German reunification
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This article is about the 1990 German reunification. For the 1871 German Empire, see Unification of Germany.
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Map showing the division of East and West Germany, with West Berlin in yellow.
German reunification (German: Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR / East Germany) joined the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG / West Germany), and Berlin was united into a single city-state. The start of this process is commonly referred to by former citizens of the GDR as die Wende (The Turning Point.). The end of the unification process is officially referred to as the German unity (German: Deutsche Einheit), celebrated on 3 October (German Unity Day).[1]
The East German regime started to falter in the summer of 1989, when Hungary opened a hole in the Iron Curtain. It caused an exodus of thousands of East Germans going to West Germany via Hungary. The Peaceful Revolution was a series of protests by East Germans. The Peaceful Revolution led to the GDR's first free elections on 18 March 1990, and to the negotiations between the GDR and FRG that culminated in a Unification Treaty,[1] whilst negotiations between the GDR and FRG and the four occupying powers produced the so-called "Two Plus Four Treaty" (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) granting full sovereignty to a unified German state, whose two halves had previously still been bound by a number of limitations stemming from its post-WWII-status as an occupied nation. The united Germany remained a member of the European Community (later the European Union) and of NATO.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Naming
* 2 Process of reunification
* 3 Aftermath
* 4 British and French opposition
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links
[edit] Naming
There is debate as to whether the events of 1990 should be properly referred to as a “reunification” or a “unification.” Proponents of the former use the term in contrast with the initial unification of Germany in 1871. Popular parlance, which uses "reunification", is deeply affected by the 1989 opening of the Berlin Wall (and the rest of the inner German border) and the physical reunification of the city of Berlin (itself divided only since 1945). Others, however, argue that 1990 represented a “unification” of two German states into a larger entity which, in its resulting form, had never before existed (see History of Germany).
For political and diplomatic reasons, West German politicians carefully avoided the term "reunification" during the run-up to what Germans frequently refer to as die Wende. The official[1] and most common term in German is "Deutsche Einheit" (in English "German unity"). German unity is the term that Hans-Dietrich Genscher used in front of international journalists to correct them when they asked him about "reunification" in 1990.
After 1990, the term "die Wende" became more common. The term generally refers to the events (mostly in Eastern Europe) that led up to the actual reunification; in its usual context, this term loosely translates to "the turning point", without any further meaning. When referring to the events surrounding unification, however, it carries the cultural connotation of the time and the events in the GDR that brought about this "turnaround" in German history. However, civil rights activists from Eastern Germany rejected the term Wende as it was introduced by SED’s Secretary General Egon Krenz.[2]
[edit] Process of reunification
Police officers of the East German Volkspolizei wait for the official opening of the Brandenburg Gate on 22 December 1989.
On 18 May 1990, the two German states signed a treaty agreeing on monetary, economic and social union. This came into force on 1 July 1990, with the Deutsche Mark replacing the East German mark as the official currency of East Germany. The Deutsche Mark had a very high reputation among the East Germans and was considered stable.[3] While the GDR transferred its financial policy sovereignty to West Germany, the West started granting subsidies for the GDR budget and social security system.[4] At the same time many West German laws came into force in the GDR. This created a suitable framework for a political union by diminishing the huge gap between the two existing political, social and economic systems.[4]
A reunification treaty between West Germany and the GDR was negotiated in mid-1990 and finally approved by large majorities in the legislative chambers of both countries on 20 September 1990.[5] After that last step Germany was officially united at 00:00 CET on 3 October 1990. The five re-established federal states (Bundesländer) of East Germany – Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia – formally joined the Federal Republic of Germany, along with the city-state Berlin which formally came into being at the same time, created out of the still formally occupied West Berlin and East Berlin, and admitted to the federation. In practice however, West Berlin had already acted as an 11th state for most purposes, so Berlin is generally not included in the list of "New Länder".
The process chosen was one of two options implemented in the West German constitution (Grundgesetz). As these five newly-founded German states formally joined the Federal Republic in accordance with (the then-existing) Article 23, the area in which the constitution served as the constitution was simply extended to include them.[6] The alternative would have been for East Germany to join as a whole along the lines of a formal union between two German states that then would have had to, amongst other things, create a new constitution for the newly established country.
Under the model that was chosen, however, the territory of the former German Democratic Republic was simply incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany, and accordingly the Federal Republic of Germany, now enlarged to include the Eastern States, continued legally to exist under the same legal personality that was founded in May 1949. Thus, the reunification was not a merger that created a third state out of the two, but an incorporation, by which West Germany absorbed East Germany. Thus, on Unification Day, October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, giving way to five new Federal States, and East and West Berlin were also unified as a single city, forming a sixth new Federal State. The new Federal States immediately became parts of the Federal Republic of Germany, so that it was enlarged to include the whole territory of the former East Germany. The practical result of that model is that the now expanded Federal Republic of Germany continued to be a party to all the treaties it had signed prior to the moment of reunification, and thus continued the same membership of the U.N., NATO, the European Commmunities, etc; also, the same Basic Law and the same laws that were in force in the Federal Republic continued automatically in force, but now applied to the expanded territory.
To facilitate this process and to reassure other countries, some changes were made to the "Basic Law" (constitution). Article 146 was amended so that Article 23 of the current constitution could be used for reunification. After the five "New Länder" of East Germany had joined, the constitution was amended again to indicate that all parts of Germany are now unified. Article 23 was rewritten and it can still be understood as an invitation to e.g. Austria to join (though the main idea of the change was to calm fears in for example Poland, that Germany would later try to rejoin with former parts of Germany that were now Polish or parts of other countries in the East. The changes effectively formalised the Oder-Neisse line as Germany's permanent eastern border). These amendments to the Basic Law were mandated by Article I, section 4 of the Two Plus Four Treaty.[7]
While the basic law was modified rather than replaced by a constitution as such, it still permits the adoption of a formal constitution by the German people at some time in the future.
To commemorate the day that marks the official unification of the former East and West Germany in 1990, 3 October has since then been the official German national holiday, the Day of German Unity (Tag der deutschen Einheit). It replaced the previous national holiday held in West Germany on 17 June commemorating the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany and the national holiday on 7 October in the GDR.[4]
On 14 November 1990, the German government signed a treaty with Poland, finalising Germany's boundaries as permanent along the Oder-Neisse line, and thus, renouncing any claims to Silesia, East Brandenburg, Farther Pomerania, Gdańsk (Danzig), and territories of the former province of East Prussia. The treaty also granted certain rights for political minorities on either side of the border.[8] The following month, the first all-German free elections since 1932 were held, resulting in an increased majority for the coalition government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
On 15 March 1991, the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, that had been signed in September 1990 between the U.S.S.R., the U.S.A, the United Kingdom, France, East Germany and West Germany, and that was ratified by the reunited Germany, entered into force, putting an end to the remaining limitations on German sovereignty that resulted from the post WWII arrangements.
[edit] Aftermath
Main article: New federal states
Wiki letter w.svg This section requires expansion.
To this day, there remain vast differences between the former East Germany and West Germany (for example, in lifestyle, wealth, political beliefs and other matters) and thus it is still common to speak of eastern and western Germany distinctly. The eastern German economy has struggled since unification, and large subsidies are still transferred from west to east.
[edit] British and French opposition
According to Kremlin records that became public in 2009, the governments of the U.K. and France did not want German "reunification." [9] Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Soviet President Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany.[9] Thatcher also clarified that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.[9] Thatcher said to Gorbachev "We do not want a united Germany”.[9] Similarly, a representative of French President François Mitterrand reportedly told an aide to Gorbachev, "France by no means wants German reunification, although it realises that in the end it is inevitable."[9] Ultimately, however, both the U.K. and France ratified the Two Plus Four Treaty, thus finalizing the reunification for purposes of international law.
In October 2009, France released its archives from 1989-90 relating to the process of German reunification.[10] It was revealed that President Mitterand agreed to German unification in exchange for a commitment from Chancellor Kohl to the European Economic and Monetary Union.[10]
In January 1990, Mitterand told Thatcher that a unified Germany could "make more ground than even Hitler had".[11]
In March 1990 the French ambassador in London reported that Margaret Thatcher had told him, "France and Great Britain should pull together today in the face of the German threat."[11][12]
[edit] See also
* History of Germany since 1945
* Reunification
* Stalin Note - 1952 German reunification proposal
* Transitology
* Goodbye Lenin!
[edit] References
1. ^ a b c Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik über die Herstellung der Einheit Deutschlands (Einigungsvertrag)
2. ^ Krenz speech of October 18, 1989 in the German radio archive
3. ^ http://www.cepr.org/Pubs/bulletin/dps/dp719.htm
4. ^ a b c http://www.london.diplo.de/Vertretung/london/en/01/Feste/Tag__der__Deutschen__Einheit/History__of__reunification__seite.html
5. ^ http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/history/bl_wall_collapse_unification.htm
6. ^ http://europe-today.com/germany/gerunif.html
7. ^ "File:Zwei-Plus-Vier-Vertrag.pdf". http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zwei-Plus-Vier-Vertrag.pdf.
8. ^ http://polandpoland.com/germany_poland_border.html
9. ^ a b c d e "Thatcher told Gorbachev Britain did not want German reunification". Michael Binyon. Times. September 11, 2009. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6829735.ece. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
10. ^ a b Ben Knight (2009-11-08). "Germany's neighbors try to redeem their 1989 negativity". Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4861759,00.html. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
11. ^ a b Anne-Laure Mondesert (AFP) (2009-10-31). "London and Paris were shocked by German reunification". Calgary Herald. http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/London+Paris+were+shocked+German+reunification/2168902/story.html. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
12. ^ Peter Allen (2009-11-02). "Margaret Thatcher was 'horrified' by the prospect of a reunited Germany". Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/6480413/Margaret-Thatcher-was-horrified-by-the-prospect-of-a-reunited-Germany.html. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
[edit] External links
Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: German reunification
* Germany's Eastern Burden: The Price of a Failed Reunification
* The End of East Germany
* German Embassy Publication, Infocus: German Unity Day
* Across an Imagined Border A 2002 cross-section trip across former intra-German boundaries.
* The Unification Treaty (Berlin, 31 August 1990) website of European navigator
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English language
English language
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This article is semi-protected.
English
Pronunciation /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/[1]
Spoken in (see below)
Total speakers First language: 309–400 million
Second language: 199–1,400 million[2][3]
Overall: 500 million–1.8 billion[4][3]
Ranking 3 (native speakers)[5]
Total: 3 [6]
Language family Indo-European
* Germanic
o West Germanic
+ Anglo–Frisian
# English
Writing system Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language in 53 countries
United Nations
European Union
Commonwealth of Nations
CoE
NATO
NAFTA
OAS
OIC
PIF
UKUSA
Regulated by No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1 en
ISO 639-2 eng
ISO 639-3 eng
Anglospeak.svg
Countries where English is a majority language are dark blue; countries where it is an official but not a majority language are light blue. English is also one of the official languages of the European Union.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,[7][8][9][10] it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world.[11][12] It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries and many international organisations.
Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. English was further influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders.
At the time of the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman (Anglo-French) vocabulary and spelling conventions. The etymology of the word "English" is a derivation from the 12th century Old English englisc or Engle, plural form Angles ("of, relating to, or characteristic of England").[13]
Modern English developed with the Great Vowel Shift that began in 15th-century England, and continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of languages, as well as coining new words. A significant number of English words, especially technical words, have been constructed based on roots from Latin and ancient Greek.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Significance
* 2 History
* 3 Classification and related languages
* 4 Geographical distribution
o 4.1 Countries in order of total speakers
o 4.2 Countries where English is a major language
o 4.3 English as a global language
o 4.4 Dialects and regional varieties
o 4.5 Constructed varieties of English
* 5 Phonology
o 5.1 Vowels
+ 5.1.1 Notes
o 5.2 Consonants
+ 5.2.1 Notes
+ 5.2.2 Voicing and aspiration
o 5.3 Supra-segmental features
+ 5.3.1 Tone groups
+ 5.3.2 Characteristics of intonation
* 6 Grammar
* 7 Vocabulary
o 7.1 Number of words in English
o 7.2 Word origins
+ 7.2.1 Dutch and Low German origins
+ 7.2.2 French origins
* 8 Writing system
o 8.1 Basic sound-letter correspondence
o 8.2 Written accents
* 9 Formal written English
* 10 Basic and simplified versions
* 11 See also
* 12 References
o 12.1 Bibliography
o 12.2 Notes
* 13 External links
Significance
See also: English-speaking world and Anglosphere
Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[14][15] is the dominant or in some instances required international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy.[16] Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late nineteenth century its reach was truly global.[17] Following British colonisation in North America, it is the dominant language in the United States, whose growing economic and cultural influence and status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language's adoption across the planet.[15]
A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). It is also one of six official languages of the United Nations.
Linguists such as David Crystal recognise that one impact of this massive growth of English, in common with other global languages, has been to reduce native linguistic diversity in many parts of the world, most particularly in Australasia and North America, and its huge influence continues to play an important role in language attrition.[18] Similarly, historical linguists, aware of the complex and fluid dynamics of language change, are always aware of the potential English contains through the vast size and spread of the communities that use it and its natural internal variety, such as in its creoles and pidgins, to produce a new family of distinct languages over time.[19]
History
Main article: History of the English language
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian and Lower Saxon dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 5th century. One of these Germanic tribes was the Angles,[20] who may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain,[21] leaving their former land empty. The names 'England' (from Engla land "Land of the Angles") and English (Old English Englisc) are derived from the name of this tribe.
The Anglo-Saxons began invading around 449 AD from the regions of Denmark and Jutland.[22][23] Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England the native population spoke Brythonic, a Celtic language.[24] Although the most significant changes in dialect occurred after the Norman invasion of 1066, the language retained its name and the pre-Norman invasion dialect is now known as Old English.[25]
Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Great Britain.[26] One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. One of the most prevalent forces in the evolution of the English language was the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning with the Rule of St Benedict in 530 and continuing until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, the Roman Catholic Church instructed monasteries and Catholic officials like Augustine of Canterbury to preserve intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria, and libraries.
During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a monopoly on intellectual property in British society, which they used to exert great influence on the English language.[citation needed] Catholic monks mainly wrote or copied text in Latin, the prevalent Medieval lingua franca of Europe.[27] When monks occasionally wrote in the vernacular, it was common to substitute or derive English-like words from Latin to describe or refer to things in which there was no English word. Extensive vocabulary, a derivative of Latin vocabularium, in the English language largely comprises Latin word derivatives. It is believed that the intellectual elite in British society over the years perpetuated vocabulary that Catholic monks contributed to English; furthermore, they continued the custom of deriving new words from Latin long after the waning of Catholic Church.[citation needed]
Old English vernacular was also influenced by two waves of invasion. The first was by language speakers of the North Germanic branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonised parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. (Over the centuries, this lost the specifically Norman element under the influence of Parisian French and, later, of English, eventually turning into a distinctive dialect of Anglo-French.) These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strict linguistic sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication).
Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a lexical supplementation of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and a huge vocabulary.
With the emergence and spread of the British Empire, the English language was adopted in regions around the world, such as North America, India, Africa, and Australia. The emergence of the United States as a superpower has also helped the spread of English.
Classification and related languages
The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic Family of Indo-European languages. The closest living relatives of English are Scots, spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland, and Frisian. As Scots is viewed by some linguists to be a group of English dialects rather than a separate language, Frisian is often considered to be the closest living relative.
After Scots and Frisian come those Germanic languages which are more distantly related, namely the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages (Low German, Dutch, Afrikaans, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the exception of Scots, and on an extremely basic level, Frisian, none of the other languages is mutually intelligible with English, due in part to the divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology, and to the isolation afforded to the English language by the British Isles, although some such as Dutch do show strong affinities with English. This isolation has allowed English and Scots to develop independently of the Continental Germanic languages and their influences over time. [28]
Lexical differences with the other Germanic languages can arise from several causes, such as natural semantic drift caused by isolation, and heavy usage in English of words taken from Latin (for example, "exit", vs. Dutch uitgang) (literally "out-gang" with "gang" as in "gangway") and French "change" vs. German Änderung, "movement" vs. German Bewegung (literally "othering" and "be-way-ing" ("proceeding along the way")). Preference of one synonym over another can also cause a differentiation in lexis, even where both words are Germanic (for instance, both English care and German Sorge descend from Proto-Germanic *karo and *surgo respectively, but *karo became the dominant word in English for "care" while in German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, the *surgo root prevailed. *Surgo still survives in English as sorrow).
Although the syntax of German is significantly different from that of English and other Germanic languages, with different rules for setting up sentences (for example, German Ich habe noch nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen, vs. English "I have still never seen anything in the square"), English syntax remains extremely similar to that of the North Germanic languages, which are believed to have influenced English syntax during the Middle English Period (eg., Norwegian Jeg har likevel aldri sett noe i torget; Swedish Jag har ännu aldrig sett något på torget).
Dutch syntax is intermediate between English and German (eg. Ik heb nog nooit iets gezien op het plein). In spite of this difference, there are more similarities between English and other Germanic languages than differences (eg. English bring/brought/brought, Dutch brengen/bracht/gebracht, Norwegian bringe/brakte/brakt; English eat/ate/eaten, Dutch eten/at/gegeten, Norwegian ete/åt/ett), with the most similarities occurring between English and the languages of the Low Countries (Dutch and Low German) and Scandinavia.
