Misplaced Pages

#943056

154-536: In the English language , nigger is a racial slur directed at black people . Starting in the 1990s, references to nigger have been increasingly replaced by the euphemistic contraction " the N-word " , notably in cases where nigger is mentioned but not directly used . In an instance of linguistic reappropriation , the term nigger is also used casually and fraternally among African Americans, most commonly in

308-505: A derogatory connotation from the mid-18th century onward, and "degenerated into an overt slur" by the middle of the 19th century. Some authors still used the term in a neutral sense up until the later part of the 20th century, at which point the use of nigger became increasingly controversial regardless of its context or intent. Because the word nigger has historically "wreaked symbolic violence, often accompanied by physical violence", it began to disappear from general popular culture from

462-553: 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

616-644: 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

770-437: A British review and American reviewers understood the change as reflecting American "refinement" and "prudery." A style guide to British English usage, H.W. Fowler 's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage , states in the first edition (1926) that applying the word nigger to "others than full or partial negroes" is "felt as an insult by the person described, & betrays in the speaker, if not deliberate insolence, at least

924-553: A descriptive term (lit. 'black person's head'). It also is or was a colloquial technical term in industry, mining, and seafaring. Nigger as "defect" (a hidden problem), derives from " nigger in the woodpile ", a US slave-era phrase denoting escaped slaves hiding in train-transported woodpiles. In the 1840s, the Morning Chronicle newspaper report series London Labour and the London Poor , by Henry Mayhew , records

1078-658: 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

1232-531: A documentary, No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968), about the front-line lot of the U.S. Army black soldier in combat in Vietnam. An Ali biographer reports that, when interviewed by Robert Lipsyte in 1966, the boxer actually said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." On February 28, 2007, the New York City Council symbolically banned the use of the word nigger ; however, there

1386-490: 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

1540-527: A job elsewhere in the mayor's government. 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 is the most spoken language in

1694-620: A language compounded of the tongues of both countries". Herodotus also refers to "the Aethiopians of Asia" (or "Ethiopians of the East"), who are said to be straight-haired, whereas the Aethiopians from Libya (Africa) have "the woolliest hair of all men". Herodotus wrote with regard to the inhabitants of Libya: "One thing I can add about this far country [Libya]: so far as one knows, it is inhabited by four races, and four only, of which two are indigenous and two not. The indigenous peoples are

SECTION 10

#1732773115944

1848-523: A major public figure came during the racially contentious O. J. Simpson murder case in 1995. Key prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman , of the Los Angeles Police Department —who denied using racist language on duty—impeached himself with his prolific use of nigger in tape recordings about his police work. Co-prosecutor Christopher Darden refused to say the actual word, calling it "the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in

2002-414: A man calls me a nigger, it's his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again." By the late 1960s, the social change brought about by the civil rights movement had legitimized the racial identity word black as mainstream American English usage to denote black-skinned Americans of African ancestry. President Thomas Jefferson had used this word of his slaves in his Notes on

2156-520: 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

2310-695: 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,

2464-510: A professor at Princeton decided to stop teaching a course on hate speech after students protested his utterance of "nigger" and a professor at DePaul had his law course cancelled after 80% of the enrolled students transferred out. Instead of pursuing disciplinary action, a student at the College of the Desert challenged his professor in a viral class presentation which argued that her use of

2618-684: 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

2772-407: 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

2926-404: A self-description)". At the trial of O. J. Simpson , prosecutor Christopher Darden referred to it as "filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language". Intra-group usage has been criticized by some contemporary Black American authors, a group of them (the eradicationists ) calling for the total abandonment of its usage (even under the variant nigga ), which they see as contributing to

3080-512: A show on Black Entertainment Television , a cable network aimed at a Black audience, described the word nigger as a " term of endearment ". "In the African American community, the word nigga. (not nigger ) brings out feelings of pride." (Davis   1). Here the word evokes a sense of community and oneness among Black people. Many teens I interviewed felt the word had no power when used amongst friends, but when used among white people

3234-758: 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

SECTION 20

#1732773115944

3388-438: A spokesman for Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, said "Two of the primary factors were the aggressive approach the victim took toward the defendant and everyone working with the defendant, and that the victim repeatedly used possibly the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language." Black listeners often react to the term differently, depending on whether it is used by white speakers or by black speakers. In

