ENGLISH LANGUAGES

views updated

ENGLISH LANGUAGES. A phrase used by some linguists and other commentators to suggest that ENGLISH is a group of languages (comparable to the Romance languages) rather than one language: ‘The European Society for the Study of English has been founded to encourage European understanding of English languages, literatures and cultures’ (from a leaflet announcing the inaugural conference of the ESSE at the U. of East Anglia in England, Sept. 1991); The English Languages (book title), Tom McArthur, 1998. See ENGLISHES, VARIETY.

More From encyclopedia.com