Semantic differences cause a number of false friends between English and its relatives (eg. English time "time" vs Norwegian time "hour"), and differences in Phonology can obscure words which actually are genetically related ("enough" vs. German genug, Danish nok). Sometimes both semantics and phonology are different (German Zeit, "time", is related to English "tide", but the English word, through a transitional phase of meaning "period"/"interval", has come to mean gravitational effects on the ocean by the moon, the original meaning preserved only in combined forms like Yuletide and betide).[citation needed] These differences, though minor, preclude mutual intelligibility, yet English is still infinitely closer to other Germanic languages than to languages of any other family.
Finally, English has been forming compound words and affixing existing words separately from the other Germanic languages for over 1500 years and has different habits in that regard. For instance, abstract nouns in English may be formed from native words by the suffixes "‑hood", "-ship", "-dom" and "-ness". All of these have cognate suffixes in most or all other Germanic languages, but their usage patterns have diverged, as German "Freiheit" vs. English "freedom" (the suffix "-heit" being cognate of English "-hood", while English "-dom" is cognate with German "-tum"). Icelandic and Faroese are other Germanic languages which follow English in this respect, since, like English, they developed independent of German influences.
Many written French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning of so-called false friends.
The pronunciation of most French loanwords in English (with exceptions such as mirage or phrases like coup d’état) has become completely anglicised and follows a typically English pattern of stress.[citation needed] Some North Germanic words also entered English because of the Danish invasion shortly before then (see Danelaw); these include words such as "sky", "window", "egg", and even "they" (and its forms) and "are" (the present plural form of "to be").[citation needed]
Geographical distribution
See also: List of countries by English-speaking population
[show]
v • d • e
The English-speaking world
The "Anglosphere"
English as an official language – clickable map
Dark blue: Countries and territories where English is spoken natively by a significant population.
Light blue: Countries where English is an official language but not native. English is also one of the official languages of the European Union. Click on the coloured regions to view the related article.
English sometimes spoken here
Anglophone states – countries and territories where English is spoken by a significant population:
Africa
Mauritius · Saint Helena · South Africa
Americas
Anguilla · Antigua and Barbuda · The Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Bermuda · British Virgin Islands · Canada · Cayman Islands · Dominica · Falkland Islands · Grenada · Guyana · Jamaica · Montserrat · Netherlands Antilles(Saba, Saint Eustatius, Saint Maarten) · Saint Kitts and Nevis · Saint Lucia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago · Turks and Caicos Islands · United States · United States Virgin Islands
Asia
Hong Kong · Philippines · Singapore
Europe
Guernsey · Isle of Man · Jersey · Malta · Republic of Ireland · United Kingdom
Oceania
Australia · Marshall Islands · Federated States of Micronesia · Nauru · New Zealand · Palau
Anglophone states – countries where English is an official language but not widely spoken:
Africa
Botswana · Cameroon · Ghana · Kenya · Lesotho · Liberia · Madagascar · Malawi · Namibia · Nigeria · Rwanda · Sierra Leone · Sudan · Swaziland · Tanzania · Uganda · Zambia · Zimbabwe
Americas
Puerto Rico
Asia
India · Malaysia · Pakistan
Oceania
Fiji · Papua New Guinea · Solomon Islands
English Wiktionary
Pie chart showing the relative numbers of native English speakers in the major English-speaking countries of the world
Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.[29] English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[30][31] However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese languages (depending on whether or not distinctions in the latter are classified as "languages" or "dialects").[6][32]
Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured.[33][34] Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[35]
The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million),[36] United Kingdom (61 million),[37] Canada (18.2 million),[38] Australia (15.5 million),[39], Ireland (3.8 million),[37], South Africa (3.7 million),[40] and New Zealand (3.6 million) 2006 Census [41]. No figure is given for the number of South African native speakers, but it would be somewhere between the number of people who spoke English only (3,008,058) and the total number of English speakers (3,673,623), if one ignores the 197,187 people who did not provide a usable answer.
Countries such as Jamaica and Nigeria also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to a more standard version of English. Of those nations where English is spoken as a second language, India has the most such speakers ('Indian English'). Crystal claims that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world.[42][43]
Countries in order of total speakers
Rank ↓ Country ↓ Total ↓ Percent of population ↓ First language ↓ As an additional language ↓ Population ↓ Comment
1 United States 251,388,301 96% 215,423,557 35,964,744 262,375,152 Source: US Census 2000: Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000, Table 1. Figure for second language speakers are respondents who reported they do not speak English at home but know it "very well" or "well". Note: figures are for population age 5 and older
2 India 90,000,000 8% 178,598 65,000,000 second language speakers.
25,000,000 third language speakers 1,028,737,436 Figures include both those who speak English as a second language and those who speak it as a third language. 1991 figures.[44][45] The figures include English speakers, but not English users.[46]
3 Nigeria 79,000,000 53% 4,000,000 >75,000,000 148,000,000 Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin, an English-based pidgin or creole. Ihemere gives a range of roughly 3 to 5 million native speakers; the midpoint of the range is used in the table. Ihemere, Kelechukwu Uchechukwu. 2006. "A Basic Description and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian Pidgin." Nordic Journal of African Studies 15(3): 296–313.
4 United Kingdom 59,600,000 98% 58,100,000 1,500,000 60,000,000 Source: Crystal (2005), p. 109.
5 Philippines 48,800,000 52%[47] 3,427,000[47] 45,373,000 92,000,000 Total speakers: Census 2000, text above Figure 7. 63.71% of the 66.7 million people aged 5 years or more could speak English. Native speakers: Census 1995, as quoted by Andrew Gonzalez in The Language Planning Situation in the Philippines, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 19 (5&6), 487–525. (1998). Ethnologue lists 3.4 million native speakers with 52% of the population speaking it as a additional language.[47]
6 Canada 25,246,220 85% 17,694,830 7,551,390 29,639,030 Source: 2001 Census – Knowledge of Official Languages and Mother Tongue. The native speakers figure comprises 122,660 people with both French and English as a mother tongue, plus 17,572,170 people with English and not French as a mother tongue.
7 Australia 18,172,989 92% 15,581,329 2,591,660 19,855,288 Source: 2006 Census.[48] The figure shown in the first language English speakers column is actually the number of Australian residents who speak only English at home. The additional language column shows the number of other residents who claim to speak English "well" or "very well". Another 5% of residents did not state their home language or English proficiency.
Note: Total = First language + Other language; Percentage = Total / Population
Countries where English is a major language
English is the primary language in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia (Australian English), the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize (Belizean Kriol), Bermuda, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Canada (Canadian English), the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guernsey (Channel Island English), Guyana, Ireland (Hiberno-English), Isle of Man (Manx English), Jamaica (Jamaican English), Jersey, Montserrat, Nauru, New Zealand (New Zealand English), Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United Kingdom, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the United States.
In some countries where English is not the most spoken language, it is an official language; these countries include Botswana, Cameroon, Dominica, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines (Philippine English), Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
It is also one of the 11 official languages that are given equal status in South Africa (South African English). English is also the official language in current dependent territories of Australia (Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and Cocos Island) and of the United States (Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and Puerto Rico),[49] the former British colony of Hong Kong, and Netherlands Antilles. (See List of countries where English is an official language for more details.)
English is not an official language in either the United States or the United Kingdom.[50][51] Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments.[52] Although falling short of official status, English is also an important language in several former colonies and protectorates of the United Kingdom, such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates. English is not a de jure official language of Israel; however, the country has maintained official language use[clarification needed] a de facto role for English since the British mandate.[53]
English as a global language
See also: English in computing, International English, and World language
Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language", the lingua franca of the modern era.[15] While English is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a second language around the world. Some linguists (such as David Graddol) believe that it is no longer the exclusive cultural property of "native English speakers", but is rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it continues to grow.[15] It is, by international treaty, the official language for aerial and maritime communications.[54] English is an official language of the United Nations and many other international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee.
English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union (by 89% of schoolchildren), followed by French (32%), German (18%), Spanish (8%), and Russian; while the perception of the usefulness of foreign languages amongst Europeans is 68% English, 25% French, 22% German, and 16% Spanish.[55] Among non-English speaking EU countries, a large percentage of the population claimed to have been able to converse in English in the Netherlands (87%), Sweden (85%), Denmark (83%), Luxembourg (66%), Finland (60%), Slovenia (56%), Austria (53%), Belgium (52%), and Germany (51%).[56] Norway and Iceland also have a large majority of competent English-speakers.[citation needed]
Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world. English is also the most commonly used language in the sciences.[15] In 1997, the Science Citation Index reported that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking countries.
Dialects and regional varieties
Main article: List of dialects of the English language
The expansion of the British Empire and—since World War II—the influence of the United States have spread English throughout the globe.[15] Because of that global spread, English has developed a host of English dialects and English-based creole languages and pidgins.
Two educated native dialects of English have wide acceptance as standards in much of the world—one based on educated southern British and the other based on educated Midwestern American. The former is sometimes called BBC (or the Queen's) English, and it may be noticeable by its preference for "Received Pronunciation"; it typifies the Cambridge model, which is the standard for the teaching of English to speakers of other languages in Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and other areas influenced either by the British Commonwealth or by a desire not to be identified with the United States.
The latter dialect, General American, which is spread over most of the United States and much of Canada, is more typically the model for the American continents and areas (such as the Philippines) which have had either close association with the United States or desire to be so identified. Aside from those two major dialects are numerous other varieties of English, which include, in most cases, several subvarieties, such as Cockney, Scouse and Geordie within British English; Newfoundland English within Canadian English; and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") and Southern American English within American English. English is a pluricentric language, without a central language authority like France's Académie française; and therefore no one variety is considered "correct" or "incorrect" except in terms of the expectations of the particular audience to which the language is directed.
Scots has its origins in early Northern Middle English[57] and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, but following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from Standard English, causing dialectalisation. Whether it is now a separate language or a dialect of English better described as Scottish English is in dispute, although the UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[58] There are a number of regional dialects of Scots, and pronunciation, grammar and lexis of the traditional forms differ, sometimes substantially, from other varieties of English.
English speakers have many different accents, which often signal the speaker's native dialect or language. For the more distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English, and for the more distinctive characteristics of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language. Within England, variation is now largely confined to pronunciation rather than grammar or vocabulary. At the time of the Survey of English Dialects, grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of lexical attrition has led most of this variation to die out.[59]
Just as English itself has borrowed words from many different languages over its history, English loanwords now appear in many languages around the world, indicative of the technological and cultural influence of its speakers. Several pidgins and creole languages have been formed on an English base, such as Jamaican Patois, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tok Pisin. There are many words in English coined to describe forms of particular non-English languages that contain a very high proportion of English words.
Constructed varieties of English
* Basic English is simplified for easy international use. Manufacturers and other international businesses tend to write manuals and communicate in Basic English. Some English schools in Asia teach it as a practical subset of English for use by beginners.
* E-Prime excludes forms of the verb to be.
* English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.
* Manually Coded English – a variety of systems have been developed to represent the English language with hand signals, designed primarily for use in deaf education. These should not be confused with true sign languages such as British Sign Language and American Sign Language used in Anglophone countries, which are independent and not based on English.
* Seaspeak and the related Airspeak and Policespeak, all based on restricted vocabularies, were designed by Edward Johnson in the 1980s to aid international cooperation and communication in specific areas. There is also a tunnelspeak for use in the Channel Tunnel.
* Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of only 1500 words.
Phonology
Main article: English phonology
Vowels
See also: IPA chart for English dialects
This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (December 2008)
It is the vowels that differ most from region to region. Length is not distinctive in most varieties of North American English.
IPA Description word
monophthongs
iː Close front unrounded vowel bead
ɪ Near-close near-front unrounded vowel bid
ɛ Open-mid front unrounded vowel bed[vn 1]
æ Near-open front unrounded vowel bad[vn 2]
ɒ Open back rounded vowel box[vn 3]
ɔː Open-mid back rounded vowel pawed[vn 4]
ɑː Open back unrounded vowel bra
ʊ Near-close near-back vowel good
uː Close back rounded vowel booed[vn 5]
ʌ Open-mid back unrounded vowel, near-open central vowel[vn 6] bud.
ɜr Open-mid central unrounded vowel bird[vn 7]
ə Schwa Rosa's[vn 8]
ɨ Close central unrounded vowel roses[vn 8][vn 9]
diphthongs
eɪ Close-mid front unrounded vowel-
Close front unrounded vowel bayed[vn 10]
oʊ Close-mid back rounded vowel-
Near-close near-back vowel bode[vn 11][vn 10]
aɪ Open front unrounded vowel
Near-close near-front unrounded vowel cry[vn 12]
aʊ Open front unrounded vowel
Near-close near-back vowel cow[vn 13]
ɔɪ Open-mid back rounded vowel
Close front unrounded vowel boy
ʊər Near-close near-back vowel
Schwa boor[vn 14]
ɛər Open-mid front unrounded vowel
Schwa fair[vn 15]
Notes
1. ^ In RP, this is closer to [e]
2. ^ In younger speakers of RP, this is closer to [a]
3. ^ Many American English dialects lack this sound; in such dialects, words with this sound elsewhere are pronounced with /ɑː/ or /ɔː/. See Lot-cloth split.
4. ^ Some dialects of North American English do not have this vowel. See Cot-caught merger.
5. ^ The letter can represent either /uː/ or the iotated vowel /juː/. In BRP, if this iotated vowel /juː/ occurs after /t/, /d/, /s/ or /z/, it often triggers palatalisation of the preceding consonant, turning it to [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ], [ɕ] and [ʑ] respectively, as in tune, during, sugar, and azure. In American English, palatalisation does not generally happen unless the /juː/ is followed by r, with the result that /(t, d, s, z)juːr/ turn to [tʃər], [dʒər], [ʃər] and [ʒər] respectively, as in nature, verdure, sure, and treasure.
6. ^ The back-vowel symbol ʌ is conventional for this English central vowel. It is actually generally closer to a [ɐ] In the northern half of England, this vowel is not used and ʊ is used in its place.
7. ^ The North American variation of this sound is a rhotic vowel [ɝ], the RP version a long central vowel [ɜː].
8. ^ a b Many speakers of North American English do not distinguish between these two unstressed vowels. For them, roses and Rosa's are pronounced the same, and the symbol usually used is schwa /ə/.
9. ^ This sound is often transcribed with /ə/ or with /ɪ/.
10. ^ a b The diphthongs /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ are monophthongal [eː] and [oː] in many dialects, including General American, Scottish, Irish and Northern English.
11. ^ In RP and parts of North America, this is closer to [əʊ]. As a reduced vowel, it may become [ɵ] ([ɵʊ] before another vowel) or [ə], depending on accent.
12. ^ In parts of North America (especially in Canada) /aɪ/ is pronounced [ʌɪ] before voiceless consonants, so that writer and rider and distinguished by their vowels, [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ, ˈɹaɪɾɚ], rather than their consonants.
13. ^ In Canada, this is pronounced [ʌʊ] before a voiceless consonant.
14. ^ In many accents, this sound is coming to be pronounced [ɔː(r)] rather than [ʊə(r)]. See English-language vowel changes before historic r.
15. ^ In some non-rhotic accents, the schwa offglide of /ɛə/ may be dropped, monophthising and lengthening the sound to [ɛː].
Consonants
This is the English consonantal system using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
Bilabial Labio-
dental Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar Palatal Velar Labial-
velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ[cn 1]
Plosive p b t d k ɡ
Affricate tʃ dʒ[cn 2]
Fricative f v θ ð[cn 3] s z ʃ ʒ[cn 2] ç[cn 4] x[cn 5] h
Flap ɾ[cn 6]
Approximant ɹ[cn 2] j ʍ w[cn 7]
Lateral l
Notes
1. ^ The velar nasal [ŋ] is a non-phonemic allophone of /n/ in some northerly British accents, appearing only before /k/ and /ɡ/. In all other dialects it is a separate phoneme, although it only occurs in syllable codas.
2. ^ a b c The sounds /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and /ɹ/ are labialised in some dialects. Labialisation is never contrastive in initial position and therefore is sometimes not transcribed. Most speakers of General American realise (always rhoticised) as the retroflex approximant /ɻ/, whereas the same is realised in Scottish English, etc. as the alveolar trill.
3. ^ In some dialects, such as Cockney, the interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ have usually merged with /f/ and /v/, and in others, like African American Vernacular English, /ð/ has merged with dental /d/. In some Irish varieties, /θ/ and /ð/ become dental plosives, which then contrast with the usual alveolar plosives.
4. ^ The voiceless palatal fricative /ç/ is in most accents just an allophone of /h/ before /j/; for instance human /çjuːmən/. However, in some accents (see this), the /j/ has dropped, but the initial consonant is the same.
5. ^ The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is used by Scottish or Welsh speakers of English for Scots/Gaelic words such as loch /lɒx/ or by some speakers for loanwords from German and Hebrew like Bach /bax/ or Chanukah /xanuka/. /x/ is also used in South African English. In some dialects such as Scouse (Liverpool) either [x] or the affricate [kx] may be used as an allophone of /k/ in words such as docker [dɒkxə]. Most native speakers have a great deal of trouble pronouncing it correctly when learning a foreign language. Most speakers use the sounds [k] and [h] instead.
6. ^ The alveolar tap [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in unstressed syllables in North American English and Australian English.[60] This is the sound of tt or dd in the words latter and ladder, which are homophones for many speakers of North American English. In some accents such as Scottish English and Indian English it replaces /ɹ/. This is the same sound represented by single r in most varieties of Spanish.