3542-475: A time when the use of the N-word is acceptable. For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script). There is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context. The use of the phrase 'N-word' was created as a euphemism, and the norm, with the intention of providing an acceptable replacement and moving people away from using

3696-431: A trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!" It was not used as a term exclusively for blacks among mountain men during this period, as Indians, Mexicans, and Frenchmen and Anglos alike could be a "niggur". "The noun slipped back and forth from derogatory to endearing." By 1859 the term was clearly used to offend, in an attack on abolitionist John Brown . The term " colored " or "negro" became a respectful alternative. In 1851,

3850-447: 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

4004-624: A very arrogant inhumanity"; but the second edition (1965) states "N. has been described as 'the term that carries with it all the obloquy and contempt and rejection which whites have inflicted on blacks'". The quoted formula goes back to the writings of the American journalist Harold R. Isaacs , who used it in several writings between 1963 and 1975. Black characters in Nella Larsen 's 1929 novel Passing view its use as offensive; one says "I'm really not such an idiot that I don't realize that if

4158-712: A work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop , bearing witnes". According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later, in 1775. In the colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony . Later American English spellings, neger and neggar , prevailed in New York under

4312-563: 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

4466-538: Is a compound derived of two Greek words: αἴθω , aíthō , 'I burn' + ὤψ , ṓps , 'face'. According to the Perseus Project , this designation properly translates in noun form as burnt-face and in adjectival form as red-brown . As such, it was used as a vague term for darker skinned populations than the Greeks since the time of Homer . The term was applied to such peoples within

4620-435: Is all of the inhabited land found to the south of Egypt, beginning at Elephantine. He describes a capital at Meroë , adding that the only deities worshipped there were Zeus ( Amun ) and Dionysus ( Osiris ). He relates that in the reign of Pharaoh Psamtik I ( c.  650 BCE ), many Egyptian soldiers deserted their country and settled amidst the Aethiopians. Herodotus also remarked on shared cultural practices between

4774-466: 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

Nigger - Misplaced Pages Continue

4928-610: 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

5082-407: 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

5236-486: 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

5390-491: Is drifting down the Mississippi River on a raft with an adult escaped slave, Jim. The word "nigger" is used (mostly about Jim) over 200 times. Twain's advocates note that the novel is composed in then-contemporary vernacular usage, not racist stereotype, because Jim, the black man, is a sympathetic character. In 2011, a new edition published by NewSouth Books replaced the word nigger with slave and also removed

5544-488: Is like to not be entitled to "do anything they please, anywhere". A concern often raised is whether frequent exposure will inevitably lead to a dilution of the extremely negative perception of the word among the majority of non-black Americans who currently consider its use unacceptable and shocking. In several English-speaking countries, " Niggerhead " or "nigger head" was used as a name for many sorts of things, including commercial products , places , plants and animals , as

5698-526: Is no penalty for using it. This formal resolution also requests excluding from Grammy Award consideration every song whose lyrics contain the word; however, Ron Roecker, vice president of communication for the Recording Academy, doubted it will have any effect on actual nominations. The word can be invoked politically for effect. When Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick came under intense scrutiny for his conduct in 2008, he deviated from an address to

5852-437: Is not necessarily derogatory and is often used to mean homie or friend . Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated, although it has established a foothold amongst younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger . Usage of nigga by mixed-race individuals is still largely considered taboo, albeit not as inflammatory as nigger . As of 2001, trends indicated that usage of

6006-536: 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 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

6160-629: Is postponed, as Zeus and other gods are absent, visiting the land of the Aethiopians. And in Book 1 of the Odyssey, Athena convinces Zeus to let Odysseus finally return home only because Poseidon is away in Aithiopia and unable to object. Hesiod ( c.  8th century BC ) speaks of Memnon as the "King of the Aethiopians." In The Catalogues of Women , he stated that the Egyptian king Epaphus

6314-424: 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

Nigger - Misplaced Pages Continue

6468-535: Is simply the most common term used to refer to any male, of any race or ethnicity. Increasingly, the term has been applied to any person, male or female. "Where y'all niggas goin?" is said with no self-consciousness or animosity to a group of women, for the routine purpose of obtaining information. The point: nigga is evaluatively neutral in terms of its inherent meaning; it may express positive, neutral, or negative attitudes; Kevin Cato, meanwhile, observes: For instance,

