Talk:English language

Spelling of "percent"

In Special:Diff/1287719185, because of the {{use British English}} template in the article's source and the {{British English}} templates in the edit notice and this talk page, I had intended to get the article to use British English. However, my edit was reverted in Special:Diff/1287722404 possibly because of how @CAVincent understood my comment, when I had intended to make the changes listed in the British English templates for this article. One of the changes made was changing to the British spelling of "percent", "per cent". I am curious as to why the article's prose uses "percent" and not "per cent". According to Wiktionary, per cent is Commonwealth English. Commonwealth English includes British English as a variety, but not the other way around. Z. Patterson (talk) 09:05, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

This is actually an interesting question: Which national variety of the English language should Wikipedia's article on English language use? I'm strongly inclined to say that should be American English, for the reason that it is the most widely used variety. I can't see any good reason for this article to use British English, other than that it has had a tag for a long time. I would also argue that the article should have dates as MDY for the same reason. (That said, I hadn't been thinking of the British English tag when I made my revert, and I would be fine with reintroducing your changes pending a discussion to not use British English. I just tried self-reverting, but it failed due to subsequent changes.) CAVincent (talk) 13:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Firstly, does an article have to specify at all which English it should use? Secondly, if it does, I would prefer British, because of where the language originated, not where it is most widely used. Thirdly, just for fun, many British people used MDY, not so long ago (in my living memory, at least). But let's not have a storm in a teacup. Tony Holkham (Talk) 14:02, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

So would I. I would think that British English would apply for these reasons. Z. Patterson (talk) 16:13, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Current British English is no more the original form than current American English; all of the major contemporary national varieties of English descend from Early Modern English. So, no, preferring British "because of where the language originated" is not a compelling argument. That said, MOS:Retain IS a compelling argument, though I haven't checked the article history to see what that would favor. CAVincent (talk) CAVincent (talk) 05:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

MOS:Retain explains why the existing variety should be retained - i.e. British English. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:17, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Did we clearly indicate which form of the word I should use? Just double-checking so I don't gratuitously do America all over the article, it's percent right? Remsense 🌈 论 11:43, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

MOS:PERCENT says BrE indicates "per cent". So does American and British English spelling differences. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 06:37, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Right, this was one of those cases I wasn't clear on, where a form might be accepted if not the most commonly used within a given English variety. Thanks! Remsense 🌈 论 14:51, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

As a compromise, I like to spell it per​cent with U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE, so that it breaks across lines. 😜 —Tamfang (talk) 05:00, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Article review

It has been a little bit since this article was last reviewed, so I took a look and noticed the following:

• There are lots of uncited statements in the article, including entire paragraphs.
• At over 14,000 words, some sections of this article have too much information, making the article WP:TOOBIG. Should some of this information be spun out, summarised more effectively, or removed?

Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 18:01, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Right! I'm committing myself to this one. Anyone else? Remsense 🌈 论 18:02, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I've no expertise in language or grammar, but I am happy to look for some missing citations. I think we could go for GAR when some work has been done, as GAR is just added pressure at this stage. Tony Holkham (Talk) 18:29, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

@Tony Holkham: If editors are working on an article, I won't send it to GAR. Z1720 (talk) 18:37, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

I'll definitely be starting work on it—this is one of the article I'd like to think I won't allow to be delisted. Remsense 🌈 论 18:39, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Oh, @Sdkb, I assume you're still interested in that spoken version also—though I know barnstars are a bit pricy these days. That might be a good capstone for me to try once I get this article to where I want it. Remsense 🌈 论 21:07, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, at this point I think the spoken articles project needs to do some soul-searching around whether AI voices have made it obsolete before I could recommend adding more articles to it. Sdkb ^talk 05:15, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Haha, I thought about that a few minutes after I sent this reply. Happy for those who benefit from it, but alas. Remsense 🌈 论 05:16, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Can I poll any editors with interest in the ongoing work as to where they think the article is at? There's still a few apparently uncited passages left—while I'm most interested what the perception is of the article's length and the proportionality of its coverage after the slimming down I've done. Remsense 🌈 论 07:16, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