7. ^ Voiceless w [ʍ] is found in Scottish and Irish English, as well as in some varieties of American, New Zealand, and English English. In most other dialects it is merged with /w/, in some dialects of Scots it is merged with /f/.
Voicing and aspiration
Voicing and aspiration of stop consonants in English depend on dialect and context, but a few general rules can be given:
* Voiceless plosives and affricates (/p/, /t/, /k/, and /tʃ/) are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable – compare pin [pʰɪn] and spin [spɪn], crap [kʰɹ̥æp] and scrap [skɹæp].
o In some dialects, aspiration extends to unstressed syllables as well.
o In other dialects, such as Indian English, all voiceless stops remain unaspirated.
* Word-initial voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects.
* Word-terminal voiceless plosives may be unreleased or accompanied by a glottal stop in some dialects; examples: tap [tʰæp̚], sack [sæk̚].
* Word-terminal voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects (e.g. some varieties of American English) – examples: sad [sæd̥], bag [bæɡ̊]. In other dialects, they are fully voiced in final position, but only partially voiced in initial position.
Supra-segmental features
Tone groups
English is an intonation language. This means that the pitch of the voice is used syntactically; for example, to convey surprise and irony, or to change a statement into a question.
In English, intonation patterns are on groups of words, which are called tone groups, tone units, intonation groups, or sense groups. Tone groups are said on a single breath and, as a consequence, are of limited length, more often being on average five words long or lasting roughly two seconds. For example:
/duː juː ˈniːd ˈɛnɪθɪŋ/ Do you need anything?
/aɪ ˈdoʊnt | ˈnoʊ/ I don't, no
/aɪ doʊnt ˈnoʊ/ I don't know (contracted to, for example, [ˈaɪ doʊnoʊ] or [ˈaɪdənoʊ] I dunno in fast or colloquial speech that de-emphasises the pause between 'don't' and 'know' even further)
Characteristics of intonation
English is a strongly stressed language, in that certain syllables, both within words and within phrases, get a relative prominence/loudness during pronunciation while the others do not. The former kind of syllables are said to be accentuated/stressed and the latter are unaccentuated/unstressed.
Hence in a sentence, each tone group can be subdivided into syllables, which can either be stressed (strong) or unstressed (weak). The stressed syllable is called the nuclear syllable. For example:
That | was | the | best | thing | you | could | have | done!
Here, all syllables are unstressed, except the syllables/words best and done, which are stressed. Best is stressed harder and, therefore, is the nuclear syllable.
The nuclear syllable carries the main point the speaker wishes to make. For example:
John had not stolen that money. (... Someone else had.)
John had not stolen that money. (... Someone said he had. or ... Not at that time, but later he did.)
John had not stolen that money. (... He acquired the money by some other means.)
John had not stolen that money. (... He had stolen some other money.)
John had not stolen that money. (... He had stolen something else.)
Also
I did not tell her that. (... Someone else told her)
I did not tell her that. (... You said I did. or ... but now I will)
I did not tell her that. (... I did not say it; she could have inferred it, etc)
I did not tell her that. (... I told someone else)
I did not tell her that. (... I told her something else)
This can also be used to express emotion:
Oh, really? (...I did not know that)
Oh, really? (...I disbelieve you. or ... That is blatantly obvious)
The nuclear syllable is spoken more loudly than the others and has a characteristic change of pitch. The changes of pitch most commonly encountered in English are the rising pitch and the falling pitch, although the fall-rising pitch and/or the rise-falling pitch are sometimes used. In this opposition between falling and rising pitch, which plays a larger role in English than in most other languages, falling pitch conveys certainty and rising pitch uncertainty. This can have a crucial impact on meaning, specifically in relation to polarity, the positive–negative opposition; thus, falling pitch means, "polarity known", while rising pitch means "polarity unknown". This underlies the rising pitch of yes/no questions. For example:
When do you want to be paid?
Now? (Rising pitch. In this case, it denotes a question: "Can I be paid now?" or "Do you desire to pay now?")
Now. (Falling pitch. In this case, it denotes a statement: "I choose to be paid now.")
Grammar
Main article: English grammar
English grammar has minimal inflection compared with most other Indo-European languages. For example, Modern English, unlike Modern German or Dutch and the Romance languages, lacks grammatical gender and adjectival agreement. Case marking has almost disappeared from the language and mainly survives in pronouns. The patterning of strong (e.g. speak/spoke/spoken) versus weak verbs inherited from its Germanic origins has declined in importance in modern English, and the remnants of inflection (such as plural marking) have become more regular.
At the same time, the language has become more analytic, and has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.
Vocabulary
The English vocabulary has changed considerably over the centuries.[61]
Search Wiktionary Look up Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Like many languages deriving from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), many of the most common words in English can trace back their origin (through the Germanic branch) to PIE. Such words include the basic pronouns I, from Old English ic, (cf. German Ich, Gothic ik, Latin ego, Greek ego, Sanskrit aham), me (cf. German mich, mir, Gothic mik, mīs, Latin me, Greek eme, Sanskrit mam), numbers (e.g. one, two, three, cf. Dutch een, twee, drie, Gothic ains, twai, threis (þreis), Latin unus, duo, tres, Greek oinos "ace (on dice)", duo, treis), common family relationships such as mother, father, brother, sister etc (cf. Dutch moeder, Greek meter, Latin mater, Sanskrit matṛ; mother), names of many animals (cf. German Maus, Dutch muis, Sankrit mus, Greek mys, Latin mus; mouse), and many common verbs (cf. Old High German knājan, Old Norse knā, Greek gignōmi, Latin gnoscere, Hittite kanes; to know).
Germanic words (generally words of Old English or to a lesser extent Old Norse origin) tend to be shorter than Latinate words in Modern English, and are more common in ordinary speech, and include nearly all the basic pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs etc. that form the basis of English syntax and grammar. The shortness of the words is generally due to syncopation in Middle English (eg. OldEng hēafod > ModEng head, OldEng sāwol > ModEng soul) and to the loss of final syllables due to stress (eg. OldEng gamen > ModEng game, OldEng ǣrende > ModEng errand), not because Germanic words are inherently shorter than Latinate words. (The lengthier, higher-register words of Old English were largely forgotten following the subjugation of English after the Norman Conquest, and most of the Old English lexis devoted to literature, the arts, and sciences ceased to be productive when it fell into disuse.) Longer Latinate words in Modern English are often regarded as more elegant or educated. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is considered at times to be either pretentious or an attempt to obfuscate an issue. George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", considered an important scrutinisation of the English language, is critical of this, as well as other perceived misuse of the language.
An English speaker is in many cases able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: come or arrive; sight or vision; freedom or liberty. In some cases, there is a choice between a Germanic derived word (oversee), a Latin derived word (supervise), and a French word derived from the same Latin word (survey); or even words derived from Norman French (e.g., warranty) and Parisian French (guarantee), and even choices involving multiple Germanic and Latinate sources are possible: sick (Old English), ill (Old Norse), infirm (French), afflicted (Latin). Such synonyms harbor a variety of different meanings and nuances, enabling the speaker to express fine variations or shades of thought. Familiarity with the etymology of groups of synonyms can give English speakers greater control over their linguistic register. See: List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English, Doublet (linguistics).
An exception to this and a peculiarity perhaps unique to a handful of languages, English included, is that the nouns for meats are commonly different from, and unrelated to, those for the animals from which they are produced, the animal commonly having a Germanic name and the meat having a French-derived one. Examples include: deer and venison; cow and beef; swine/pig and pork; and sheep and mutton. This is assumed to be a result of the aftermath of the Norman invasion, where an Anglo-Norman-speaking elite were the consumers of the meat, produced by lower classes, which happened to be largely Anglo-Saxon.[citation needed]
Since the majority of words used in informal settings will normally be Germanic, such words are often the preferred choices when a speaker wishes to make a point in an argument in a very direct way. A majority of Latinate words (or at least a majority of content words) will normally be used in more formal speech and writing, such as in a courtroom or an encyclopædia article.[citation needed] However, there are other Latinate words that are used in everyday speech which are not formal; these words no longer appear Latinate and oftentimes have no Germanic equivalents. For instance, the words mountain, valley, river, aunt, uncle, move, use, push and stay ("to remain") are Latinate. Likewise, the inverse can occur: acknowledge, meaningful, understanding, mindful, behaviour, forbearance, behoove, forestall, allay, rhyme, starvation, embodiment come from Anglo-Saxon, and allegiance, abandonment, debutant, feudalism, seizure, guarantee, disregard, wardrobe, disenfranchise, disarray, bandolier, bourgeoisie, debauchery, performance, furniture, gallantry are of Germanic origin, usually through the Germanic element in French, so it is oftentimes impossible to know the origin of a word based on its register.
English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and often imports new words and phrases. Examples of this phenomenon include contemporary words such as cookie, Internet and URL (technical terms), as well as genre, über, lingua franca and amigo (imported words/phrases from French, German, Italian, and Spanish, respectively). In addition, slang often provides new meanings for old words and phrases. In fact, this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage.
See also: sociolinguistics.
Number of words in English
The General Explanations at the beginning of the Oxford English Dictionary states:
The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.
The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation. Unlike other languages, such as French, German, Spanish and Italian, there is no Academy to define officially accepted words and spellings. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science, technology and other fields, and new slang is constantly developed. Some of these new words enter wide usage; others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might or might not be widely considered as "English".
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (OED2) includes over 600,000 definitions, following a rather inclusive policy:
It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang (Supplement to the OED, 1933).[62]
The editors of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (475,000 main headwords) in their preface, estimate the number to be much higher. It is estimated that about 25,000 words are added to the language each year.[63]
The Global Language Monitor announced that the English language had crossed the 1,000,000-word threshold on June 10, 2009.[64] The announcement was met with strong skepticism by linguists and lexicographers,[65] though a number of non-specialist reports[66][67] accepted the figure uncritically.
Word origins
Main article: Lists of English words of international origin
One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words which are Germanic (mostly West Germanic, with a smaller influence from the North Germanic branch) and those which are "Latinate" (Latin-derived, either directly or from Norman French or other Romance languages).
The majority (83%) of the 1,000 most common English words, and all of the 100 most common, are Germanic (though of Old English and unique to the isle).[68] Conversely, a vast majority of more advanced words from subjects such as the sciences, philosophy, math, etc. come from Latin or Greek. A noticeable number of words from astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry are from Arabic.
Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the proportionate origins of English vocabulary. None, as of yet, is considered definitive by most linguists.
A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973)[69] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
Influences in English vocabulary
* Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
* Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
* Other Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English; does not include Germanic words coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages): 25%
* Greek: 5.32%
* No etymology given: 4.03%
* Derived from proper names: 3.28%
* All other languages: less than 1%
A survey by Joseph M. Williams in Origins of the English Language of 10,000 words taken from several thousand business letters gave this set of statistics:[70]
* French (langue d'oïl): 41%
* "Native" English: 33%
* Latin: 15%
* Old Norse: 2%
* Dutch: 1%
* Other: 10%
Dutch and Low German origins
Main article: List of English words of Dutch origin
Many words describing the navy, types of ships, and other objects or activities on the water are of Dutch origin. Yacht (jacht), skipper (schipper) and cruiser (kruiser) are examples. Other words pertain to art and daily life: easel (ezel), etch (etsen), slim (slim), staple (Middle Dutch stapel "market"), slip (Middle Dutch slippen). Dutch has also contributed to English slang, e.g. spook, and the now obsolete snyder (tailor) and stiver (small coin).
Words from Low German include trade (Middle Low German trade), smuggle (smuggeln), and dollar (daler/thaler).
French origins
Main article: List of French words and phrases used by English speakers
A large portion of English vocabulary is of French or Langues d'oïl origin, and was transmitted to English via the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the upper classes in England in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. Words of French origin include competition, mountain, art, table, publicity, police, role, routine, machine, force, and thousands of others, most of which have been anglicised to fit English rules of phonology, pronunciation and spelling, rather than those of French (with a few exceptions, for example, façade and affaire de cœur.)
Writing system
Main articles: English alphabet and English orthography
Since around the ninth century, English has been written in the Latin alphabet, which replaced Anglo-Saxon runes. The spelling system, or orthography, is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system; it has grown to vary significantly from the phonology of the language. The spelling of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken.
Though letters and sounds may not correspond in isolation, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are 75% or more reliable.[71] Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic.[72] However, English has fewer consistent relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages; for example, the sound sequence ough can be pronounced in 10 different ways. The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that reading can be challenging.[73] It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish.[74]
Basic sound-letter correspondence
See also: Hard and soft C and Hard and soft G
IPA Alphabetic representation Dialect-specific
p p
b b
t t, th (rarely) thyme, Thames th thing (African American, New York)
d d th that (African American, New York)
k c (+ a, o, u, consonants), k, ck, ch, qu (rarely) conquer, kh (in foreign words)
g g, gh, gu (+ a, e, i), gue (final position)
m m
n n
ŋ n (before g or k), ng
f f, ph, gh (final, infrequent) laugh, rough th thing (many forms of English language in England)
v v th with (Cockney, Estuary English)
θ th thick, think, through
ð th that, this, the
s s, c (+ e, i, y), sc (+ e, i, y), ç often c (façade/facade)
z z, s (finally or occasionally medially), ss (rarely) possess, dessert, word-initial x xylophone
ʃ sh, sch, ti (before vowel) portion, ci/ce (before vowel) suspicion, ocean; si/ssi (before vowel) tension, mission; ch (esp. in words of French origin); rarely s/ss before u sugar, issue; chsi in fuchsia only
ʒ medial si (before vowel) division, medial s (before "ur") pleasure, zh (in foreign words), z before u azure, g (in words of French origin) (+e, i, y) genre, j (in words of French origin) bijou
x kh, ch, h (in foreign words) occasionally ch loch (Scottish English, Welsh English)
h h (syllable-initially, otherwise silent), j (in words of Spanish origin) jai alai
tʃ ch, tch, t before u future, culture t (+ u, ue, eu) tune, Tuesday, Teutonic (several dialects – see Phonological history of English consonant clusters)
dʒ j, g (+ e, i, y), dg (+ e, i, consonant) badge, judg(e)ment d (+ u, ue, ew) dune, due, dew (several dialects – another example of yod coalescence)
ɹ r, wr (initial) wrangle
j y (initially or surrounded by vowels), j hallelujah
l l
w w
ʍ wh (pronounced hw) Scottish and Irish English, as well as some varieties of American, New Zealand, and English English
Written accents
Main article: English words with diacritics
Unlike most other Germanic languages, English has almost no diacritics except in foreign loanwords (like the acute accent in café), and in the uncommon use of a diaeresis mark (often in formal writing) to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as one sound (e.g. naïve, Zoë). Words such as décor, café, résumé/résumé, entrée, fiancée and naïve are frequently spelt both ways.
Some English words retain diacritics to distinguish them from others, such as animé, exposé, lamé, öre, øre, pâté, piqué, and rosé, though these are sometimes also dropped (for example, résumé/résumé is often spelt resume in the United States). To clarify pronunciation, a small number of loanwords may employ a diacritic that does not appear in the original word, such as maté, from Spanish yerba mate, following the French usage.
Formal written English
Main article: Formal written English
A version of the language almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world is called formal written English. It takes virtually the same form regardless of where it is written, in contrast to spoken English, which differs significantly between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang and of colloquial and regional expressions. Local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited, being restricted largely to the spelling differences between British and American English, along with a few minor differences in grammar and lexis.
Basic and simplified versions
To make English easier to read, there are some simplified versions of the language. One basic version is named Basic English, a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English. Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English. Thus, Basic English may be employed by companies which need to make complex books for international use, as well as by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time.
Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be said with a few other words and he worked to make the words work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also made the grammar simpler, but tried to keep the grammar normal for English users.
The concept gained its greatest publicity just after the Second World War as a tool for world peace.[citation needed] Although it was not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised for various international uses.
Another version, Simplified English, exists, which is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardised[by whom?] subset of English. Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word close can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear".
See also
Wikipedia Books Wikipedia:Books has a book on: English language
* Changes to Old English vocabulary
* English for Academic Purposes
* English language learning and teaching
* Language Report
* Lists of English words
* Teaching English as a foreign language
* The Adventure of English (film)
References
Bibliography
* Ammon, Ulrich (2006). Sociolinguistics: an international handbook of the science of language and society. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3110184184. http://books.google.com/books?id=LMZm0w0k1c4C&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Baugh, Albert C.; Thomas Cable (2002). A history of the English language (5th ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28099-0.
* Bragg, Melvyn (2004). The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-710-0.
* Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53032-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=d6jPAKxTHRYC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Crystal, David (2003). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53033-4.
* Crystal, David (2004). The Stories of English. Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9752-4.
* Halliday, MAK (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0-340-55782-6.
* Hayford, Harrison; Howard P. Vincent (1954). Reader and Writer. Houghton Mifflin Company. [4]
* Howatt, Anthony (2004). A history of English language teaching. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0194421856. http://books.google.com/books?id=g2e7iw_F-ZcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Kenyon, John Samuel and Knott, Thomas Albert, A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, G & C Merriam Company, Springfield, Mass, USA,1953.
* Mazrui, Alamin (1998). The power of Babel: language & governance in the African experience. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0852558074. http://books.google.com/books?id=6lQTPxdYx8kC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* McArthur, T. (ed.) (1992). The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-214183-X.
