English Language FAQ

Not according to millions of student of English as a foreign language! But English does have some 'user friendly features as an OUP lexicographer explains in this short extract from a BBC interview Easy English (ESL)

Because I accidentally restricted access! Have corrected - comments welcome!

There does not seem to be an agreed term as you can see from the number of Google references here: yankophile 945 americanophile 716 americophile 233 americaphile 150 usaphile 14 usphile 1 Contrast this with the situation for lovers of French, English, Chinese or Japanese culture anglophile 102,000, francophile 84,700, japanophile 20,400, sinophile 3450 Why is this? Snobbery, perhaps - a 'new' culture looked down on by traditional ones? Or is it just linguistically awkward - americaphile really isn't a pretty word. You might want to check out:  (audio) discussion about the relationship between British and American English here . Time Magazine piece on The Next American Century The New American Century Alistair Cooke's America

The Test of English as a Foreign Language. TOEFL  is the standardised test used by American universities and many employers to test the language level of non-native speakers of English.  Nik Peachey guides you through a typical reading activity or you can try a free practice test here , English as a foreign - or second or other - language has many obscure acronyms.

Or  has there 'never been a time when English was not thought to be going to hell in a handcart'?  Complaints about English are (a) as old as the hills, (b) based on no linguistic logic, and (c) ultimately futile, since no one can stop language from varying and changing.   In The Language Wars , Henry Hitchings argues there has never been a time when English was not thought to be going to hell in a handcart. He cites what sounds like a contemporary essay on "the growing illiteracy of American boys" and invites us to guess when it was written. The answer turns out to be, in 1896 – and the boys whose illiteracy so alarmed the essay's author were not hillbillies or slum children, but Harvard undergraduates.  Source But aren't young people today reading far less?  Is the Internet destroying our 'book culture'? Adam Gopnik summarises the different approaches to this question: Never-Better : The internet is opening up a new information democracy. Everyone

There is no official academy of English as there is with French, Spanish and other European languages. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the closest we have to such an authority.  How does the OED decide which words to include? It accepts a new word if it is commonly used over a period of time.  More on how this works  here Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary  Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Dictionary & CD ROM) Concise Oxford English Dictionary: 11th Edition Revised 2008 Oxford English Dictionary: 20 vol. print set & CD ROM

Depends what you mean by beautiful? Or ugly for that matter. This brave blog has attempted a list of 100 'beautiful and ugly words'. The writer suggests: One of the many fascinating features of our language is how often words with pleasant associations are also quite pleasing on the tongue and even to the eye, and how many words, by contrast, acoustically and visually corroborate their disagreeable nature All pretty subjective but interesting to see that there are far more 'beautiful' words on the list than 'ugly' ones. Full list here:  

This is a question which still causes great confusion. Is the name change essentially political, an assertion of Chinese nationalism? Then why is still Pékin in French and Pekín in French? The Economist's Johnson Blog (named after the great dictionary pioneer) confidently put forward a theory last year - only to quickly withdraw it after protests from commentators. I personally go with the idea Peking is the Cantonese form of the word.  This is what I was told when I lived in (Cantonese speaking) Hong Kong and seems to make sense. Anyway, Kung Hei Fat Choi (a Happy (Cantonese!) New Year

Hamlet. At least according to the wonderful Howard Dietz lyric for 'That's Entertainment' in the Hollywood musical 'The Band Wagon' (1952).

Not another debate over the rights and wrongs of those wars but a peculiar linguistic quirk pointed out by Jay Nordlinger My colleague and I were talking about this, too: We say “Iraq War”; but “Afghan War.” Those are unequal. We would never say “Iraqi War” or “Afghanistan War.” Strange. We refer to the “Korean War.” But we would never say “Vietnamese War.” We say “Vietnam War” — and not “Korea War.” It is curious. My theory is that we instinctively reach for the adjective but collectively abandon this rule for multi-syllable countries. So 'Korean' but not 'Vietnamese'. Not very scientific but when did that stop me ....