6622-517: 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

6776-777: 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

6930-978: 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

7084-600: 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

7238-485: 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

7392-622: The Boston Vigilance Committee , an abolitionist organization , posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity . Writing in 1904, journalist Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word nigger , emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored" or "negro". By the turn of the century, "colored" had become sufficiently mainstream that it

7546-546: 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

7700-552: 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

7854-595: The Indus River , Indian Ocean , and Red Sea , circumnavigating the Arabian Peninsula . He mentioned "Aethiopians", though his writings on them have not survived. Hecataeus of Miletus ( c.  500 BC ) is also said to have written a book about 'Aethiopia,' but his writing is now known only through quotations from later authors. He stated that 'Aethiopia' was located to the east of the Nile , as far as

SECTION 50

#1732773115944

8008-600: The Indus Valley and that there were no people in the region by that name prior to their arrival. Physiognomonics , a Greek treatise traditionally attributed to Aristotle , but now of disputed ownership made an observation on the physical nature of the Egyptians and Ethiopians with the view that "Those who are too black are cowards, like for the instance, the Egyptians and Ethopians" The Greek travelogue from

8162-504: The Maghreb and the desert to the south. Homer ( c.  8th century BC ) is the first to mention "Aethiopians" ( Αἰθίοπες , Αἰθιοπῆες ), writing that they are to be found at the east and west extremities of the world, divided by the sea into "eastern" (at the sunrise) and "western" (at the sunset). In Book 1 of the Iliad , Thetis visits Olympus to meet Zeus , but the meeting

8316-713: The Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston used this meaning to degrade the people considered to be of lower status, whether white or black. Of course, no one considered himself a nigger. It was always something you called someone who could be considered anything less than you. I soon found out there were a few black families living in Old Colony. They'd lived there for years and everyone said that they were okay, that they weren't niggers but just black. It felt good to all of us to not be as bad as

8470-585: The Old Norse word nig (stingy) and the Middle English word nigon . In the US, this word has been misinterpreted as related to nigger and taken as offensive. In January 1999, David Howard, a white Washington, D.C., city employee, was compelled to resign after using niggardly —in a financial context—while speaking with black colleagues, who took umbrage. After reviewing the misunderstanding, Mayor Anthony A. Williams offered to reinstate Howard to his former position. Howard refused reinstatement but took

8624-668: 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

8778-518: 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

8932-464: The vogue word Afro-American , an early-1970s popular usage. Some Black Americans continue to use the word nigger , often spelled as nigga and niggah , without irony, either to neutralize the word's impact or as a sign of solidarity. Surveys from 2006 showed that the American public widely perceived usage of the term to be wrong or unacceptable, but that nearly half of whites and two-thirds of blacks knew someone personally who referred to blacks by

9086-627: The "construction of an identity founded on self-hate". In wider society, the inclusion of the word nigger in classic works of literature (as in Mark Twain 's 1884 book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ) and in more recent cultural productions (such as Quentin Tarantino 's 1994 film Pulp Fiction and 2012 film Django Unchained ) has sparked controversy and ongoing debate. The word nigger has also been historically used to designate "any person considered to be of low social status" (as in

9240-564: 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

9394-492: The "second Ethiopia" because of its 'black-skinned' population. Stephanus of Byzantium , from the 6th-century AD, had written that "Ethiopia was the first established country on earth; and the Ethiopians were the first to set up the worship of the gods and to establish laws." Manilius, a Roman poet wrote in his Astronomicon "The Ethiopians stain the world and depict a race of men steeped in darkness; less sun-burnt are

SECTION 60

#1732773115944

9548-527: The 1st-century AD that "The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically". Also the Roman Christian historian and theologian Saint Jerome along with Sophronius referred to Colchis as

9702-638: The 1st-century AD, known as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea , initially describes the littoral , based on its author's intimate knowledge of the area. However, the Periplus does not mention any dark-skinned "Ethiopians" among the area's inhabitants. They only later appear in Ptolemy 's Geographia in a region far south, around the " Bantu nucleus" of northern Mozambique . Arrian , wrote in

9856-617: 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

10010-399: The Aethiopians "who dwelt in that part of Libya (Africa) which borders upon the southern sea." They found a strong and healthy people. Although Cambyses then campaigned toward their country, by not preparing enough provisions for the long march, his army completely failed and returned quickly. In Book 3, Herodotus defines "Aethiopia" as the farthest region of "Libya" (i.e. Africa): Where