* Plotkin, Vulf (2006). The Language System of English. BrownWalker Press. ISBN 1-58112-993-9.
* Robinson, Orrin (1992). Old English and Its Closest Relatives. Stanford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-8047-2221-8.
* Schneider, Edgar (2007). Postcolonial English: varieties around the world. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521831407. http://books.google.com/books?id=QIE6zGSd8okC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Wardhaugh, Ronald (2006). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 140513559X. http://books.google.com/books?id=0J2VOzNYtKQC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
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This article is semi-protected.
English
Pronunciation /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/[1]
Spoken in (see below)
Total speakers First language: 309–400 million
Second language: 199–1,400 million[2][3]
Overall: 500 million–1.8 billion[4][3]
Ranking 3 (native speakers)[5]
Total: 3 [6]
Language family Indo-European
* Germanic
o West Germanic
+ Anglo–Frisian
# English
Writing system Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language in 53 countries
United Nations
European Union
Commonwealth of Nations
CoE
NATO
NAFTA
OAS
OIC
PIF
UKUSA
Regulated by No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1 en
ISO 639-2 eng
ISO 639-3 eng
Anglospeak.svg
Countries where English is a majority language are dark blue; countries where it is an official but not a majority language are light blue. English is also one of the official languages of the European Union.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,[7][8][9][10] it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world.[11][12] It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries and many international organisations.
Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. English was further influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders.
At the time of the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman (Anglo-French) vocabulary and spelling conventions. The etymology of the word "English" is a derivation from the 12th century Old English englisc or Engle, plural form Angles ("of, relating to, or characteristic of England").[13]
Modern English developed with the Great Vowel Shift that began in 15th-century England, and continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of languages, as well as coining new words. A significant number of English words, especially technical words, have been constructed based on roots from Latin and ancient Greek.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Significance
* 2 History
* 3 Classification and related languages
* 4 Geographical distribution
o 4.1 Countries in order of total speakers
o 4.2 Countries where English is a major language
o 4.3 English as a global language
o 4.4 Dialects and regional varieties
o 4.5 Constructed varieties of English
* 5 Phonology
o 5.1 Vowels
+ 5.1.1 Notes
o 5.2 Consonants
+ 5.2.1 Notes
+ 5.2.2 Voicing and aspiration
o 5.3 Supra-segmental features
+ 5.3.1 Tone groups
+ 5.3.2 Characteristics of intonation
* 6 Grammar
* 7 Vocabulary
o 7.1 Number of words in English
o 7.2 Word origins
+ 7.2.1 Dutch and Low German origins
+ 7.2.2 French origins
* 8 Writing system
o 8.1 Basic sound-letter correspondence
o 8.2 Written accents
* 9 Formal written English
* 10 Basic and simplified versions
* 11 See also
* 12 References
o 12.1 Bibliography
o 12.2 Notes
* 13 External links
Significance
See also: English-speaking world and Anglosphere
Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[14][15] is the dominant or in some instances required international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy.[16] Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late nineteenth century its reach was truly global.[17] Following British colonisation in North America, it is the dominant language in the United States, whose growing economic and cultural influence and status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language's adoption across the planet.[15]
A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). It is also one of six official languages of the United Nations.
Linguists such as David Crystal recognise that one impact of this massive growth of English, in common with other global languages, has been to reduce native linguistic diversity in many parts of the world, most particularly in Australasia and North America, and its huge influence continues to play an important role in language attrition.[18] Similarly, historical linguists, aware of the complex and fluid dynamics of language change, are always aware of the potential English contains through the vast size and spread of the communities that use it and its natural internal variety, such as in its creoles and pidgins, to produce a new family of distinct languages over time.[19]
History
Main article: History of the English language
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian and Lower Saxon dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 5th century. One of these Germanic tribes was the Angles,[20] who may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain,[21] leaving their former land empty. The names 'England' (from Engla land "Land of the Angles") and English (Old English Englisc) are derived from the name of this tribe.
The Anglo-Saxons began invading around 449 AD from the regions of Denmark and Jutland.[22][23] Before the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England the native population spoke Brythonic, a Celtic language.[24] Although the most significant changes in dialect occurred after the Norman invasion of 1066, the language retained its name and the pre-Norman invasion dialect is now known as Old English.[25]
Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Great Britain.[26] One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate. One of the most prevalent forces in the evolution of the English language was the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning with the Rule of St Benedict in 530 and continuing until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, the Roman Catholic Church instructed monasteries and Catholic officials like Augustine of Canterbury to preserve intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria, and libraries.
During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a monopoly on intellectual property in British society, which they used to exert great influence on the English language.[citation needed] Catholic monks mainly wrote or copied text in Latin, the prevalent Medieval lingua franca of Europe.[27] When monks occasionally wrote in the vernacular, it was common to substitute or derive English-like words from Latin to describe or refer to things in which there was no English word. Extensive vocabulary, a derivative of Latin vocabularium, in the English language largely comprises Latin word derivatives. It is believed that the intellectual elite in British society over the years perpetuated vocabulary that Catholic monks contributed to English; furthermore, they continued the custom of deriving new words from Latin long after the waning of Catholic Church.[citation needed]
Old English vernacular was also influenced by two waves of invasion. The first was by language speakers of the North Germanic branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonised parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. (Over the centuries, this lost the specifically Norman element under the influence of Parisian French and, later, of English, eventually turning into a distinctive dialect of Anglo-French.) These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it was never a truly mixed language in the strict linguistic sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication).
Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a lexical supplementation of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and a huge vocabulary.
With the emergence and spread of the British Empire, the English language was adopted in regions around the world, such as North America, India, Africa, and Australia. The emergence of the United States as a superpower has also helped the spread of English.
Classification and related languages
The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic Family of Indo-European languages. The closest living relatives of English are Scots, spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland, and Frisian. As Scots is viewed by some linguists to be a group of English dialects rather than a separate language, Frisian is often considered to be the closest living relative.
After Scots and Frisian come those Germanic languages which are more distantly related, namely the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic languages (Low German, Dutch, Afrikaans, High German), and the North Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). With the exception of Scots, and on an extremely basic level, Frisian, none of the other languages is mutually intelligible with English, due in part to the divergences in lexis, syntax, semantics, and phonology, and to the isolation afforded to the English language by the British Isles, although some such as Dutch do show strong affinities with English. This isolation has allowed English and Scots to develop independently of the Continental Germanic languages and their influences over time. [28]
Lexical differences with the other Germanic languages can arise from several causes, such as natural semantic drift caused by isolation, and heavy usage in English of words taken from Latin (for example, "exit", vs. Dutch uitgang) (literally "out-gang" with "gang" as in "gangway") and French "change" vs. German Änderung, "movement" vs. German Bewegung (literally "othering" and "be-way-ing" ("proceeding along the way")). Preference of one synonym over another can also cause a differentiation in lexis, even where both words are Germanic (for instance, both English care and German Sorge descend from Proto-Germanic *karo and *surgo respectively, but *karo became the dominant word in English for "care" while in German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, the *surgo root prevailed. *Surgo still survives in English as sorrow).
Although the syntax of German is significantly different from that of English and other Germanic languages, with different rules for setting up sentences (for example, German Ich habe noch nie etwas auf dem Platz gesehen, vs. English "I have still never seen anything in the square"), English syntax remains extremely similar to that of the North Germanic languages, which are believed to have influenced English syntax during the Middle English Period (eg., Norwegian Jeg har likevel aldri sett noe i torget; Swedish Jag har ännu aldrig sett något på torget).
Dutch syntax is intermediate between English and German (eg. Ik heb nog nooit iets gezien op het plein). In spite of this difference, there are more similarities between English and other Germanic languages than differences (eg. English bring/brought/brought, Dutch brengen/bracht/gebracht, Norwegian bringe/brakte/brakt; English eat/ate/eaten, Dutch eten/at/gegeten, Norwegian ete/åt/ett), with the most similarities occurring between English and the languages of the Low Countries (Dutch and Low German) and Scandinavia.
Semantic differences cause a number of false friends between English and its relatives (eg. English time "time" vs Norwegian time "hour"), and differences in Phonology can obscure words which actually are genetically related ("enough" vs. German genug, Danish nok). Sometimes both semantics and phonology are different (German Zeit, "time", is related to English "tide", but the English word, through a transitional phase of meaning "period"/"interval", has come to mean gravitational effects on the ocean by the moon, the original meaning preserved only in combined forms like Yuletide and betide).[citation needed] These differences, though minor, preclude mutual intelligibility, yet English is still infinitely closer to other Germanic languages than to languages of any other family.
Finally, English has been forming compound words and affixing existing words separately from the other Germanic languages for over 1500 years and has different habits in that regard. For instance, abstract nouns in English may be formed from native words by the suffixes "‑hood", "-ship", "-dom" and "-ness". All of these have cognate suffixes in most or all other Germanic languages, but their usage patterns have diverged, as German "Freiheit" vs. English "freedom" (the suffix "-heit" being cognate of English "-hood", while English "-dom" is cognate with German "-tum"). Icelandic and Faroese are other Germanic languages which follow English in this respect, since, like English, they developed independent of German influences.
Many written French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning of so-called false friends.
The pronunciation of most French loanwords in English (with exceptions such as mirage or phrases like coup d’état) has become completely anglicised and follows a typically English pattern of stress.[citation needed] Some North Germanic words also entered English because of the Danish invasion shortly before then (see Danelaw); these include words such as "sky", "window", "egg", and even "they" (and its forms) and "are" (the present plural form of "to be").[citation needed]
Geographical distribution
See also: List of countries by English-speaking population
[show]
v • d • e
The English-speaking world
The "Anglosphere"
English as an official language – clickable map
Dark blue: Countries and territories where English is spoken natively by a significant population.
Light blue: Countries where English is an official language but not native. English is also one of the official languages of the European Union. Click on the coloured regions to view the related article.
English sometimes spoken here
Anglophone states – countries and territories where English is spoken by a significant population:
Africa
Mauritius · Saint Helena · South Africa
Americas
Anguilla · Antigua and Barbuda · The Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Bermuda · British Virgin Islands · Canada · Cayman Islands · Dominica · Falkland Islands · Grenada · Guyana · Jamaica · Montserrat · Netherlands Antilles(Saba, Saint Eustatius, Saint Maarten) · Saint Kitts and Nevis · Saint Lucia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago · Turks and Caicos Islands · United States · United States Virgin Islands
Asia
Hong Kong · Philippines · Singapore
Europe
Guernsey · Isle of Man · Jersey · Malta · Republic of Ireland · United Kingdom
Oceania
Australia · Marshall Islands · Federated States of Micronesia · Nauru · New Zealand · Palau
Anglophone states – countries where English is an official language but not widely spoken:
Africa
Botswana · Cameroon · Ghana · Kenya · Lesotho · Liberia · Madagascar · Malawi · Namibia · Nigeria · Rwanda · Sierra Leone · Sudan · Swaziland · Tanzania · Uganda · Zambia · Zimbabwe
Americas
Puerto Rico
Asia
India · Malaysia · Pakistan
Oceania
Fiji · Papua New Guinea · Solomon Islands
English Wiktionary
Pie chart showing the relative numbers of native English speakers in the major English-speaking countries of the world
Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.[29] English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[30][31] However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese languages (depending on whether or not distinctions in the latter are classified as "languages" or "dialects").[6][32]
Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured.[33][34] Linguistics professor David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[35]
The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million),[36] United Kingdom (61 million),[37] Canada (18.2 million),[38] Australia (15.5 million),[39], Ireland (3.8 million),[37], South Africa (3.7 million),[40] and New Zealand (3.6 million) 2006 Census [41]. No figure is given for the number of South African native speakers, but it would be somewhere between the number of people who spoke English only (3,008,058) and the total number of English speakers (3,673,623), if one ignores the 197,187 people who did not provide a usable answer.
Countries such as Jamaica and Nigeria also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to a more standard version of English. Of those nations where English is spoken as a second language, India has the most such speakers ('Indian English'). Crystal claims that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world.[42][43]
Countries in order of total speakers
Rank ↓ Country ↓ Total ↓ Percent of population ↓ First language ↓ As an additional language ↓ Population ↓ Comment
1 United States 251,388,301 96% 215,423,557 35,964,744 262,375,152 Source: US Census 2000: Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000, Table 1. Figure for second language speakers are respondents who reported they do not speak English at home but know it "very well" or "well". Note: figures are for population age 5 and older
2 India 90,000,000 8% 178,598 65,000,000 second language speakers.
25,000,000 third language speakers 1,028,737,436 Figures include both those who speak English as a second language and those who speak it as a third language. 1991 figures.[44][45] The figures include English speakers, but not English users.[46]
3 Nigeria 79,000,000 53% 4,000,000 >75,000,000 148,000,000 Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin, an English-based pidgin or creole. Ihemere gives a range of roughly 3 to 5 million native speakers; the midpoint of the range is used in the table. Ihemere, Kelechukwu Uchechukwu. 2006. "A Basic Description and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian Pidgin." Nordic Journal of African Studies 15(3): 296–313.
4 United Kingdom 59,600,000 98% 58,100,000 1,500,000 60,000,000 Source: Crystal (2005), p. 109.
5 Philippines 48,800,000 52%[47] 3,427,000[47] 45,373,000 92,000,000 Total speakers: Census 2000, text above Figure 7. 63.71% of the 66.7 million people aged 5 years or more could speak English. Native speakers: Census 1995, as quoted by Andrew Gonzalez in The Language Planning Situation in the Philippines, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 19 (5&6), 487–525. (1998). Ethnologue lists 3.4 million native speakers with 52% of the population speaking it as a additional language.[47]
6 Canada 25,246,220 85% 17,694,830 7,551,390 29,639,030 Source: 2001 Census – Knowledge of Official Languages and Mother Tongue. The native speakers figure comprises 122,660 people with both French and English as a mother tongue, plus 17,572,170 people with English and not French as a mother tongue.
7 Australia 18,172,989 92% 15,581,329 2,591,660 19,855,288 Source: 2006 Census.[48] The figure shown in the first language English speakers column is actually the number of Australian residents who speak only English at home. The additional language column shows the number of other residents who claim to speak English "well" or "very well". Another 5% of residents did not state their home language or English proficiency.
Note: Total = First language + Other language; Percentage = Total / Population
Countries where English is a major language
English is the primary language in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia (Australian English), the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize (Belizean Kriol), Bermuda, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Canada (Canadian English), the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guernsey (Channel Island English), Guyana, Ireland (Hiberno-English), Isle of Man (Manx English), Jamaica (Jamaican English), Jersey, Montserrat, Nauru, New Zealand (New Zealand English), Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United Kingdom, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the United States.
In some countries where English is not the most spoken language, it is an official language; these countries include Botswana, Cameroon, Dominica, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines (Philippine English), Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
It is also one of the 11 official languages that are given equal status in South Africa (South African English). English is also the official language in current dependent territories of Australia (Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and Cocos Island) and of the United States (Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and Puerto Rico),[49] the former British colony of Hong Kong, and Netherlands Antilles. (See List of countries where English is an official language for more details.)
English is not an official language in either the United States or the United Kingdom.[50][51] Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments.[52] Although falling short of official status, English is also an important language in several former colonies and protectorates of the United Kingdom, such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates. English is not a de jure official language of Israel; however, the country has maintained official language use[clarification needed] a de facto role for English since the British mandate.[53]
English as a global language
See also: English in computing, International English, and World language
Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "world language", the lingua franca of the modern era.[15] While English is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a second language around the world. Some linguists (such as David Graddol) believe that it is no longer the exclusive cultural property of "native English speakers", but is rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it continues to grow.[15] It is, by international treaty, the official language for aerial and maritime communications.[54] English is an official language of the United Nations and many other international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee.
English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union (by 89% of schoolchildren), followed by French (32%), German (18%), Spanish (8%), and Russian; while the perception of the usefulness of foreign languages amongst Europeans is 68% English, 25% French, 22% German, and 16% Spanish.[55] Among non-English speaking EU countries, a large percentage of the population claimed to have been able to converse in English in the Netherlands (87%), Sweden (85%), Denmark (83%), Luxembourg (66%), Finland (60%), Slovenia (56%), Austria (53%), Belgium (52%), and Germany (51%).[56] Norway and Iceland also have a large majority of competent English-speakers.[citation needed]
Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world. English is also the most commonly used language in the sciences.[15] In 1997, the Science Citation Index reported that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking countries.
Dialects and regional varieties
Main article: List of dialects of the English language
The expansion of the British Empire and—since World War II—the influence of the United States have spread English throughout the globe.[15] Because of that global spread, English has developed a host of English dialects and English-based creole languages and pidgins.
Two educated native dialects of English have wide acceptance as standards in much of the world—one based on educated southern British and the other based on educated Midwestern American. The former is sometimes called BBC (or the Queen's) English, and it may be noticeable by its preference for "Received Pronunciation"; it typifies the Cambridge model, which is the standard for the teaching of English to speakers of other languages in Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and other areas influenced either by the British Commonwealth or by a desire not to be identified with the United States.
The latter dialect, General American, which is spread over most of the United States and much of Canada, is more typically the model for the American continents and areas (such as the Philippines) which have had either close association with the United States or desire to be so identified. Aside from those two major dialects are numerous other varieties of English, which include, in most cases, several subvarieties, such as Cockney, Scouse and Geordie within British English; Newfoundland English within Canadian English; and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") and Southern American English within American English. English is a pluricentric language, without a central language authority like France's Académie française; and therefore no one variety is considered "correct" or "incorrect" except in terms of the expectations of the particular audience to which the language is directed.