@Z1720 could I ask for your brief reappraisal in specific? Remsense 🌈 论 22:09, 23 August 2025 (UTC)

• @Remsense: Sorry for the late response. I added citation needed tags to the article. I think some sections can still be reduced: typically, I recommend that sections have 2-4 paragraphs. Sections that are longer should consider moving information to the daughter article and summarising the information more effectively. Z1720 (talk) 14:14, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the rule of thumb for section length, and the concrete boxes to further tick off here! Helps a ton. Also, thanks generally for the work you do in ensuring our GAC and FAC are live, operative criteria. Remsense 🌈 论 14:37, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

"English language." listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect English language. has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 August 27 § English language. until a consensus is reached. ArthananWarcraft (talk) 18:58, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 12 October 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. WP:RMEC WP:SNOW ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 05:41, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

---

• English language → English
• English → English (disambiguation)English (disambiguation)

– Clear primary topic, according to WikiNav this page gets 74% of the outgoing pageviews of the English dab page (English people comes second with 13%, but "English" isn't an appropriate title there anyway per WP:NOUN, and other entries are negligible). WP:NCLANG says articles on languages can be titled with the bare name of the variety where this is unambiguous (e.g. Bokmål) or where it is unquestionably the primary topic for the name (e.g. Arabic, Kannada, Serbo-Croatian). Similar to the recent move of "Swahili language" to "Swahili", where there are ~100 million speakers [1] compared to an ethnic population of ~2 million [2], there are 1.5 billion speakers of English [3] and an ethnic population of 37 million (+~60 million in the diaspora). Proposed title is also more concise. Ultimately the language is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. Kowal2701 (talk) 19:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Notified WP:LANGUAGE, WP:ENGLAND, and WP:UK. Kowal2701 (talk) 19:09, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Support, just obvious. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. There's enough incoherence already in titles of specific language articles. X language is accurately descriptive for both "major" language articles (Spanish language, French language, German language...) and "minor" (Wolof language, Arapaho language, Gamilaraay language...). The economy gained by deleting language is minimal, and introduces possible confusion where accuracy is desirable. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. No primary topic here, in no way does the proposed move improve clarity. 162 etc. (talk) 23:11, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose - Honestly, this is just a dumb suggestion. It isn't even worth pointing to policy and guidelines for something so obviously dumb. CAVincent (talk) 02:21, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Well that's just rude... Anne drew (talk · contribs) 02:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  Agreeing with Anne drew. Wolfdog (talk) 05:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Apologizing for my rudeness. My opposition stands but should have been expressed more politely. CAVincent (talk) 10:07, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

1. Views of English that probably correspond to a click towards the language article 3,010 (30.3%)
2. Clicks from English to something that we can't identify (anonymized) 1,590 (16.0%)
3. Views of English that probably correspond to a click towards other identifiable articles 1,083 (10.9%)
4. Views of English that can't be assumed to correspond to any outgoing clicks 4,257 (42.8%)

• I don't think WikiNav output is as determinative as it looks. Here's a pie chart to the right that interprets the exact same data (Clickstreams and Page views from August), but without relegating filtered clicks and clicks that don't have a matching outgoing click to the dustbin as WikiNav happens to do.

I think the anonymization should be more pronounced with the more rare sources and destinations, less so with the largest known topics. So I don't think we should assume that most of the filtered clicks here are to the language. At the same time, even if we do somehow magically assume that, even that literally all the filtered clicks were going towards the language, the combination of these two is still less than half the overall volume of incoming views.

