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  2. English orthography - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography

    English had also borrowed large numbers of words from French, and kept their French spellings. The spelling of Middle English is very irregular and inconsistent, with the same word being spelled in different ways, sometimes even in the same sentence. However, these were generally much better guides to the then-pronunciation than modern English ...

  3. American and British English spelling differences - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British...

    Today's British English spellings mostly follow Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), while many American English spellings follow Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language ("ADEL", "Webster's Dictionary", 1828). [2] Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic.

  4. English usage controversies - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_usage_controversies

    In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, generational, or other), difference between the social norms of spoken ...

  5. English-language spelling reform - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling...

    Such spelling reform seeks to change English orthography so that it is more consistent, matches pronunciation better, and follows the alphabetic principle. [1] Common motives for spelling reform include making learning quicker, making learning cheaper, and making English more useful as an international auxiliary language .

  6. Foreign-language influences in English - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-language...

    The article's lead section may need to be rewritten.The reason given is: the current lead (i) contradicts the content of the Word origins section and a prominent figure legend, (ii) contains statements only appearing in the lead (violating WP:LEAD), and (iii) presents statements unsupported by citation (anywhere, violating WP:VERIFY), and thus, (iv) appears to violate WP:ORIGINAL RESEARCH.

  7. Linguistic purism in English - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English

    English words gave way to borrowings from Anglo-Norman following the Norman Conquest as English lost ground as a language of prestige. Anglo-Norman was used in schools and dominated literature, nobility and higher life, leading a wealth of French loanwords to enter English over the course of several centuries—English only returned to courts of law in 1362, and to government in the following ...

  8. Comparison of American and British English - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and...

    The English language was introduced to the Americas by the arrival of the British, beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.The language also spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and settlement and the spread of the former British Empire, which, by 1921, included 470–570 million people, about a quarter of the world's population.

  9. Negative evidence in language acquisition - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_evidence_in...

    English does not allow topic-drop, as evidenced by the insertion of expletive subjects in sentences such as There is rain. Yang notes that in English child-directed speech, children very rarely hear expletive subjects. Yang asserts that this leads English-acquiring children to momentarily conclude that English is a topic-drop language.