Scots has its origins in early Northern Middle English[57] and developed and changed during its history with influence from other sources, but following the Acts of Union 1707 a process of language attrition began, whereby successive generations adopted more and more features from Standard English, causing dialectalisation. Whether it is now a separate language or a dialect of English better described as Scottish English is in dispute, although the UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[58] There are a number of regional dialects of Scots, and pronunciation, grammar and lexis of the traditional forms differ, sometimes substantially, from other varieties of English.
English speakers have many different accents, which often signal the speaker's native dialect or language. For the more distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English, and for the more distinctive characteristics of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language. Within England, variation is now largely confined to pronunciation rather than grammar or vocabulary. At the time of the Survey of English Dialects, grammar and vocabulary differed across the country, but a process of lexical attrition has led most of this variation to die out.[59]
Just as English itself has borrowed words from many different languages over its history, English loanwords now appear in many languages around the world, indicative of the technological and cultural influence of its speakers. Several pidgins and creole languages have been formed on an English base, such as Jamaican Patois, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tok Pisin. There are many words in English coined to describe forms of particular non-English languages that contain a very high proportion of English words.
Constructed varieties of English
* Basic English is simplified for easy international use. Manufacturers and other international businesses tend to write manuals and communicate in Basic English. Some English schools in Asia teach it as a practical subset of English for use by beginners.
* E-Prime excludes forms of the verb to be.
* English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.
* Manually Coded English – a variety of systems have been developed to represent the English language with hand signals, designed primarily for use in deaf education. These should not be confused with true sign languages such as British Sign Language and American Sign Language used in Anglophone countries, which are independent and not based on English.
* Seaspeak and the related Airspeak and Policespeak, all based on restricted vocabularies, were designed by Edward Johnson in the 1980s to aid international cooperation and communication in specific areas. There is also a tunnelspeak for use in the Channel Tunnel.
* Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of only 1500 words.
Phonology
Main article: English phonology
Vowels
See also: IPA chart for English dialects
This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (December 2008)
It is the vowels that differ most from region to region. Length is not distinctive in most varieties of North American English.
IPA Description word
monophthongs
iː Close front unrounded vowel bead
ɪ Near-close near-front unrounded vowel bid
ɛ Open-mid front unrounded vowel bed[vn 1]
æ Near-open front unrounded vowel bad[vn 2]
ɒ Open back rounded vowel box[vn 3]
ɔː Open-mid back rounded vowel pawed[vn 4]
ɑː Open back unrounded vowel bra
ʊ Near-close near-back vowel good
uː Close back rounded vowel booed[vn 5]
ʌ Open-mid back unrounded vowel, near-open central vowel[vn 6] bud.
ɜr Open-mid central unrounded vowel bird[vn 7]
ə Schwa Rosa's[vn 8]
ɨ Close central unrounded vowel roses[vn 8][vn 9]
diphthongs
eɪ Close-mid front unrounded vowel-
Close front unrounded vowel bayed[vn 10]
oʊ Close-mid back rounded vowel-
Near-close near-back vowel bode[vn 11][vn 10]
aɪ Open front unrounded vowel
Near-close near-front unrounded vowel cry[vn 12]
aʊ Open front unrounded vowel
Near-close near-back vowel cow[vn 13]
ɔɪ Open-mid back rounded vowel
Close front unrounded vowel boy
ʊər Near-close near-back vowel
Schwa boor[vn 14]
ɛər Open-mid front unrounded vowel
Schwa fair[vn 15]
Notes
1. ^ In RP, this is closer to [e]
2. ^ In younger speakers of RP, this is closer to [a]
3. ^ Many American English dialects lack this sound; in such dialects, words with this sound elsewhere are pronounced with /ɑː/ or /ɔː/. See Lot-cloth split.
4. ^ Some dialects of North American English do not have this vowel. See Cot-caught merger.
5. ^ The letter can represent either /uː/ or the iotated vowel /juː/. In BRP, if this iotated vowel /juː/ occurs after /t/, /d/, /s/ or /z/, it often triggers palatalisation of the preceding consonant, turning it to [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ], [ɕ] and [ʑ] respectively, as in tune, during, sugar, and azure. In American English, palatalisation does not generally happen unless the /juː/ is followed by r, with the result that /(t, d, s, z)juːr/ turn to [tʃər], [dʒər], [ʃər] and [ʒər] respectively, as in nature, verdure, sure, and treasure.
6. ^ The back-vowel symbol ʌ is conventional for this English central vowel. It is actually generally closer to a [ɐ] In the northern half of England, this vowel is not used and ʊ is used in its place.
7. ^ The North American variation of this sound is a rhotic vowel [ɝ], the RP version a long central vowel [ɜː].
8. ^ a b Many speakers of North American English do not distinguish between these two unstressed vowels. For them, roses and Rosa's are pronounced the same, and the symbol usually used is schwa /ə/.
9. ^ This sound is often transcribed with /ə/ or with /ɪ/.
10. ^ a b The diphthongs /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ are monophthongal [eː] and [oː] in many dialects, including General American, Scottish, Irish and Northern English.
11. ^ In RP and parts of North America, this is closer to [əʊ]. As a reduced vowel, it may become [ɵ] ([ɵʊ] before another vowel) or [ə], depending on accent.
12. ^ In parts of North America (especially in Canada) /aɪ/ is pronounced [ʌɪ] before voiceless consonants, so that writer and rider and distinguished by their vowels, [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ, ˈɹaɪɾɚ], rather than their consonants.
13. ^ In Canada, this is pronounced [ʌʊ] before a voiceless consonant.
14. ^ In many accents, this sound is coming to be pronounced [ɔː(r)] rather than [ʊə(r)]. See English-language vowel changes before historic r.
15. ^ In some non-rhotic accents, the schwa offglide of /ɛə/ may be dropped, monophthising and lengthening the sound to [ɛː].
Consonants
This is the English consonantal system using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
Bilabial Labio-
dental Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar Palatal Velar Labial-
velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ[cn 1]
Plosive p b t d k ɡ
Affricate tʃ dʒ[cn 2]
Fricative f v θ ð[cn 3] s z ʃ ʒ[cn 2] ç[cn 4] x[cn 5] h
Flap ɾ[cn 6]
Approximant ɹ[cn 2] j ʍ w[cn 7]
Lateral l
Notes
1. ^ The velar nasal [ŋ] is a non-phonemic allophone of /n/ in some northerly British accents, appearing only before /k/ and /ɡ/. In all other dialects it is a separate phoneme, although it only occurs in syllable codas.
2. ^ a b c The sounds /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and /ɹ/ are labialised in some dialects. Labialisation is never contrastive in initial position and therefore is sometimes not transcribed. Most speakers of General American realise
3. ^ In some dialects, such as Cockney, the interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ have usually merged with /f/ and /v/, and in others, like African American Vernacular English, /ð/ has merged with dental /d/. In some Irish varieties, /θ/ and /ð/ become dental plosives, which then contrast with the usual alveolar plosives.
4. ^ The voiceless palatal fricative /ç/ is in most accents just an allophone of /h/ before /j/; for instance human /çjuːmən/. However, in some accents (see this), the /j/ has dropped, but the initial consonant is the same.
5. ^ The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is used by Scottish or Welsh speakers of English for Scots/Gaelic words such as loch /lɒx/ or by some speakers for loanwords from German and Hebrew like Bach /bax/ or Chanukah /xanuka/. /x/ is also used in South African English. In some dialects such as Scouse (Liverpool) either [x] or the affricate [kx] may be used as an allophone of /k/ in words such as docker [dɒkxə]. Most native speakers have a great deal of trouble pronouncing it correctly when learning a foreign language. Most speakers use the sounds [k] and [h] instead.
6. ^ The alveolar tap [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in unstressed syllables in North American English and Australian English.[60] This is the sound of tt or dd in the words latter and ladder, which are homophones for many speakers of North American English. In some accents such as Scottish English and Indian English it replaces /ɹ/. This is the same sound represented by single r in most varieties of Spanish.
7. ^ Voiceless w [ʍ] is found in Scottish and Irish English, as well as in some varieties of American, New Zealand, and English English. In most other dialects it is merged with /w/, in some dialects of Scots it is merged with /f/.
Voicing and aspiration
Voicing and aspiration of stop consonants in English depend on dialect and context, but a few general rules can be given:
* Voiceless plosives and affricates (/p/, /t/, /k/, and /tʃ/) are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable – compare pin [pʰɪn] and spin [spɪn], crap [kʰɹ̥æp] and scrap [skɹæp].
o In some dialects, aspiration extends to unstressed syllables as well.
o In other dialects, such as Indian English, all voiceless stops remain unaspirated.
* Word-initial voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects.
* Word-terminal voiceless plosives may be unreleased or accompanied by a glottal stop in some dialects; examples: tap [tʰæp̚], sack [sæk̚].
* Word-terminal voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects (e.g. some varieties of American English) – examples: sad [sæd̥], bag [bæɡ̊]. In other dialects, they are fully voiced in final position, but only partially voiced in initial position.
Supra-segmental features
Tone groups
English is an intonation language. This means that the pitch of the voice is used syntactically; for example, to convey surprise and irony, or to change a statement into a question.
In English, intonation patterns are on groups of words, which are called tone groups, tone units, intonation groups, or sense groups. Tone groups are said on a single breath and, as a consequence, are of limited length, more often being on average five words long or lasting roughly two seconds. For example:
/duː juː ˈniːd ˈɛnɪθɪŋ/ Do you need anything?
/aɪ ˈdoʊnt | ˈnoʊ/ I don't, no
/aɪ doʊnt ˈnoʊ/ I don't know (contracted to, for example, [ˈaɪ doʊnoʊ] or [ˈaɪdənoʊ] I dunno in fast or colloquial speech that de-emphasises the pause between 'don't' and 'know' even further)
Characteristics of intonation
English is a strongly stressed language, in that certain syllables, both within words and within phrases, get a relative prominence/loudness during pronunciation while the others do not. The former kind of syllables are said to be accentuated/stressed and the latter are unaccentuated/unstressed.
Hence in a sentence, each tone group can be subdivided into syllables, which can either be stressed (strong) or unstressed (weak). The stressed syllable is called the nuclear syllable. For example:
That | was | the | best | thing | you | could | have | done!
Here, all syllables are unstressed, except the syllables/words best and done, which are stressed. Best is stressed harder and, therefore, is the nuclear syllable.
The nuclear syllable carries the main point the speaker wishes to make. For example:
John had not stolen that money. (... Someone else had.)
John had not stolen that money. (... Someone said he had. or ... Not at that time, but later he did.)
John had not stolen that money. (... He acquired the money by some other means.)
John had not stolen that money. (... He had stolen some other money.)
John had not stolen that money. (... He had stolen something else.)
Also
I did not tell her that. (... Someone else told her)
I did not tell her that. (... You said I did. or ... but now I will)
I did not tell her that. (... I did not say it; she could have inferred it, etc)
I did not tell her that. (... I told someone else)
I did not tell her that. (... I told her something else)
This can also be used to express emotion:
Oh, really? (...I did not know that)
Oh, really? (...I disbelieve you. or ... That is blatantly obvious)
The nuclear syllable is spoken more loudly than the others and has a characteristic change of pitch. The changes of pitch most commonly encountered in English are the rising pitch and the falling pitch, although the fall-rising pitch and/or the rise-falling pitch are sometimes used. In this opposition between falling and rising pitch, which plays a larger role in English than in most other languages, falling pitch conveys certainty and rising pitch uncertainty. This can have a crucial impact on meaning, specifically in relation to polarity, the positive–negative opposition; thus, falling pitch means, "polarity known", while rising pitch means "polarity unknown". This underlies the rising pitch of yes/no questions. For example:
When do you want to be paid?
Now? (Rising pitch. In this case, it denotes a question: "Can I be paid now?" or "Do you desire to pay now?")
Now. (Falling pitch. In this case, it denotes a statement: "I choose to be paid now.")
Grammar
Main article: English grammar
English grammar has minimal inflection compared with most other Indo-European languages. For example, Modern English, unlike Modern German or Dutch and the Romance languages, lacks grammatical gender and adjectival agreement. Case marking has almost disappeared from the language and mainly survives in pronouns. The patterning of strong (e.g. speak/spoke/spoken) versus weak verbs inherited from its Germanic origins has declined in importance in modern English, and the remnants of inflection (such as plural marking) have become more regular.
At the same time, the language has become more analytic, and has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.
Vocabulary
The English vocabulary has changed considerably over the centuries.[61]
Search Wiktionary Look up Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Like many languages deriving from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), many of the most common words in English can trace back their origin (through the Germanic branch) to PIE. Such words include the basic pronouns I, from Old English ic, (cf. German Ich, Gothic ik, Latin ego, Greek ego, Sanskrit aham), me (cf. German mich, mir, Gothic mik, mīs, Latin me, Greek eme, Sanskrit mam), numbers (e.g. one, two, three, cf. Dutch een, twee, drie, Gothic ains, twai, threis (þreis), Latin unus, duo, tres, Greek oinos "ace (on dice)", duo, treis), common family relationships such as mother, father, brother, sister etc (cf. Dutch moeder, Greek meter, Latin mater, Sanskrit matṛ; mother), names of many animals (cf. German Maus, Dutch muis, Sankrit mus, Greek mys, Latin mus; mouse), and many common verbs (cf. Old High German knājan, Old Norse knā, Greek gignōmi, Latin gnoscere, Hittite kanes; to know).
Germanic words (generally words of Old English or to a lesser extent Old Norse origin) tend to be shorter than Latinate words in Modern English, and are more common in ordinary speech, and include nearly all the basic pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs etc. that form the basis of English syntax and grammar. The shortness of the words is generally due to syncopation in Middle English (eg. OldEng hēafod > ModEng head, OldEng sāwol > ModEng soul) and to the loss of final syllables due to stress (eg. OldEng gamen > ModEng game, OldEng ǣrende > ModEng errand), not because Germanic words are inherently shorter than Latinate words. (The lengthier, higher-register words of Old English were largely forgotten following the subjugation of English after the Norman Conquest, and most of the Old English lexis devoted to literature, the arts, and sciences ceased to be productive when it fell into disuse.) Longer Latinate words in Modern English are often regarded as more elegant or educated. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is considered at times to be either pretentious or an attempt to obfuscate an issue. George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", considered an important scrutinisation of the English language, is critical of this, as well as other perceived misuse of the language.
An English speaker is in many cases able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: come or arrive; sight or vision; freedom or liberty. In some cases, there is a choice between a Germanic derived word (oversee), a Latin derived word (supervise), and a French word derived from the same Latin word (survey); or even words derived from Norman French (e.g., warranty) and Parisian French (guarantee), and even choices involving multiple Germanic and Latinate sources are possible: sick (Old English), ill (Old Norse), infirm (French), afflicted (Latin). Such synonyms harbor a variety of different meanings and nuances, enabling the speaker to express fine variations or shades of thought. Familiarity with the etymology of groups of synonyms can give English speakers greater control over their linguistic register. See: List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English, Doublet (linguistics).
An exception to this and a peculiarity perhaps unique to a handful of languages, English included, is that the nouns for meats are commonly different from, and unrelated to, those for the animals from which they are produced, the animal commonly having a Germanic name and the meat having a French-derived one. Examples include: deer and venison; cow and beef; swine/pig and pork; and sheep and mutton. This is assumed to be a result of the aftermath of the Norman invasion, where an Anglo-Norman-speaking elite were the consumers of the meat, produced by lower classes, which happened to be largely Anglo-Saxon.[citation needed]
Since the majority of words used in informal settings will normally be Germanic, such words are often the preferred choices when a speaker wishes to make a point in an argument in a very direct way. A majority of Latinate words (or at least a majority of content words) will normally be used in more formal speech and writing, such as in a courtroom or an encyclopædia article.[citation needed] However, there are other Latinate words that are used in everyday speech which are not formal; these words no longer appear Latinate and oftentimes have no Germanic equivalents. For instance, the words mountain, valley, river, aunt, uncle, move, use, push and stay ("to remain") are Latinate. Likewise, the inverse can occur: acknowledge, meaningful, understanding, mindful, behaviour, forbearance, behoove, forestall, allay, rhyme, starvation, embodiment come from Anglo-Saxon, and allegiance, abandonment, debutant, feudalism, seizure, guarantee, disregard, wardrobe, disenfranchise, disarray, bandolier, bourgeoisie, debauchery, performance, furniture, gallantry are of Germanic origin, usually through the Germanic element in French, so it is oftentimes impossible to know the origin of a word based on its register.
English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and often imports new words and phrases. Examples of this phenomenon include contemporary words such as cookie, Internet and URL (technical terms), as well as genre, über, lingua franca and amigo (imported words/phrases from French, German, Italian, and Spanish, respectively). In addition, slang often provides new meanings for old words and phrases. In fact, this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage.
See also: sociolinguistics.
Number of words in English
The General Explanations at the beginning of the Oxford English Dictionary states:
The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.
The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation. Unlike other languages, such as French, German, Spanish and Italian, there is no Academy to define officially accepted words and spellings. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science, technology and other fields, and new slang is constantly developed. Some of these new words enter wide usage; others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might or might not be widely considered as "English".