10164-608: 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

10318-470: 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

10472-802: The Dutch and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name Begraafplaats van de Neger (Cemetery of the Negro). An early occurrence of neger in American English dates from 1625 in Rhode Island . Lexicographer Noah Webster suggested the neger spelling in place of negro in his 1806 dictionary. During

10626-434: 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

10780-575: The Egyptians and Ethiopians: For it is plain to see that Colchians are Egyptians; and this that I say I myself noted before I heard it from others. When I began to think on this matter, I inquired of both peoples; and the Colchians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians remembered the Colchians; the Egyptians said that they held the Colchians to be part of Sesostris' army. I myself guessed it to be so, partly because they are dark-skinned and woolly-haired; though that indeed goes for nothing, seeing that other peoples, too, are such; but my better proof

10934-509: The Egyptians, in order that we may omit nothing in our discussion of their antiquities". Achilles Tatius described the complexion of the Egyptian herdsmen near Alexandria as "dark-coloured (yet not absolutely black like an Indian but more like a bastard Ethiopian)". With regard to the Ethiopians, Strabo indicates that they looked similar to Indians , remarking "those who are in Asia (South India), and those who are in Africa, do not differ from each other." Pliny in turn asserts that

11088-488: The English /ˈnɪɡər/ , occurring in biologic and anatomic names, such as Hyoscyamus niger (black henbane), and even for animals that are in fact not black, such as Sciurus niger (fox squirrel). Nigra is the Latin feminine form of niger (black), used in biologic and anatomic names such as substantia nigra (black substance). The word niggardly (miserly) is etymologically unrelated to nigger , derived from

11242-655: 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

11396-456: The English language". Media personnel who reported on Fuhrman's testimony substituted the N-word for nigger . Niger (Latin for "black") occurs in Latinate scientific nomenclature and is the root word for some homophones of nigger ; sellers of niger seed (used as bird feed), sometimes use the spelling Nyjer seed. The classical Latin pronunciation /ˈniɡeɾ/ sounds similar to

11550-557: 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

11704-706: 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

11858-613: The Libyans and Ethiopians, the former occupying the northerly, the latter the more southerly parts; the immigrants are the Phoenicians and Greeks." The Egyptian priest Manetho ( c.  300 BC ) listed Kushite (25th) dynasty, calling it the "Aethiopian dynasty," and Esarhaddon the early 7th century BC ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire describes deporting all "Aethiopians" from Egypt upon conquering Egypt from

12012-718: The Nubian Kushite Empire which formed the 25th Dynasty. Moreover, when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (c. 200 BC), the Hebrew appellation "Kush, Kushite" became in Greek "Aethiopia, Aethiopians", appearing as "Ethiopia, Ethiopians" in the English King James Version . Agatharchides provides a relatively detailed description of the gold mining system of Aethiopia. His text

12166-574: The Red Sea and Indian Ocean. He is also quoted as relating a myth in which the Skiapods ('Shade feet'), whose feet were supposedly large enough to serve as shade, lived there. In his Histories ( c.  440 BC ), Herodotus presents some of the most ancient and detailed information about "Aethiopia". He relates that he personally traveled up the Nile to the border of Egypt as far as Elephantine (modern Aswan ). In his view, "Aethiopia"

12320-554: 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

12474-527: The Spanish and Portuguese word negro ('black') and the now-pejorative French nègre . Etymologically, negro , noir , nègre , and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum , the stem of the Latin niger ('black'). In its original English-language usage, nigger (also spelled niger ) was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in

12628-482: The State of Virginia (1785), but "black" had not been widely used until the later 20th century. (See black pride , and, in the context of worldwide anti-colonialism initiatives, Négritude .) In the 1980s, the term " African American " was advanced analogously to such terms as " German American " and " Irish American ", and was adopted by major media outlets. Moreover, as a compound word , African American resembles

12782-494: 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

12936-607: The United States have occurred at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and the Madrid campus of Syracuse University . In June 2020, Canadian news host Wendy Mesley was suspended and replaced with a guest host after she attended a meeting on racial justice and, in the process of quoting a journalist, used "a word that no-one like me should ever use". In August 2020, BBC news, with the agreement of victim and family, mentioned

