English
Indo-European · United States, United Kingdom, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, Jamaica
Endangerment: Safe — Spoken by all generations and learned naturally by children.
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The North Wind and the Sun
The North Wind and the Sun were arguing about which of them was stronger. Just then, a traveler wearing a warm coat came walking along the road. They agreed that whoever first made the traveler take off his coat would be considered the stronger. The North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the harder he blew, the more tightly the traveler wrapped his coat around him. In the end, the North Wind gave up. Then the Sun shone warmly, and the traveler immediately took off his coat. And so the North Wind had to admit that the Sun was stronger than he was.
- Nouns have no grammatical gender, and adjectives never change form: 'a big dog', 'big dogs'.
- The basic word order is subject-verb-object, as in 'I eat rice'.
- After the Norman Conquest in 1066, English borrowed many words from French, like 'beef' and 'pork'.
- Spelling doesn't always match sound. The 'ough' in 'though', 'through' and 'tough' is pronounced differently each time.