The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (OED2) includes over 600,000 definitions, following a rather inclusive policy:
It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang (Supplement to the OED, 1933).[62]
The editors of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (475,000 main headwords) in their preface, estimate the number to be much higher. It is estimated that about 25,000 words are added to the language each year.[63]
The Global Language Monitor announced that the English language had crossed the 1,000,000-word threshold on June 10, 2009.[64] The announcement was met with strong skepticism by linguists and lexicographers,[65] though a number of non-specialist reports[66][67] accepted the figure uncritically.
Word origins
Main article: Lists of English words of international origin
One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words which are Germanic (mostly West Germanic, with a smaller influence from the North Germanic branch) and those which are "Latinate" (Latin-derived, either directly or from Norman French or other Romance languages).
The majority (83%) of the 1,000 most common English words, and all of the 100 most common, are Germanic (though of Old English and unique to the isle).[68] Conversely, a vast majority of more advanced words from subjects such as the sciences, philosophy, math, etc. come from Latin or Greek. A noticeable number of words from astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry are from Arabic.
Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the proportionate origins of English vocabulary. None, as of yet, is considered definitive by most linguists.
A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973)[69] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
Influences in English vocabulary
* Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
* Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
* Other Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English; does not include Germanic words coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages): 25%
* Greek: 5.32%
* No etymology given: 4.03%
* Derived from proper names: 3.28%
* All other languages: less than 1%
A survey by Joseph M. Williams in Origins of the English Language of 10,000 words taken from several thousand business letters gave this set of statistics:[70]
* French (langue d'oïl): 41%
* "Native" English: 33%
* Latin: 15%
* Old Norse: 2%
* Dutch: 1%
* Other: 10%
Dutch and Low German origins
Main article: List of English words of Dutch origin
Many words describing the navy, types of ships, and other objects or activities on the water are of Dutch origin. Yacht (jacht), skipper (schipper) and cruiser (kruiser) are examples. Other words pertain to art and daily life: easel (ezel), etch (etsen), slim (slim), staple (Middle Dutch stapel "market"), slip (Middle Dutch slippen). Dutch has also contributed to English slang, e.g. spook, and the now obsolete snyder (tailor) and stiver (small coin).
Words from Low German include trade (Middle Low German trade), smuggle (smuggeln), and dollar (daler/thaler).
French origins
Main article: List of French words and phrases used by English speakers
A large portion of English vocabulary is of French or Langues d'oïl origin, and was transmitted to English via the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the upper classes in England in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. Words of French origin include competition, mountain, art, table, publicity, police, role, routine, machine, force, and thousands of others, most of which have been anglicised to fit English rules of phonology, pronunciation and spelling, rather than those of French (with a few exceptions, for example, façade and affaire de cœur.)
Writing system
Main articles: English alphabet and English orthography
Since around the ninth century, English has been written in the Latin alphabet, which replaced Anglo-Saxon runes. The spelling system, or orthography, is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system; it has grown to vary significantly from the phonology of the language. The spelling of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken.
Though letters and sounds may not correspond in isolation, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are 75% or more reliable.[71] Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic.[72] However, English has fewer consistent relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages; for example, the sound sequence ough can be pronounced in 10 different ways. The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that reading can be challenging.[73] It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish.[74]
Basic sound-letter correspondence
See also: Hard and soft C and Hard and soft G
IPA Alphabetic representation Dialect-specific
p p
b b
t t, th (rarely) thyme, Thames th thing (African American, New York)
d d th that (African American, New York)
k c (+ a, o, u, consonants), k, ck, ch, qu (rarely) conquer, kh (in foreign words)
g g, gh, gu (+ a, e, i), gue (final position)
m m
n n
ŋ n (before g or k), ng
f f, ph, gh (final, infrequent) laugh, rough th thing (many forms of English language in England)
v v th with (Cockney, Estuary English)
θ th thick, think, through
ð th that, this, the
s s, c (+ e, i, y), sc (+ e, i, y), ç often c (façade/facade)
z z, s (finally or occasionally medially), ss (rarely) possess, dessert, word-initial x xylophone
ʃ sh, sch, ti (before vowel) portion, ci/ce (before vowel) suspicion, ocean; si/ssi (before vowel) tension, mission; ch (esp. in words of French origin); rarely s/ss before u sugar, issue; chsi in fuchsia only
ʒ medial si (before vowel) division, medial s (before "ur") pleasure, zh (in foreign words), z before u azure, g (in words of French origin) (+e, i, y) genre, j (in words of French origin) bijou
x kh, ch, h (in foreign words) occasionally ch loch (Scottish English, Welsh English)
h h (syllable-initially, otherwise silent), j (in words of Spanish origin) jai alai
tʃ ch, tch, t before u future, culture t (+ u, ue, eu) tune, Tuesday, Teutonic (several dialects – see Phonological history of English consonant clusters)
dʒ j, g (+ e, i, y), dg (+ e, i, consonant) badge, judg(e)ment d (+ u, ue, ew) dune, due, dew (several dialects – another example of yod coalescence)
ɹ r, wr (initial) wrangle
j y (initially or surrounded by vowels), j hallelujah
l l
w w
ʍ wh (pronounced hw) Scottish and Irish English, as well as some varieties of American, New Zealand, and English English
Written accents
Main article: English words with diacritics
Unlike most other Germanic languages, English has almost no diacritics except in foreign loanwords (like the acute accent in café), and in the uncommon use of a diaeresis mark (often in formal writing) to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately, rather than as one sound (e.g. naïve, Zoë). Words such as décor, café, résumé/résumé, entrée, fiancée and naïve are frequently spelt both ways.
Some English words retain diacritics to distinguish them from others, such as animé, exposé, lamé, öre, øre, pâté, piqué, and rosé, though these are sometimes also dropped (for example, résumé/résumé is often spelt resume in the United States). To clarify pronunciation, a small number of loanwords may employ a diacritic that does not appear in the original word, such as maté, from Spanish yerba mate, following the French usage.
Formal written English
Main article: Formal written English
A version of the language almost universally agreed upon by educated English speakers around the world is called formal written English. It takes virtually the same form regardless of where it is written, in contrast to spoken English, which differs significantly between dialects, accents, and varieties of slang and of colloquial and regional expressions. Local variations in the formal written version of the language are quite limited, being restricted largely to the spelling differences between British and American English, along with a few minor differences in grammar and lexis.
Basic and simplified versions
To make English easier to read, there are some simplified versions of the language. One basic version is named Basic English, a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English. Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English. Thus, Basic English may be employed by companies which need to make complex books for international use, as well as by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time.
Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be said with a few other words and he worked to make the words work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also made the grammar simpler, but tried to keep the grammar normal for English users.
The concept gained its greatest publicity just after the Second World War as a tool for world peace.[citation needed] Although it was not built into a program, similar simplifications were devised for various international uses.
Another version, Simplified English, exists, which is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardised[by whom?] subset of English. Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word close can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear".
See also
Wikipedia Books Wikipedia:Books has a book on: English language
* Changes to Old English vocabulary
* English for Academic Purposes
* English language learning and teaching
* Language Report
* Lists of English words
* Teaching English as a foreign language
* The Adventure of English (film)
References
Bibliography
* Ammon, Ulrich (2006). Sociolinguistics: an international handbook of the science of language and society. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3110184184. http://books.google.com/books?id=LMZm0w0k1c4C&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Baugh, Albert C.; Thomas Cable (2002). A history of the English language (5th ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28099-0.
* Bragg, Melvyn (2004). The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-710-0.
* Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53032-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=d6jPAKxTHRYC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Crystal, David (2003). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53033-4.
* Crystal, David (2004). The Stories of English. Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9752-4.
* Halliday, MAK (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. ISBN 0-340-55782-6.
* Hayford, Harrison; Howard P. Vincent (1954). Reader and Writer. Houghton Mifflin Company. [4]
* Howatt, Anthony (2004). A history of English language teaching. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0194421856. http://books.google.com/books?id=g2e7iw_F-ZcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Kenyon, John Samuel and Knott, Thomas Albert, A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, G & C Merriam Company, Springfield, Mass, USA,1953.
* Mazrui, Alamin (1998). The power of Babel: language & governance in the African experience. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0852558074. http://books.google.com/books?id=6lQTPxdYx8kC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* McArthur, T. (ed.) (1992). The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-214183-X.
* Plotkin, Vulf (2006). The Language System of English. BrownWalker Press. ISBN 1-58112-993-9.
* Robinson, Orrin (1992). Old English and Its Closest Relatives. Stanford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-8047-2221-8.
* Schneider, Edgar (2007). Postcolonial English: varieties around the world. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521831407. http://books.google.com/books?id=QIE6zGSd8okC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Wardhaugh, Ronald (2006). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 140513559X. http://books.google.com/books?id=0J2VOzNYtKQC&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Houston
Houston
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This article is about a U.S. city. For other uses, see Houston (disambiguation).
"Space City USA" redirects here. For other uses, see Space City.
City of Houston
— City —
Flag
Seal
Nickname(s): Space City
Location in Harris County, Texas
Coordinates: 29°45′46″N 95°22′59″W / 29.76278°N 95.38306°W / 29.76278; -95.38306Coordinates: 29°45′46″N 95°22′59″W / 29.76278°N 95.38306°W / 29.76278; -95.38306
Country United States
State Texas
Counties Harris
Fort Bend
Montgomery
Incorporated June 5, 1837
Government
- Mayor Bill White
Area
- City 601.7 sq mi (1,558 km2)
- Land 579.4 sq mi (1,501 km2)
- Water 22.3 sq mi (57.7 km2)
Elevation 43 ft (13 m)
Population (2007)[1][2]
- City 2,242,193 (4th)
- Density 3,828/sq mi (1,471/km2)
- Urban 3,822,509
- Metro 5,728,143 (6th Largest)
- Demonym Houstonian
Time zone CST (UTC-6)
- Summer (DST) CDT (UTC-5)
Area code(s) 713, 281, 832
FIPS code 48-35000[3]
GNIS feature ID 1380948[4]
Website houstontx.gov
Houston (pronounced /ˈhjuːstən/) is the fourth-largest city in the United States and the largest city within the state of Texas. As of the 2008 U.S. Census estimate, the city has a population of 2.2 million within an area of 600 square miles (1,600 km²). Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area—the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with a population over 5.7 million.
Houston was founded on August 30, 1836, by brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen on land near the banks of Buffalo Bayou.[5] The city was incorporated on June 5, 1837, and named after then-President of the Republic of Texas—former General Sam Houston—who had commanded at the Battle of San Jacinto, which took place 25 miles (40 km) east of where the city was established. The burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the city's population. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston became the home of the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located.
Rated as a beta world city,[6] Houston's economy has a broad industrial base in the energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, transportation, and health care sectors and is a leading center for building oilfield equipment; only New York City is home to more Fortune 500 headquarters in the city limits.[7] The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled.[8] The city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. It is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits—attracting more than 7 million visitors a year to the Houston Museum District. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District and is one of few U.S. cities that offer year-round resident companies in all major performing arts.[9]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Geography
o 2.1 Geology
o 2.2 Climate
o 2.3 Cityscape
* 3 Government and politics
* 4 Economy
* 5 Demographics
* 6 Culture
o 6.1 Arts and theatre
o 6.2 Tourism and recreation
o 6.3 Sports
o 6.4 Media
* 7 Architecture
* 8 Crime
* 9 Transportation
* 10 Healthcare and medicine
* 11 Education
o 11.1 Colleges and universities
* 12 Notes
* 13 Further reading
* 14 External links
[edit] History
Main article: History of Houston
See also: Historical events of Houston
Sam Houston
In August 1836, John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York City, purchased 6,642 acres (27 km²) of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city.[10] The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the popular general at the Battle of San Jacinto,[10] who was elected President of Texas in September 1836.
Houston was granted incorporation on June 5, 1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor.[11] In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County (now Harris County) and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas.[12] In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to promote shipping and waterborne business at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou.[13]
By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton.[12] Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont. During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General John Bankhead Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston.[14] After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more commerce between downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890 Houston was the railroad center of Texas.
Houston, circa 1873
In 1900, after Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane, efforts to make Houston into a viable deepwater port were accelerated.[15] The following year, oil discovered at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry.[16] In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel. By 1910 the city's population had reached 78,800, almost doubling from a decade before. An integral part of the city were African Americans, who numbered 23,929 or nearly one-third of the residents.[17] They were developing a strong professional class based then in the Fourth Ward.
President Woodrow Wilson opened the deepwater Port of Houston in 1914, seven years after digging began. By 1930, Houston had become Texas's most populous city and Harris the most populous county.[18]
When World War II started, tonnage levels at the port decreased and shipping activities were suspended; however, the war did provide economic benefits for the city. Petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants were constructed along the ship channel because of the demand for petroleum and synthetic rubber products during the war.[19] Ellington Field, initially built during World War I, was revitalized as an advanced training center for bombardiers and navigators.[20] The M. D. Anderson Foundation formed the Texas Medical Center in 1945. After the war, Houston's economy reverted to being primarily port-driven. In 1948, several unincorporated areas were annexed into the city limits, which more than doubled the city's size, and Houston proper began to spread across the region.[11][21]
In 1950, the availability of air conditioning provided impetus for many companies to relocate to Houston resulting in an economic boom and producing a key shift in the city's economy toward the energy sector.[22][23]
The space shuttle, atop its Boeing 747 SCA, flying over Johnson Space Center
The increased production of the local shipbuilding industry during World War II spurred Houston's growth,[24] as did the establishment in 1961 of NASA's "Manned Spacecraft Center" (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973), which created the city's aerospace industry. The Astrodome, nicknamed the "Eighth Wonder of the World,"[25] opened in 1965 as the world's first indoor domed sports stadium.
During the late 1970s, Houston experienced a population boom as people from Rust Belt states moved to Texas in large numbers.[26] The new residents came for the numerous employment opportunities in the petroleum industry, created as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo.
The population boom ended abruptly in the mid-1980s, as oil prices fell precipitously. The space industry also suffered in 1986 after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. The late 1980s saw a recession adversely affecting the city's economy.
Since the 1990s, as a result of the recession, Houston has made efforts to diversify its economy by focusing on aerospace and health care/biotechnology and by reducing its dependence on the petroleum industry. In 1997, Houstonians elected Lee P. Brown as the city's first African American mayor.[27]
Hurricane Rita evacuation. (With contraflow lane reversal.)
In June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 37 inches (940 mm) of rain on parts of Houston, causing the worst flooding in the city's history; the storm cost billions of dollars in damage and killed 20 people in Texas.[28] By December of that same year, Houston-based energy company Enron collapsed into the second-largest ever U.S. bankruptcy during an investigation surrounding fabricated partnerships that were allegedly used to hide debt and inflate profits.
In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans who evacuated from Hurricane Katrina.[29] One month later, approximately 2.5 million Houston area residents evacuated when Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This was the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States.[30][31]
[edit] Geography
Main article: Geography of Houston
A simulated-color image of Houston
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 601.7 square miles (1,558.4 km²); this comprises 579.4 square miles (1,500.7 km²) of land and 22.3 square miles (57.7 km²) of water. Most of Houston is located on the gulf coastal plain, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland and forest. Much of the city was built on forested land, marshes, swamp, or prairie, which are all still visible in surrounding areas. Flatness of the local terrain, when combined with urban sprawl, has made flooding a recurring problem for the city.[32] Downtown stands about 50 feet (15 m) above sea level,[33] and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about 125 feet (38 m) in elevation.[34][35] The city once relied on groundwater for its needs, but land subsidence forced the city to turn to ground-level water sources such as Lake Houston and Lake Conroe.[11][36]
Houston has four major bayous passing through the city. Buffalo Bayou runs through downtown and the Houston Ship Channel, and has three tributaries: White Oak Bayou, which runs through the Heights neighborhood north of downtown and then towards downtown; Braes Bayou, which runs along the Texas Medical Center; and Sims Bayou, which runs through the south of Houston and downtown Houston. The ship channel continues past Galveston and then into the Gulf of Mexico.
[edit] Geology
Underpinning Houston's land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, and poorly cemented sands up to several miles deep. The region's geology developed from river deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic matter, that over time, transformed into oil and natural gas. Beneath the layers of sediment is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward. As it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into salt dome formations, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. The thick, rich, sometimes black, surface soil is suitable for rice farming in suburban outskirts where the city continues to grow.[37][38]
The Houston area has over 150 active faults (estimated to be 300 active faults)[39] with an aggregate length of up to 310 miles (500 km),[40][41] including the Long Point-Eureka Heights Fault System which runs through the center of the city. There have been no significant historically recorded earthquakes in Houston, but researchers do not discount the possibility of such quakes occurring in the deeper past, nor in the future. Land in some communities southeast of Houston is sinking because water has been pumped out from the ground for many years. It may be associated with slip along faults; however, the slippage is slow and not considered an earthquake, where stationary faults must slip suddenly enough to create seismic waves.[42] These faults also tend to move at a smooth rate in what is termed "fault creep,"[36] which further reduces the risk of an earthquake.
