Talk:English

Engels
The Engels knows many more translations for the word "English". You can copy all these translations across as they use messages in stead of text. Most of the messages have the correct content. :) Thanks Timwi, 20:08, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

the English
Should "the English" be moved to the English? Kipmaster 10:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I don’t think so. Someone interested in "the English" would look up English. —Stephen 11:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, but we have to indicate somehow that a determiner, either "the" or a demonstrative adjective (if I'm not mistaken), is required. Putting "the" in parenthesis in the definition doesn't cut it for me. It's not obvious to me that that means anything at all. Davilla 17:43, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Davilla, it was me that changed it. The problem is that (as the second example shows), it doesn't always take the definite article.  In fact even the first example sounds a little awkward to me, I would probably be more likely to say The Scottish and English have a history of....  But at any rate I think to separate it with a different heading makes it look like a separate word.  I've added a usage-note-style thing on the def line, how does that work for you?  Widsith 17:47, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


 * First of all the nouns being all together is great. I didn't like the style of your usage note and rather than revert I've modified the entry as I would otherwise have it, but I promise to stop playing with the format now. And what about the multiple depths? Is there no better solution? Davilla 18:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I just made this edit, but now I have second thoughts. I think that "What's the English for..." uses grammatical ellipsis of "term", "phrase" or "expression", i.e. that it's short for "What's the English term for...". However, I notice that our own entry for ellipsis as of yet lacks the grammatical sense of the term (which I'll add in a minute) and "English" shows "the English-language term or expression for something" as a subsense of "with reference to the language", implying that there is no ellipsis in such phrases.

I will open the issue for discussion WT:TR. Rod (A. Smith) 01:37, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Pronounciation
Hey, where is this pronounced "in-glish" (with an /ɪ/)? Everywhere I've heard it pronounced - including the audio files on this very page - it's been pronounced "een-glish" (with an /i/). And yet two of the pronounciation representations given here only have the "in-glish" pronounciation! What's up with that? 121.98.178.89 04:11, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Please look more carefully; both pronunciations are given. --EncycloPetey 16:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I can see that- what I want to know is where the /ɪ/ pronounciation is ever used. 121.98.178.89 18:03, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Kreisler
Chrysler is an English form of Kreisler. RCNesland (talk) 17:33, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Archived feedback: April–May 2018
Why is there a photo of P G Wodehouse under the Wiktionary for English? I enjoy his writing, but he is hardly a major figure in English literature, and there is a cloud over his behavior in WWII. Chaucer and Shakespeare are too predictable, but Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, or even Rudyard Kipling would be better choices.
 * I wouldn't have a photo at at all. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 11:58, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer a picture of an English dictionary. --Cien pies 6 (talk) 09:58, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I've removed the picture. --Per utramque cavernam 08:32, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

The sense “ability to employ the English language…”
The English entry for this word has the following definition: 3. Ability to employ the English language correctly or idiomatically. My coworkers have pretty good English for non-native speakers. Should we really have this definition? I don’t really feel this is a separate sense, but rather a use of the sense “the English language”. There is an idiom to have [LANGUAGE], but this can be any language, and the idiom isn’t specific to the word English. Rather, “to have the ability to speak and/or understand (a language)” should be listed among the senses of. – Krun (talk) 17:39, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Moved to Tea_room/2019/September

/ˈɪŋlɪʃ/
Englisc still shows in its pronunciation the sound /g/, so how come it is apparently not pronounced by some AmE speakers? --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:17, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Wardour Street
[https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Wardour+Street 2. (Linguistics) Wardour Street English affectedly archaic speech or writing] --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:28, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

English-educated
OED: ENGLISH adj. Special uses 1b shows uses of English ‘With participial adjectives’, such as English-born and English-educated. --Backinstadiums (talk) 08:46, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Quotation-sense mismatch
The Orwell quote looks like it belongs under the adjective, not the noun. 98.170.164.88 20:20, 2 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Heh, I just came to this entry and noticed this again, and was going to write something here... apparently I had already noted this months ago. Does anyone object to moving the quote? 98.170.164.88 20:50, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅I’ve moved the quotation. --Lambiam 17:29, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Lambiam: Not to be a pedant, but isn't adjective sense 3 more fitting? Actually, nevermind, I guess sense 1 works too since you could say the "working class of England". 98.170.164.88 19:20, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Actually, for sense 3 it seems one should be able to substitute a postpositive “who is/was/are/were English”, so “an English tourist” is “a tourist who is English”, “English painters” are “painters who are English”, and so on. But “the English working class” is not “the working class that are English”. --Lambiam 00:34, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Broken English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_English JMGN (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * broken sense 3.3, not a proper noun. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:42, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * broken heart JMGN (talk) 13:36, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Broken+English JMGN (talk) 13:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Proto-English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English#Proto-English JMGN (talk) 16:12, 9 September 2023 (UTC)