes, some of them affecting all varieties, and others affecting only a few. Most standard varieties are affected by the Great Vowel Shift, which changed the pronunciation of long vowels, but a few dialects have slightly different results. In North America, a number of chain shifts such as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Canadian Shift have produced very different vowel landscapes in some regional accents.[167]

Some dialects have fewer or more consonant phonemes and phones than the standard varieties. Some conservative varieties like Scottish English have a voiceless [ʍ] sound in whine that contrasts with the voiced [w] in wine, but most other dialects pronounce both words with voiced [w], a dialect feature called wine–whine merger. The voiceless velar fricative sound /x/ is found in Scottish English, which distinguishes loch /lɔx/ from lock /lɔk/. Accents like Cockney with "h-dropping" lack the glottal fricative /h/, and dialects with th-stopping and th-fronting like African-American Vernacular and Estuary English do not have the dental fricatives /θ, ð/, but replace them with dental or alveolar stops /t, d/ or labiodental fricatives /f, v/.[168][169] Other changes affecting the phonology of local varieties are processes such as yod-dropping, yod-coalescence, and reduction of consonant clusters.[170][page needed]

General American and Received Pronunciation vary in their pronunciation of historical /r/ after a vowel at the end of a syllable (in the syllable coda). GA is a rhotic dialect, meaning that it pronounces /r/ at the end of a syllable, but RP is non-rhotic, meaning that it loses /r/ in that position. English dialects are classified as rhotic or non-rhotic depending on whether they elide /r/ like RP or keep it like GA.[171]

There is complex dialectal variation in words with the open front and open back vowels /æ ɑː ɒ ɔː/. These four vowels are only distinguished in RP, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In GA, these vowels merge to three /æ ɑ ɔ/,[172] and in Canadian English, they merge to two /æ ɑ/.[173] In addition, the words that have each vowel vary by dialect. The table "Dialects and open vowels" shows this variation with lexical sets in which these sounds occur.

As is typical of an Indo-European language, English follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Unlike other Indo-European languages though, English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system in favour of analytic constructions. Only the personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class. English distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, determiners (including articles), prepositions, and conjunctions. Some analyses add pronouns as a class separate from nouns, and subdivide conjunctions into subordinators and coordinators, and add the class of interjections.[174] English also has a rich set of auxiliary verbs, such as have and do, expressing the categories of mood and aspect. Questions are marked by do-support, wh-movement (fronting of question words beginning with wh-) and word order inversion with some verbs.[175]

Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in English, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs speak/spoke and foot/feet) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as love/loved, hand/hands).[176] Vestiges of the case and gender system are found in the pronoun system (he/him, who/whom) and in the inflection of the copula verb to be.[176]

The seven word-classes are exemplified in this sample sentence:[177]

English nouns are only inflected for number and possession. New nouns can be formed through derivation or compounding. They are semantically divided into proper nouns (names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically into count nouns and mass nouns.[178]

Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the plural suffix -s, but a few nouns have irregular plural forms. Mass nouns can only be pluralised through the use of a count noun classifier, e.g. one loaf of bread, two loaves of bread.[179]

Possession can be expressed either by the possessive enclitic -s (also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the preposition of. Historically the -s possessive has been used for animate nouns, whereas the of possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -s also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from a singular noun with an apostrophe. If the noun is plural formed with -s the apostrophe follows the -s.[175]

Nouns can form noun phrases (NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives.[180] Noun phrases can be short, such as the man, composed only of a determiner and a noun. They can also include modifiers such as adjectives (e.g. red, tall, all) and specifiers such as determiners (e.g. the, that). But they can also tie together several nouns into a single long NP, using conjunctions such as and, or prepositions such as with, e.g. the tall man with the long red trousers and his skinny wife with the spectacles (this NP uses conjunctions, prepositions, specifiers, and modifiers). Regardless of length, an NP functions as a syntactic unit.[175] For example, the possessive enclitic can, in cases which do not lead to ambiguity, follow the entire noun phrase, as in The President of India's wife, where the enclitic follows India and not President.

The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms of definiteness, where the marks a definite noun and a or an an indefinite one. A definite noun is assumed by the speaker to be already known by the interlocutor, whereas an indefinite noun is not specified as being previously known. Quantifiers, which include one, many, some and all, are used to specify the noun in terms of quantity or number. The noun must agree with the number of the determiner, e.g. one man (sg.) but all men (pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.[181]