[edit] Climate
Main article: Climate of Houston
Allen's Landing after Tropical Storm Allison, June 2001
Houston
Climate chart
J F M A M J J A S O N D
4.3
63
45
3
67
48
3.2
74
55
3.5
79
61
5.1
86
68
6.8
91
74
4.4
94
75
4.5
93
75
5.6
89
72
5.3
82
62
4.5
73
53
3.8
65
47
average max. and min. temperatures in °F
precipitation totals in inches
source: Weather.com / NWS
Metric conversion[show]
J F M A M J J A S O N D
108
17
7
76
19
9
81
23
13
88
26
16
130
30
20
174
33
23
111
34
24
115
34
24
143
32
22
134
28
17
115
23
12
96
18
8
average max. and min. temperatures in °C
precipitation totals in mm
Houston's climate is classified as humid subtropical (Cfa in Köppen climate classification system). Spring supercell thunderstorms sometimes bring tornados to the area. Prevailing winds are from the south and southeast during most of the year, bringing heat across the continent from the deserts of Mexico and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.[43]
During the summer months, it is common for the temperature to reach over 90 °F (32 °C), with an average of 99 days per year above 90 °F (32 °C).[44][45] However, the humidity results in a heat index higher than the actual temperature. Summer mornings average over 90 percent relative humidity and approximately 60 percent in the afternoon.[46][47] Winds are often light in the summer and offer little relief, except near the immediate coast.[48] To cope with the heat, people use air conditioning in nearly every vehicle and building in the city; in 1980 Houston was described as the "most air-conditioned place on earth".[49] Scattered afternoon thunderstorms are common in the summer. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Houston was 109 °F (43 °C) on September 4, 2000.[50]
Winters in Houston are fairly temperate. The average high in January, the coldest month, is 63 °F (17 °C), while the average low is 41 °F (5 °C). Snowfall is generally rare. Recent snow events in Houston include a storm on December 24, 2004 when one inch (2.5 cm) fell and more recent snowfalls on December 10 and December 24, 2008. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Houston was 5 °F (−15 °C) on January 23, 1940.[51] Houston receives a high amount of rainfall annually, averaging about 48 inches a year. These rains tend to cause floods over portions of the city.
Houston has excessive ozone levels and is ranked among the most ozone-polluted cities in the United States.[52] Ground-level ozone, or smog, is Houston’s predominant air pollution problem, with the American Lung Association rating the metropolitan area's ozone level as the 6th worst in the United States in 2006.[53] The industries located along the ship channel are a major cause of the city's air pollution.[54]
[edit] Cityscape
Further information: Geographic areas of Houston and List of Houston neighborhoods
Houston was incorporated in 1837 under the ward system of representation. The ward designation is the progenitor of the nine current-day Houston City Council districts. Locations in Houston are generally classified as either being inside or outside the Interstate 610 Loop. The inside encompasses the central business district and many residential neighborhoods that predate World War II. More recently, high-density residential areas have been developed within the loop. The city's outlying areas, suburbs and enclaves are located outside of the loop. Beltway 8 encircles the city another 5 miles (8 km) farther out.
Uptown (foreground) and Downtown (background)
Though Houston is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations, it has developed similarly to other Sun Belt cities because the city's land use regulations and legal covenants have played a similar role.[55][56] Regulations include mandatory lot size for single-family houses and requirements that parking be available to tenants and customers. Such restrictions have had mixed results. Though some[56] have blamed the city's low density, urban sprawl, and lack of pedestrian-friendliness on these policies, the city's land use has also been credited with a bounty of affordable housing, sparing Houston the worst effects of the 2008 real estate crisis.[57] The city issued 42,697 building permits in 2008 and was ranked first in the list of healthiest housing markets for 2009, according to Builder magazine.[58]
Voters rejected efforts to have separate residential and commercial land-use districts in 1948, 1962, and 1993. Consequently, rather than a single central business district as the center of the city's employment, multiple districts have grown throughout the city in addition to downtown which include Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Midtown, Greenway Plaza, Energy Corridor, Westchase, and Greenspoint.
[edit] Government and politics
Main article: Politics of Houston
Houston City Hall
The city of Houston has a strong mayoral form of municipal government.[59] Houston is a home rule city and all municipal elections in the state of Texas are nonpartisan.[59][60] The City's elected officials are the mayor, city controller and 14 members of the city council.[61] As of 2009, the mayor of Houston is William "Bill" White, a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot[62] who is serving his third and final term (due to term limits). Houston's mayor serves as the city's chief administrator, executive officer, and official representative. He is responsible for the general management of the city and for seeing that all laws and ordinances are enforced.[62] As the result of a 1991 referendum in Houston, a mayor is elected for a two-year term, and can be elected to as many as three consecutive terms.
The current city council line-up of nine district based and five at-large positions was based on a U.S. Justice Department mandate which took effect in 1979.[63] At-large council members represent the entire city.[61] Under the current city charter, if the population in the city limits goes past 2.1 million residents, the current nine-member city council districts will be expanded with the addition of two city council districts.[64]
The city controller is elected independently of the mayor and council. The controller's duties are to certify available funds prior to committing such funds, processing disbursements, and performing financial and performance audits of city departments. Annise Parker is the current (as of 2009) city controller, serving her third term in office. The city's fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30.
[edit] Economy
Main article: Economy of Houston
Further information: List of companies in Houston
Data from city-data.com[65]
Houston is recognized worldwide for its energy industry—particularly for oil and natural gas—as well as for biomedical research and aeronautics. Renewable energy sources—wind and solar—are also becoming popular economic bases in Houston.[66][67] The ship channel is also a large part of Houston's economic base. Because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network.[6]
Considered to be the energy capital of the world, five of the six supermajor energy companies maintain a large base of operations in Houston (international headquarters of ConocoPhillips; US operational headquarters of Exxon-Mobil; US headquarters for international companies Shell Oil (US subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell located in The Hague, Netherlands), and BP whose international headquarters are in London, England).[68] Specifically, the headquarters of Shell Oil Company, the US affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell, is located at One Shell Plaza. While ExxonMobil maintains its small, global headquarters in Irving, Texas, its upstream and chemical divisions as well as most operational divisions, are located in Houston. Chevron has offices in Houston, having acquired a 40 story building intended to be the headquarters of Enron.[69] The company's Chevron Pipe Line Company subsidiary is headquartered in Houston, and more divisions are being consolidated and moved to Houston each year.[70] Houston is headquarters for the Marathon Oil Corporation, Apache Corporation, and Citgo and alternative energy companies such as Horizon Wind Energy.[71]
Greater Houston is a leading center for building oilfield equipment.[72] Much of Houston's success as a petrochemical complex is due to its busy man-made ship channel, the Port of Houston.[73] The port ranks first in the United States in international commerce, and is the tenth-largest port in the world.[8][74] Unlike most places, where high oil and gasoline prices are seen as harmful to the economy, they are generally seen as beneficial for Houston as many are employed in the energy industry.[75]
Houston Ship Channel
The Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown MSA's Gross Area Product (GAP) in 2008 was $440.4 billion,[76] slightly larger than Belgium’s, Malaysia’s, Venezuela’s or Sweden’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). When comparing Houston's economy to a national economy, only 21 countries other than the United States have a gross domestic product exceeding Houston's regional gross area product.[76] Houston's MSA Gross Area Product for 2007 is estimated to be 416.6 billion, up 13.8 percent from 2006. Mining, which in Houston is almost entirely exploration and production of oil and gas, accounts for 26.3% of Houston's GAP, up sharply in response to high energy prices and a decreased worldwide surplus of oil production capacity; followed by engineering services, health services, and manufacturing.[77]
The Houston area added 42,400 private-sector jobs between November 2007 and November 2008 and registered the nation’s largest gain in private-sector employment among the nation's cities, according to employment statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.[78] The unemployment rate in the city was 3.8% in April 2008, the lowest level in eight years while the job growth rate was 2.8%.[79]
In 2006, the Houston metropolitan area ranked first in Texas and third in the U.S. within the Category of "Best Places for Business and Careers" by Forbes magazine.[80] Foreign governments have established 89 consular offices in metropolitan Houston. Forty foreign governments maintain trade and commercial offices here and 23 active foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations.[81] Twenty-five foreign banks representing 13 nations operate in Houston, providing financial assistance to the international community.[82]
In 2008, Houston received top ranking on Kiplinger's Personal Finance Best Cities of 2008 list which ranks cities on their local economy, employment opportunities, reasonable living costs and quality of life.[83] The city ranked fourth for highest increase in the local technological innovation over the preceding 15 years, according to Forbes magazine.[84] In the same year, the city ranked second on the annual Fortune 500 list of company headquarters,[7] ranked first for Forbes Best Cities for College Graduates,[85] and ranked first on Forbes list of Best Cities to Buy a Home.[86]
[edit] Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Houston
Historical populations
Census Pop. %±
1850 2,396
—
1860 4,845 102.2%
1870 9,332 92.6%
1880 16,513 77.0%
1890 27,557 66.9%
1900 44,633 62.0%
1910 78,800 76.6%
1920 138,276 75.5%
1930 292,352 111.4%
1940 384,514 31.5%
1950 596,163 55.0%
1960 938,219 57.4%
1970 1,232,802 31.4%
1980 1,595,138 29.4%
1990 1,630,553 2.2%
2000 1,953,631 19.8%
Est. 2007 2,208,180 13.0%
The annual Houston International Festival spotlights a different culture each year
Houston is a multicultural city, in part because of its many academic institutions and strong industries. Over 90 languages are spoken in the city.[87] Houston has among the youngest populations in the nation,[88][89][90] partly due to an influx of immigrants into Texas.[91] The city has the third-largest Hispanic and third-largest Mexican-American population in the United States. It also has more Hispanic Americans than any other city in Texas[92] An estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants reside in the Greater Houston area.[93] Houston has some of the largest communities of Indian and Pakistani descent in the United States.[94] The Nigerian-American community of Houston, estimated to be over 2.0% of the city's population, is the largest in the United States.[95][96]
As of the 2005-2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, White Americans made up 54.1% of Houston's population; of which 28.0% were non-Hispanic whites. Blacks or African Americans made up 24.3% of Houston's population; of which 24.0% were non-Hispanic blacks. American Indians made up 0.3% of Houston's population; of which 0.2% were non-Hispanic. Asian Americans made up 5.3% of Houston's population while Pacific Islander Americans made up 0.1%. Individuals from some other race made up 14.7% of the city's population; of which 0.2% were non-Hispanic. Individuals from two or more races made up 1.1% of the city's population; of which 0.6% were non-Hispanic. Hispanics or Latinos made up 41.7% of Houston's population.[97][98]
As of the 2000 Census, there were 1,953,631 people and the population density was 3,371.7 people per square mile (1,301.8/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 49.3% White, 25.3% African American, 5.3% Asian, 0.4% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.5% from some other race, and 3.1% from two or more races. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos made up 37.4% of Houston's population while non-Hispanic whites made up 30.8%.[99]
Houston has a large number of immigrants from Asia, including the largest Vietnamese American population in Texas and third-largest in the United States, with 30,000 people in 2007. Some parts of the city with high populations of Vietnamese and Chinese residents have Chinese and Vietnamese street signs, in addition to English ones. Houston has two Chinatowns: the original located in Downtown, and the more recent one north of Bellaire Boulevard in the southwest area of the city.[100][101] The city has a Little Saigon in Midtown and Vietnamese businesses located in the southwest area of Houston's Chinatown.[102] A "Little India" community referred to as the "Harwin District" exists along Hillcroft.[103]
Houston has a large gay community concentrated primarily in Montrose, Neartown and Houston Heights. It is estimated that the Houston metropolitan area has the twelfth-largest number of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals in the United States.[104]
Houston has routinely been named as one of the "fattest cities in America" in a prominent survey conducted yearly by Men's Fitness magazine.[105][106] However, a Houston Chronicle article has asserted that this ranking is unscientific and therefore meaningless.[107] Houston was labeled by the magazine as "fattest city" in five of the past nine years, and was deemed sixth fattest in 2009. [108] Houston Mayor Bill White formed the Mayor’s Wellness Council and initiated the "Get Moving Houston" fitness campaign in 2005 to address Houston’s ranking by Men’s Fitness magazine.[109][110]
[edit] Culture
Main article: Culture of Houston
See also: Nicknames of Houston, List of events in Houston, List of people raised in Houston, and Sister cities of Houston
Houston Art Car Parade
Houston is a diverse city with a large and growing international community.[111] The metropolitan area is home to an estimated 1.1 million (21.4 percent) residents who were born outside the United States, with nearly two-thirds of the area's foreign-born population from south of the United States–Mexico border.[112] Additionally, more than one in five foreign-born residents are from Asia.[112] The city is home to the nation’s third largest concentration of consular offices, representing 86 countries.[113]
Many annual events celebrate the diverse cultures of Houston. The largest and longest running is the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, held over 20 days from late February to early March.[114] Another large celebration is the annual night-time Houston Pride Parade, held at the end of June.[115] Other annual events include the Houston Greek Festival,[116] Art Car Parade, the Houston Auto Show, the Houston International Festival, the Westheimer Block Party[117] and the Bayou City Art Festival, which is considered to be one of the top five art festivals in the United States.[118][119]
Houston received the official nickname of "Space City" in 1967 because it is the location of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Other nicknames often used by locals include "Bayou City," "Magnolia City," "Clutch City," and "H-Town."
[edit] Arts and theatre
Wortham Center in the Theater District of Downtown
Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene. The Theater District is located downtown and is home to nine major performing arts organizations and six performance halls. It is the second-largest concentration of theater seats in a downtown area in the United States.[120][121][122] Houston is one of few United States cities with permanent, professional, resident companies in all major performing arts disciplines: opera (Houston Grand Opera), ballet (Houston Ballet), music (Houston Symphony Orchestra), and theater (The Alley Theatre).[9][123] Houston is also home to many local folk artists, art groups and various smaller progressive arts organizations.[124] Houston attracts many touring Broadway acts, concerts, shows, and exhibitions for a variety of interests.[125]
The Museum District has many popular cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year.[126][127] Notable facilities located in the district include The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Holocaust Museum Houston, and the Houston Zoo.[128][129][130] Located in the nearby Montrose area are The Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel.
Hobby Center for the Performing Arts
Bayou Bend, located in River Oaks, is a 14-acre (5.7 ha) facility of the Museum of Fine Arts that houses one of America's best collections of decorative art, paintings and furniture. Bayou Bend is the former home of Houston philanthropist Ima Hogg.[131]
Many venues scattered across Houston regularly host local and touring rock, blues, country, hip hop and Tejano musical acts. There has never been a widely renowned music scene in Houston. Artists seem to relocate to other parts of the United States once attaining some level of success.[132] A notable exception to the rule is Houston hip-hop, which celebrates the unique southern flavor and attitude of its roots. This has given rise to a strong, independent hip-hop music scene, influencing and influenced by the larger Southern hip hop and gangsta rap communities.[133] Many Houstonian hip-hop artists have attained commercial success. Houston is the home of chopped and screwed music.
Many non-hip hop artists that have come from Houston include the pop and R&B girl group Destiny's Child, hard Southern rock band ZZ Top, sixties psychedelic rock band Red Krayola, folk-country singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett, pop singer Hilary Duff, singer and actor Patrick Swayze, and indie-piano rock band Blue October. Houston also once had fledgling blues and folk scenes in the sixties and seventies with blues performers such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, "Texas" Johnny Brown, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, and Joe "Guitar" Hughes many of whom recorded with the hometown music label Peacock Records. Folk artists in the city in the sixties and seventies such as Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle and Guy Clark also called Houston home for many years playing at long standing venues like Anderson Fair and the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe.[134] The eighties and nineties produced punk and alternative rock such as Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, Verbal Abuse, Really Red, Culturcide, the Pain Teens and the outside musician Jandek. The new millennium has seen a continuance of Houston Noise Bands with contemporary performers such as Jana Hunter and Indian Jewelry.
[edit] Tourism and recreation
Reflection pool in Hermann Park
The Theater District is a 17-block area in the center of downtown Houston that is home to the Bayou Place entertainment complex, restaurants, movies, plazas, and parks. Bayou Place is a large multilevel building containing full-service restaurants, bars, live music, billiards, and art house films. The Houston Verizon Wireless Theater stages live concerts, stage plays, and stand-up comedy; and the Angelika Film Center presents art, foreign and independent films.[135]
Houston is home to 337 parks including Hermann Park, which houses the Houston Zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Terry Hershey Park, Lake Houston Park, Memorial Park, Tranquility Park, Sesquicentennial Park, Discovery Green and Sam Houston Park (which contains restored and reconstructed homes which were originally built between 1823 and 1905).[136] Of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, Houston has the most total area of parks and green space: 56,405 acres (228 km2).[137] The city also has over 200 additional green spaces—totaling over 19,600 acres (79 km2) that are managed by the city—including the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. The Williams Waterwall serves as a popular tourist attraction and sits in Uptown Houston. The Houston Civic Center was replaced by the George R. Brown Convention Center—one of the nation's largest—and the Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Society for the Performing Arts. The Sam Houston Coliseum and Music Hall have been replaced by the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.
Space Center Houston is the official visitors’ center of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Here one will find many interactive exhibits including moon rocks, a shuttle simulator, and presentations about the history of NASA's manned space flight program.
Other tourist attractions include the Galleria (Texas's largest shopping mall located in the Uptown District), Old Market Square, the Downtown Aquarium, and Sam Houston Race Park.