13090-451: The antecedents of this phenomenon in 1957 in his essay The White Negro . The prosecutor [ Christopher Darden ], his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile he would not utter it. "It's the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language." — Kenneth B. Noble, January 14, 1995 The New York Times One of the first uses of the N-word euphemism by

13244-619: The autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term within quotes, indicating reported speech , but used the term "negro" when writing in his own narrative persona . Joseph Conrad published a novella in Britain with the title The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897); in the United States, it was released as The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle ; the original had been called "the ugliest conceivable title" in

13398-407: 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,

13552-453: 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

13706-400: 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. John Trevisa , c.  1385 Middle English

13860-510: The city council, saying, "In the past 30 days, I've been called a nigger more than any time in my entire life." Opponents accused him of "playing the race card " to save his political life. The implicit racism of the word nigger has generally rendered its use taboo . Magazines and newspapers typically do not use this word but instead print censored versions such as "n*gg*r", "n**ger", "n——" or "the N-word"; see below . The use of nigger in older literature has become controversial because of

14014-638: 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

14168-416: The daughter of Richard Pryor and a professor at Smith College , to give a talk opining that the word was leading to a "social crisis" in higher education. In addition to Smith College, Emory University , Augsburg University , Southern Connecticut State University , and Simpson College all suspended professors in 2019 over referring to the word "nigger" by name in classroom settings. In two other cases,

14322-466: 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

14476-476: 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

14630-528: 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

14784-401: 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

14938-551: 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

15092-695: The elite in England eventually developed into 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

15246-421: The employee a nigger. The customer fell to the floor and hit his head. Three days later, he died, having suffered a skull fracture and brain contusions . The employee was arrested, and charged with manslaughter . In a plea bargain , the employee pled guilty to felony battery , and was sentenced to two years of house arrest . In 2022, in explaining why the employee did not receive any jail time, Grayson Kamm,

15400-408: 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

15554-615: The expression white nigger ) or "any person whose behavior is regarded as reprehensible". In some cases, with awareness of the word's offensive connotation, but without intention to cause offense, it can refer to a "victim of prejudice likened to that endured by African Americans" (as in John Lennon 's 1972 song " Woman Is the Nigger of the World "). The variants neger and negar derive from various Romance words for 'black', including

15708-489: The form of nigga , whose spelling reflects the phonology of African-American English . The origin of the word lies with the Latin adjective niger ([ˈnɪɡɛr]), meaning "black". It was initially seen as a relatively neutral term, essentially synonymous with the English word negro . Early attested uses during the Atlantic slave trade (16th–19th century) often conveyed a merely patronizing attitude. The word took on

15862-426: The former case, it is regularly understood as insensitive or insulting; in the latter, it may carry notes of in-group disparagement, or it may be understood as neutral or affectionate, a possible instance of reappropriation . In the black community, nigger is often rendered as nigga . This usage has been popularized by the rap and hip-hop music cultures and is used as part of an in-group lexicon and speech. It

16016-721: 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

16170-479: 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,

16324-407: 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

16478-627: The hopeless people in D Street or, God forbid, the ones in Columbia Point, who were both black and niggers. But now I was jealous of the kids in Old Harbor Project down the road, which seemed like a step up from Old Colony   ... The word's usage in literature has led to it being a point of discussion in university lectures as well. In 2008, Arizona State University English professor Neal A. Lester created what has been called "the first ever college-level class designed to explore

16632-403: 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

16786-531: 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

16940-475: 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

17094-431: 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

17248-477: The late 18th and early 19th century, the word "nigger" also described an actual labor category, which African American laborers adopted for themselves as a social identity, and thus white people used the descriptor word as a distancing or derogatory epithet, as if "quoting black people" and their non-standard language. During the early 1800s to the late 1840s fur trade in the Western United States ,

17402-466: The lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance might be subject to the gods and suffer harm -- Aethiopians and Libyans and mare-milking Scythians. For verily Epaphus was the child of the almighty Son of Cronos, and from him sprang the dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies. All these are the offspring of

17556-649: The lord, the Loud-thunderer. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon when conquering Egypt and destroying the Kushite Empire states how he "deported all 'Aethiopians' from Egypt, leaving not one to pay homage to me". He was talking about the Nubian 25th Dynasty rather than people from modern Ethiopia. In 515 BC, Scylax of Caryanda , on orders from Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire , sailed along