We often see some amount of views that don't correspond to outgoing clicks. However, the idea that around a half of all views would be readers who look up English intending to visit the language topic, and then see this simple list and then somehow miss the very first link to the language article - seems like a big stretch. I'm not sure we have an issue with navigation here that needs to be addressed. --Joy (talk) 10:13, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose, this is in direct contradiction of what WP:NCLANG says and beancounting speakers vs "ethnic population" (whatever the hell that means in this context - do Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians etc. with English ancestry count towards this "ethnic population?") is not a sensible way of determining primary topic. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:21, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  NCLANG says Where a common name exists in English for both a people and their language, it is most often the case that neither is the primary topic. A title based on that term, with explicit disambiguation, is preferred for both articles, as with Chinese people and Chinese language. Unlike where "German" as a noun refers to both language and people, "English" isn't the common name for English people because our article titles are nouns and it's not used as a noun but an adjective (except in rare cases of "the English"). The beancounting was an attempt to illustrate how the language outstrips the ethnic group in terms of importance and educational value as a global lingua franca Kowal2701 (talk) 15:49, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  This is simply not true. Many well-meaning newish editors will link English where the people (or some iteration of the nation-state) is what was intended. Moving this page will make finding and fixing such errors much more difficult. older ≠ wiser 16:41, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  It's also not true that "English" is not used to refer to the people. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 23:32, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per Barefoot through the chollas. "Arabic" and "Serbo-Croatian" are examples of specifically linguistic terms. Given WP:THE and the fact that English people can be referred to as 'the English', I do not think WP:NOUN applies the way the nom says. Srnec (talk) 15:46, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per Srnec and because that just does not make the encyclopaedia better. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:50, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose, this move is based on faulty assumptions and will make disambiguating erroneous links more difficult. older ≠ wiser 16:42, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

  • Oppose, It is easier to keep it the way it is than to merge it. If it ain't broke do not fix it.

  Freedom759 (talk) 23:32, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per Barefoot through the chollas, Srnec, and Bkonrad (older ≠ wiser). --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 23:35, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose English language and English people are separate subjects, neither of which should have their articles titled simply English. Nor should any of the topics at the disambigulation page. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:36, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose per the various reasons mentioned above. "English" by itself being a disambiguation page is fine as is since it can refer to widely different topics. Like the natives of England, people of English ethnicity/ancestry around the world, English culture, etc. Clear Looking Glass (talk) 05:33, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

  I would only really actually oppose if we changed German to German language and so forth with similar language pages Since German and German language are also 2 separate things similar to how English And the English Language are 2 separate things Freedom759 (talk) 20:53, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

  Unless its like that already Freedom759 (talk) 20:59, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

  German is a disambiguation page and German language is the article about the language, same as the status quo with English. That's the normal naming convention for languages. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 21:04, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tweaks to meaning, some of them erroneous

@PuppyMonkey, please ask here first before making further edits to this article that change the meaning of prose cited to a reliable source. It is not clear you check what the cited source says or doesn't say when you make these kinds of edits, and that means you sometimes make errors when you're effectively citing either your own knowledge or possibly just another Wikipedia article (see WP:CIRCULAR) and adding claims the cited sources no longer verify.

Given your restatement in the edit summary, most recently you simply misunderstood what the passage about Latin script adoption said to begin with. I ask you in the strongest possible terms given how many of your edits are substantive changes to cited prose in our most important articles, that you make an effort to follow those sources when you do so. If you cannot access sources, you cannot decide they are wrong or decide you knew what they probably said instead. Remsense 🌈 论 20:50, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I'll do my best, @Remsense. PuppyMonkey (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Non-native English reading by Spanish native speaker 001.ogg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:36, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 December 2025

Remove United States from the list of countries where English is dominant without being legally defined, as Executive Order 14224 made English the official national language. ~2025-38158-22 (talk) 00:49, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

Not done for now. There has never been a law that has actually been passed declaring English the official language. I would either wait for that to be passed, or establish a consensus. NotJamestack (✉️|📝) 01:00, 4 December 2025 (UTC)