język: English language

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that emerged in early medieval England and has since become a global lingua franca. The language is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Britain after the end of Roman rule. English is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influence of the British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the rise of the United States. It is the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second‑language speakers than native speakers. However, English is only the third‑most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is eithe…

Evidence: 86 • authority: 72

Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It originated in the Kingdom of Castile, a kingdom in north-central Iberia. Today, it is a global language with 519 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 636 million speakers total, including second-language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 21 countries, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandar…

Evidence: 77 • authority: 72

The most commonly used language in the United States is English (specifically the American English set of varieties), which is the national language and official language. While the U.S. Congress has never declared a statutory official language, the federal government primarily uses English and a 2025 executive order declared English official. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have laws that recognize English as an official language. Of these, three states and most territories have adopted English plus one or more other official languages. Overall, 430 languages are spoken or signed by the population, of which 177 are indigenous to the U.S. or its territori…

Evidence: 69 • authority: 92

Native and non-native lexical processing in Mandarin: pinyin and tone representation.. The nature of the Chinese mental lexicon is described in this theoretical paper, with a particular focus on the way in which Mandarin is represented and processed, especially with regard to tonal information. Because an alphabetic script (i.e., pinyin) is adopted in China at the earliest stages of reading acquisition, an account is given of the way in which alphabetic orthography is processed, using English as the example. Following from this, a framework for thinking about the processes involved in learning to read Chinese is presented and the impact of pinyin is considered. In particular, it is argued t…

Evidence: 69 • authority: 72

The Israeli population is linguistically and culturally diverse. Hebrew is the country's official language, and almost the entire population speaks it either as a first language or proficiently as a second language. Its standard form, known as Modern Hebrew, is the main medium of life in Israel. Arabic is used mainly by Arab citizens of Israel, who comprise about one-fifth of the population. Arabic has a special status under Israeli law. English is known as a foreign language by a significant portion of the Israeli population as it is widely used in official logos and road signs alongside Hebrew and Arabic. Data collected between 2018 and 2020 by the National Center for Exams and Evaluation…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 92

Primary Language, Social Determinants of Health, and the Lived Patient Experience After Heart Transplantation: A Comparative Qualitative Study.. Background Over 4,500 individuals undergo heart transplantation (HT) in the United States every year. Limited qualitative data exist evaluating challenges and barriers in the evaluation and post-transplant process and their association with primary language spoken. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with individuals who received HT at a high-volume urban academic medical center between 2015 and 2024. Primary English and Spanish speaking patients were included; interviews were conducted by a certified Spanish speaker. Interviews were au…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 88

Production of coda voicing contrast of L2 English by native Mandarin Chinese speakers in comparison with native Korean speakers. This study investigates native language effects on phonetic encoding of coda voicing contrast in L2 English by Chinese versus Korean speakers. Results show much smaller phonetic differences in both vowel duration and F0 in marking coda voicing contrast for Chinese speakers than Korean speakers, despite native Chinese speakers' experience with lexical tones. They suggest that producing an F0-related cue in L2 is conditioned by position-specific phonological richness and use of F0 in the speaker's L1. The results are discussed in terms of contrast maximization and e…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly romanized as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. Although Cantonese specifically refers to the prestige variety in linguistics, the term is often used more broadly to describe the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including varieties such as Taishanese, which have limited mutual intelligibility with Cantonese. Cantonese is viewed as a vital and inseparable part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swaths of southeastern China, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as in overseas communities.…

Evidence: 58 • authority: 92

Integrating Nonpharmacologic Strategies for Pain with Inclusion, Respect, and Equity (INSPIRE): Cultural and linguistic tailoring for a digital health intervention.. Chronic pain (CP) disproportionately affects underserved populations who often experience barriers to evidence-based nonpharmacologic treatments. Digital health interventions can address these barriers by providing scalable and accessible CP management resources. However, culturally and linguistically tailored digital interventions are rare, which may limit engagement and effectiveness. The Integrating Nonpharmacologic Strategies for Pain with Inclusion, Respect, and Equity (INSPIRE) intervention combines a tailored mobile app…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 92

Bridging corpus diagnostics and EAP pedagogy: A corpus-driven study on lexical hedges in Chinese scholars' spoken academic English.. As the internationalization of higher education intensifies - particularly under China's "Double First-Class" initiative - Chinese scholars are increasingly expected not only to publish in English but also to perform effectively in high-stakes spoken genres such as conference talks, keynote lectures, and doctoral defences. Yet pragmatic features such as hedging remain a persistent barrier, often leading to pragmatic failure in real-time interactions. This study addresses this challenge through an integrated approach that couples corpus-based diagnostics with p…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 92

New Zealand deaf adults' perspectives on speech-language therapy for deaf children.. Speech-language therapy (SLT) within deaf education in Aotearoa New Zealand remains influenced by oralist traditions. Māori deaf individuals also face barriers to their culture and native language. This qualitative study explored deaf adults' experiences and perceptions of SLT, including how SLTs should best support deaf children. Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 11 deaf adults (aged 28-65) who had engaged with SLT. Data were generated in New Zealand Sign Language or English and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Ensuring deaf children thrive and flourish was the overarching theme, w…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 72

French (français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] or langue française [lɑ̃ɡ fʁɑ̃sɛːz] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, French and its closest relatives—the langues d'oïl, historically spoken in northern France and southern Belgium—descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. It was influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the Germanic Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Over time, French largely supplanted most regional Romance varieties across France, Belgium and Switzerland. As a result of French and later Belgian colonialism, it was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and nume…