17710-475: The natives of India; the land of Egypt, flooded by the Nile, darkens bodies more mildly owing to the inundation of its fields: it is a country nearer to us and its moderate climate imparts a medium tone." Philostratus (c. 170 – c. 245 AD) had written in his journeys and life of Apollonios of Tyana , he had at one point arrived at "the crossing point between Ethiopia and Egypt, which is called Kaminos", where at

17864-484: 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

18018-584: The place-name "Aethiopia" was derived from one "Aethiop, a son of Vulcan " (the Greek god Hephaestus ). He also writes that the "Queen of the Ethiopians" bore the title Kandake , and avers (incorrectly) that the Ethiopians had conquered ancient Syria and the Mediterranean . Following Strabo, the Greco-Roman historian Eusebius claims that the Ethiopians had emigrated into the Red Sea area from

18172-426: 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

18326-452: The range of observation of the ancient geographers , primarily in what was then Nubia (in ancient Sudan ). With the expansion of geographical knowledge, the exonym successively extended to certain other areas below the Sahara. In classical antiquity, the term Africa did not refer to any part of sub-Saharan Africa, but in its widest sense to instead to Ancient Libya —what is now known as

18480-678: 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

18634-455: The second half of the 20th century onward, with the exception of cases derived from intra-group usage such as hip hop culture . The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary describes the term as "perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English". The Oxford English Dictionary writes that "this word is one of the most controversial in English, and is liable to be considered offensive or taboo in almost all contexts (even when used as

18788-468: 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

18942-499: The slur when reporting on a physical and verbal assault on the black NHS worker and musician K-Dogg. Within the week the BBC received over 18,600 complaints, the black radio host David Whitely resigned in protest, and the BBC apologized. In 2021, in Tampa, Florida , a 27-year-old black employee at a Dunkin' Donuts punched a 77-year-old white customer after the customer had repeatedly called

19096-466: The south declines towards the setting sun lies the country called Aethiopia, the last inhabited land in that direction. There gold is obtained in great plenty, huge elephants abound, with wild trees of all sorts, and ebony ; and the men are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere else. Herodotus also wrote that the Ammonians of Siwa Oasis are "colonists from Egypt and Aethiopia and speak

19250-474: 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

19404-600: The specific word. When a person violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for many. The following year, screenwriter Walter Mosley turned down a job after his human resources department took issue with him using the word to describe racism that he experienced as a black man. While defending Laurie Sheck, a professor who was cleared of ethical violations for quoting I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin , John McWhorter wrote that efforts to condemn racist language by white Americans had undergone mission creep . Similar controversies outside

19558-455: 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

19712-600: The term in intragroup settings is increasing even amongst white youth, due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture. Linguist Keith Allan rejects the view that nigger is always a slur, arguing that it is also used as a marker of camaraderie and friendship, comparable to the British and Australian term "mate" or the American "buddy". According to Arthur K. Spears in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 2006 : In many African-American neighborhoods, nigga

19866-557: The term. Nearly one-third of whites and two-thirds of blacks said they had personally used the term within the last five years. " Niggers in the White House " was written in reaction to an October 1901 White House dinner hosted by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt , who had invited Booker T. Washington —an African-American presidential advisor—as a guest. The poem reappeared in 1929 after First Lady Lou Hoover , wife of President Herbert Hoover , invited Jessie De Priest ,

20020-457: The usages of both "nigger" and the similar-sounding word "niggard" denoting a false bottom for a grate. In American English , "nigger lover" initially applied to abolitionists , then to white people sympathetic towards black Americans. The portmanteau word wigger ('White' + 'nigger') denotes a white person emulating "street Black behavior", hoping to gain acceptance to the hip hop , thug, and gangsta sub-cultures. Norman Mailer wrote of

20174-485: 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. Aethiopia The Greek name Aithiopia ( Αἰθιοπία , from Αἰθίοψ , Aithíops )

20328-462: The wife of African-American congressman Oscar De Priest , to a tea for congressmen's wives at the White House . The identity of the author—who used the byline "unchained poet"—remains unknown. In explaining his refusal to be conscripted to fight the Vietnam War (1955–75), professional boxer Muhammad Ali said, "No Vietcong ever called me nigger." Later, his modified answer was the title of

20482-436: The word injun . The change was spearheaded by Twain scholar Alan Gribben in the hope of "countering the 'pre-emptive censorship ' " that results from the book's being removed from school curricula over language concerns. The changes sparked outrage from critics Elon James , Alexandra Petri and Chris Meadows . In his 1999 memoir All Souls , Irish-American Michael Patrick MacDonald describes how many white residents of

20636-473: 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

20790-580: The word 'nigger ' ". Starting in the following decade, colleges struggled with attempts to teach material about the slur in a sensitive manner. In 2012, a sixth grade Chicago teacher Lincoln Brown was suspended after repeating the contents of a racially charged note being passed around in class. Brown later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the headmaster and the Chicago public schools. A New Orleans high school also experienced controversy in 2017. Such increased attention prompted Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor,

20944-399: The word in a lecture was not justified. In 2018, the head of the media company Netflix , Reed Hastings , fired his chief communications officer, Jonathan Friedland, for using the word twice during internal discussions about sensitive words. In explaining why, Hastings wrote: [The word's use] in popular media like music and film have created some confusion as to whether or not there is ever

21098-403: The word took on a completely different meaning. In fact, comedian Alex Thomas on BET stated, "I still better not hear no white boy say that to me   ... I hear a white boy say that to me, it means 'White boy, you gonna get your ass beat. ' " Addressing the use of nigger by black people, philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West said in 2007: There's a certain rhythmic seduction to

21252-483: The word was spelled "niggur", and is often recorded in the literature of the time. George Fredrick Ruxton used it in his " mountain man " lexicon, without pejorative connotation . "Niggur" was evidently similar to the modern use of " dude " or "guy". This passage from Ruxton's Life in the Far West illustrates the word in spoken form—the speaker here referring to himself: "Travler, marm, this niggur's no travler; I ar'

21406-484: The word's modern meaning as a racist insult. One of the most enduring controversies has been the word's use in Mark Twain 's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most challenged book during the 1990s, according to the American Library Association . The novel is written from the point of view, and largely in the language, of an uneducated white boy, who

21560-408: The word. If you speak in a sentence, and you have to say cat , companion , or friend , as opposed to nigger , then the rhythmic presentation is off. That rhythmic language is a form of historical memory for Black people   ... When Richard Pryor came back from Africa, and decided to stop using the word onstage, he would sometimes start to slip up, because he was so used to speaking that way. It

21714-785: 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

21868-539: 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,

22022-480: 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 is either the official language or one of

22176-438: 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

22330-405: 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

22484-538: Was brought into Egypt by Osiris". He recounted this story that attributes the origins of Egyptian civilization to migrants from the south, which in this context corresponds to the Kingdom of Kush . Diodorus Siculus also discussed the similar cultural practices between the Ethiopians and Egyptians such as the writing systems as he states "We must now speak about the Ethiopian writing which is called hieroglyphic among

22638-603: Was chosen as the racial self-identifier for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 2008 Carla Sims, its communications director, said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive." Mark Twain , in

22792-439: Was copied almost verbatim by virtually all subsequent ancient writers on the area, including Diodorus Siculus and Photius . Diodorus Siculus in his work Bibliotheca Historica , reported that the Ethiopians claimed that Egypt was an early colony, and that the Ethiopians also cited evidence that they were more ancient than the Egyptians as he wrote: "The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies which

22946-518: 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

23100-505: 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

23254-533: 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

23408-475: Was that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have from the first practised circumcision”. Herodotus further states that that out of "three hundred and thirty kings" of Egypt, there had been 18 Ethiopian kings, one native Egyptian queen, and the rest had been Egyptian men. Herodotus tells us that king Cambyses II ( c.  570 BC ) of the Achaemenid Empire sent spies to

23562-516: Was the progenitor of the Aethiopians and other dark-skinned tribes of Libya . He wrote: The Sons of Boreas pursued the Harpies to the lands of the Massagetae and of the proud Half-Dog men, of the Underground-folk and of the feeble Pygmies; and to the tribes of the boundless Black-skins and the Libyans. Huge Earth bare these to Epaphus -- soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus

23716-508: Was the right word at the moment to keep the rhythm together in his sentence making. In the 2010s, "nigger" in its various forms saw use with increasing frequency by African Americans amongst themselves or in self-expression, the most common swear word in hip hop music lyrics. Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested that it continues to be unacceptable for non-blacks to utter while singing or rapping along to hip-hop, and that by being so restrained it gives white Americans (specifically) an impression of what it

#943056