[edit] Sports
Main article: Sports in Houston
See also: Former professional sports teams in Houston
Revelers at "The Main Event" held Downtown during Super Bowl XXXVIII
Houston has teams for nearly every major professional sport. The Houston Astros (MLB), Houston Texans (NFL), Houston Rockets (NBA), Houston Dynamo (MLS), Houston Aeros (AHL), Houston Wranglers (WTT), Houston Takers (ABA), Houston Energy (IWFL), Houston Leones (PDL), and the H-Town Texas Cyclones (NWFA) all call Houston home.
Minute Maid Park (home of the Astros) and Toyota Center (home of the Rockets, and Aeros) are located in a revived area of downtown. The city has the Reliant Astrodome, the first domed stadium in the world; it also holds the NFL's first retractable-roof stadium, Reliant Stadium. Other sports facilities in Houston include Hofheinz Pavilion, Reliant Arena (former home of the Comets), and Robertson Stadium (both used for University of Houston collegiate sports, the latter also for the Houston Dynamo), and Rice Stadium (home of the Rice University Owls football team). The infrequently used Reliant Astrodome hosted World Wrestling Entertainment's WrestleMania X-Seven on April 1, 2001, where an attendance record of 67,925 was set.[138] The city also hosted WrestleMania XXV at Reliant Stadium on April 5, 2009.[139]
Houston has hosted major recent sporting events, including the 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Game,[140] the 2000 IHL All-Star Game, the 2005 World Series, the 2005 Big 12 Conference football championship game, the 2006 NBA All-Star Game, the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships from 2001–2006, and the Tennis Masters Cup in 2003 and 2004, as well as the annual Shell Houston Open golf tournament. Starting in 2009, Houston will host the final official event in the LPGA golf season, the LPGA Tour Championship. The city hosts the annual NCAA College Baseball Minute Maid Classic every February and NCAA football's Texas Bowl in December. Houston has hosted the Super Bowl championship game twice. Super Bowl VIII was played at Rice Stadium in 1974 and Super Bowl XXXVIII was played at Reliant Stadium in 2004. From 1998 to 2001, the CART auto racing series held a yearly race, the Grand Prix of Houston, on downtown streets. After a five-year hiatus, CART's successor series, Champ Car, revived the race for 2006 and 2007 on the streets surrounding the Reliant Park complex. However, Champ Car merged with the rival Indy Racing League (IRL) in 2008, discontinuing the Houston race in the process.
[edit] Media
Further information: List of newspapers in Houston, List of television stations in Houston, List of radio stations in Houston, and List of films featured in Houston
LeRoy and Lucile Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting at the University of Houston
Houston is served by the Houston Chronicle, its only major daily newspaper with wide distribution. The Hearst Corporation, which owns and operates the Houston Chronicle, bought the assets of the Houston Post—its long-time rival and main competition—when Houston Post ceased operations in 1995. The Houston Post was owned by the family of former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby of Houston. The only other major publication to serve the city is the Houston Press—a free alternative weekly with a weekly readership of more than 300,000.[141]
The Houston area is served by a public television station, KUHT, and public radio station, KUHF. Both stations are licensed to and operated by the University of Houston. KUHT (Channel 8) is a PBS member station and the first public television station in the United States, and KUHF (88.7 FM) is an NPR member station. Both stations broadcast from the LeRoy and Lucile Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting at the University of Houston.
One of the leading media personalities in Houston is Dave Ward who is the longest running anchor at any station in all of Houston, and one of few in the country. Ward has led KTRK-TV for more than 40 years. Ron Stone led Channel 2 News for 20 years, 1972 to 1992. Ray Miller, host of The Eyes of Texas, a cultural anthology series broadcast for nearly three decades over KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate, is also well known, as was Marvin Zindler. In the late 1960s, Miller hired Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Galveston native as the first woman newswoman in Texas. She later served in the Texas House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
[edit] Architecture
Main article: Architecture of Houston
See also: List of tallest buildings in Houston
The JPMorgan Chase Tower stands as the tallest building in Texas.
Houston's skyline has been ranked fourth most impressive in the United States;[142] it is the third-tallest skyline in the United States and one of the top 10 in the world.[143] Houston has a seven-mile (11 km) system of tunnels and skywalks linking buildings in downtown which contain shops, restaurants, and convenience stores. This system enables pedestrians to avoid the intense summer heat and heavy rain showers while walking from one building to another.
In the 1960s, Downtown Houston consisted of a modest collection of mid-rise office structures, but has since grown into one of the largest skylines in the United States. Downtown was on the threshold of a boom in 1970 with huge projects being launched by real estate developers with the energy industry boom. A succession of skyscrapers were built throughout the 1970s—many by real estate developer Gerald D. Hines—culminating with Houston's tallest skyscraper, the 75-floor, 1,002-foot (305 m)-tall JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly the Texas Commerce Tower), which was completed in 1982. It is the tallest structure in Texas, 10th-tallest building in the United States and the 30th-tallest skyscraper in the world based on height to roof. In 1983, the 71-floor, 992-foot (302 m)-tall Wells Fargo Bank Plaza (formerly Allied Bank Plaza) was completed, which became the second-tallest building in Houston and Texas. Based on height to roof, it is the 13th-tallest in the United States and the 36th-tallest in the world. As of 2007, downtown Houston had over 43 million square feet (4,000,000 m²) of office space.[144]
Centered on Post Oak Boulevard and Westheimer Road, the Uptown District boomed during the 1970s and early 1980s when a collection of mid-rise office buildings, hotels, and retail developments appeared along Interstate 610 west. Uptown became one of the most impressive instances of an edge city. The highest achievement of Uptown was the construction of the 64-floor, 901-foot (275 m)-tall, Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed landmark Williams Tower (known as the Transco Tower until 1999). At the time, it was believed to the be the world's tallest skyscraper outside of a central business district. The Uptown District is also home to other buildings designed by noted architects such as I. M. Pei, César Pelli, and Philip Johnson. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a mini-boom of mid-rise and high-rise residential tower construction, with several over 30 stories tall.[145][146][147] In 2002, Uptown had more than 23 million square feet (2,100,000 m²) of office space with 16 million square feet (1,500,000 m²) of Class A office space.[148]
[edit] Crime
Police services are provided by the Houston Police Department. Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population).[149] The city's murder rate, however, ranked 3rd among U.S. cities with a population of 1,000,000 or more. Even those statistics were believed to be higher after local TV news investigator Mark Greenblatt found the Houston Police Department under-counted 2005 homicides. Officially counting just two more of the city's murders would have bumped up the city's murder rate to second place.[150] While nonviolent crime in the city dropped by 2 percent in 2005 compared to 2004, the number of homicides rose by 23.5 percent.[151] Since 2005, Houston has been experiencing a spike in crime, which is due in part to an influx of people from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.[152] After Katrina, Houston's murder rate increased 70 percent in November and December 2005 compared to levels in 2004. The city recorded 336 murders in 2005,[151] compared to 272 in 2004.[153] Houston's homicide rate per 100,000 residents increased from 16.33 in 2005 to 17.24 in 2006.[154] The number of murders in the city increased to 379 in 2006.[151] Among other cities, Houston is a major hub for drug traffickers, who supply cocaine, marijuana, heroin, MDMA, and methamphetamine to distributors in other American markets.[155]
In 2007, Houston ranked first for auto-theft in the state of Texas when more than 31,000 motor vehicles stolen in the Houston metropolitan area. [156]
[edit] Transportation
Main article: Transportation in Houston
Interstate 10 and Interstate 45 near Downtown
Houston's freeway system is made up of 739.3 miles (1,189.8 km) of freeways and expressways in a ten-county metropolitan area.[157] Its highway system uses a hub-and-spoke freeway structure serviced by multiple loops. The innermost loop is Interstate 610, which encircles downtown, the medical center, and many core neighborhoods with around a 10-mile (16 km) diameter. Beltway 8 and its freeway core, the Sam Houston Tollway, form the middle loop at a diameter of roughly 25 miles (40 km). A proposed highway project, State Highway 99 (The Grand Parkway), would form a third loop outside of Houston. Currently, only two out of eleven segments of State Highway 99 have been completed. Houston is located along the route of the proposed Interstate 69 NAFTA superhighway that would link Canada, the U.S. industrial Midwest, Texas, and Mexico. Other spoke freeways either planned or under construction include the Fort Bend Parkway, Hardy Toll Road, Crosby Freeway, and the future Alvin Freeway.
Houston's freeway system is monitored by Houston TranStar—a partnership of four government agencies that are responsible for providing transportation and emergency management services to the region. Houston TranStar was the first center in the nation to combine transportation and emergency management centers, and the first to bring four agencies (Texas Department of Transportation, Harris County, Texas, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas and the City of Houston) together to share their resources.[158]
METRO light rail along the Main Street Corridor in Downtown
The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas, or METRO, provides public transportation in the form of buses, light rail, and lift vans. METRO's various forms of public transportation still do not connect many of the suburbs to the greater city. METRO began light rail service on January 1, 2004 with the inaugural track ("Red Line") running about 8 miles (13 km) from the University of Houston–Downtown (UHD), which traverses through the Texas Medical Center and terminates at Reliant Park. METRO is currently in the design phase of a 10-year expansion plan that will add five more lines to the existing system.[159]
Amtrak, the national rail passenger system, provides service to Houston via the Sunset Limited (Los Angeles–New Orleans), which stops at a train station on the north side of the downtown area. The station saw 14,891 boardings and alightings in fiscal year 2008.[160]
George Bush Intercontinental Airport
Houston is served by three airports, two of which are commercial that served 52 million passengers in 2007 and managed by the Houston Airport System.[161] The Federal Aviation Administration and the state of Texas selected the "Houston Airport System as Airport of the Year" for 2005,[162] largely because of its multi-year, $3.1 billion airport improvement program for both major airports in Houston. The primary city airport is George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), the eighth-busiest in the United States for total passengers, and sixteenth-busiest worldwide.[163] Bush Intercontinental currently ranks third in the United States for non-stop domestic and international service with 182 destinations.[164] In 2006, the United States Department of Transportation named George Bush Intercontinental Airport the fastest-growing of the top ten airports in the United States.[165] Houston is the headquarters of Continental Airlines and Bush Intercontinental is Continental Airlines' largest hub. The airline offers more than 700 daily departures from Houston.[166] In early 2007, Bush Intercontinental Airport was named a model "port of entry" for international travelers by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.[167] The Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center stands on the George Bush Intercontinental Airport grounds. The second-largest commercial airport is William P. Hobby Airport (named Houston International Airport until 1967) which operates primarily small to medium-haul domestic flights. Houston's aviation history is showcased in the 1940 Air Terminal Museum located in the old terminal building on the west side of the airport. Hobby Airport has been recognized with two awards for being one of the top five performing airports in the world and for customer service by Airports Council International.[168] Houston's third municipal airport is Ellington Airport (a former U.S. Air Force base) used by military, government, NASA, and general aviation sectors.[169]
[edit] Healthcare and medicine
Main article: Texas Medical Center
See also: List of hospitals in Texas
Texas Medical Center
Houston is the seat of the internationally renowned Texas Medical Center, which contains the world's largest concentration of research and healthcare institutions.[170] All 47 member institutions of the Texas Medical Center are non-profit organizations. They provide patient and preventive care, research, education, and local, national, and international community well-being. Employing more than 73,600 people, institutions at the medical center include 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and virtually all health-related careers. It is where one of the first—and still the largest—air emergency service, Life Flight, was created, and a very successful inter-institutional transplant program was developed. More heart surgeries are performed at the Texas Medical Center than anywhere else in the world.[171]
Some of the academic and research health institutions in the center include Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, The Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The Baylor College of Medicine has annually been considered within the top ten medical schools in the nation, and it is currently considering a merger with Rice University, a top-tier undergraduate university; likewise, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has consistently ranked as one of the top two U.S. hospitals specializing in cancer care by U.S. News & World Report since 1990.[172][173] The Menninger Clinic, a renowned psychiatric treatment center is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital System.[174]
[edit] Education
Main article: Education in Houston
There are 17 school districts serving the city. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the seventh-largest in the United States.[175] HISD has 112 campuses that serve as magnet or vanguard schools—specializing in such disciplines as health professions, visual and performing arts, and the sciences. There are also many charter schools that are run separately from school districts. In addition, some public school districts also have their own charter schools.
The Houston area is home to more than 300 private schools,[176][177][178] many of which are accredited by Texas Private School Accreditation Commission recognized agencies. The Houston Area Independent Schools offer education from a variety of different religious as well as secular viewpoints.[179] The Houston area Catholic schools are operated by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
[edit] Colleges and universities
Further information: List of colleges and universities in Houston
University of Houston
Houston has more than sixty colleges, universities and other degree-granting institutions with a total enrollment of approximately 360,000 students.[180] There are four public universities engaged in research and development in Houston. The University of Houston (UH) is Texas's third-largest public research university with 37,000 students from 130 countries. With over 300 degree programs and 40 research centers and institutes, UH is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System (UHS) and is one of the most ethnically diverse research university in the country.[181][182] Its law school—University of Houston Law Center—ranked No. 55 (Tier 1) of the "Top 100 Law Schools" in 2008 by U.S. News & World Report.[183] UH has the only optometry school and one of six pharmacy programs in Texas. The University of Houston–Clear Lake (UHCL) is an upper-level university with 89 degree programs and an enrollment of 7,700 located adjacent to NASA's Johnson Space Center. The University of Houston–Downtown (UHD) is an open admissions four-year university with an enrollment of 12,300 offering 46 degree programs. Texas Southern University (TSU) is a historically black four-year university with a pharmacy program and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.
Houston is home to many private institutions of higher learning—ranging from liberal arts colleges to a nationally recognized Tier One research university. Rice University is one of the leading teaching and research universities of the United States and ranked the nation's 17th-best overall university by U.S. News & World Report.[184] Two private liberal arts colleges are Houston Baptist University (HBU) and University of St. Thomas (UST). Founded in 1923, South Texas College of Law is a private and oldest law school in Houston located in Downtown.[185]
There are three community college districts with campuses in Houston. The Houston Community College System serves most of Houston and is the fourth-largest community college system in the United States.[186] The northwestern through northeastern parts of the city are served by various campuses of the Lone Star College System while the southeastern portion of Houston is served by San Jacinto College.
[edit] Notes
1. ^ "US Census Bureau Population Finder: Houston city, TX". factfinder.census.gov. http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFPopulation?_event=ChangeGeoContext&geo_id=16000US4835000&_geoContext=01000US%7C04000US48%7C16000US4835000&_street=&_county=Houston%2C+Tx&_cityTown=Houston2C+Tx&_state=&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on&ActiveGeoDiv=geoSelect&_useEV=&pctxt=fph&pgsl=010&_submenuId=population_0&ds_name=null&_ci_nbr=null&qr_name=null®=null%3Anull&_keyword=&_industry=link. Retrieved 2009-03-28.
2. ^ "Population Estimates for the 25 Largest U.S. Cities based on July 1, 2006 Population Estimates" (PDF). www.census.gov. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2007/cb07-91table1.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-28.
3. ^ "American FactFinder". United States Census Bureau. http://factfinder.census.gov. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
4. ^ "US Board on Geographic Names". United States Geological Survey. 2007-10-25. http://geonames.usgs.gov. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
5. ^ McComb, David G. (January 19, 2008). ""Houston, Texas"". Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/hdh3.html. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
6. ^ a b "GaWC - The World According to GaWC 2008". Globalization and World Cities Research Network. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2008t.html. Retrieved 2009-03-01.
7. ^ a b "Fortune 500 2008: Cities". http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2008/cities/. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
8. ^ a b U.S. Port Ranking by Cargo Volume 2004. Port Industry Information, American Association of Port Authorities. 2004. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
9. ^ a b "Museums and Cultural ArtsPDF (31.8 KB)", Greater Houston Partnership. Retrieved on 2009-03-21.
10. ^ a b Coutinho, Juliana (2000-09-13). "Brief history of Houston". The Daily Cougar. http://www.stp.uh.edu/vol66/13/news/news-index.html. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
11. ^ a b c Houston, Texas. Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.
12. ^ a b Looscan, Adele B. (1916). "Harris County, 1822–1845". Southwestern Historical Quarterly 19: 37–64. http://www.tshaonline.org/publications/journals/shq/online/v019/n1/article_4.html. Retrieved 2007-02-07.
13. ^ Born on the Bayou: city's murky start. John Perry, City Savvy Online Edition. Published Summer 2006. Retrieved on 2007-02-06
14. ^ Cotham, Edward T. (2004). Sabine Pass: The Confederacy's Thermopylae. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70594-8.
15. ^ J.H.W. Stele to Sayers, September 11-12, 1900. Texas State Library & Archives Commission, Retrieved on August 31, 2007
16. ^ Olien, Diana Davids; Olien, Roger M. (2002). Oil in Texas: The Gusher Age, 1895–1945. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-76056-6.
17. ^ "Marvin Hurley, 1910-1920, Houston History". http://www.houstonhistory.com/decades/history5h.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-06.
18. ^ Gibson, Campbell (June 1998). "Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990". Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Census Bureau). http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
19. ^ "Houston Ship Channel". TSHA Handbook of Texas. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/rhh11.html. Retrieved 2007-02-18.
20. ^ Carlson, Erik (February 1999). "Ellington Field: A Short History, 1917–1963" (PDF). National Aeronautics and Space Administration. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/ellington/Ellington.pdf. Retrieved 2007-02-18.
21. ^ Streetman, Ashley. "Houston Timeline". Houston Institute for Culture. http://www.houstonculture.org/resources/houstontime.html. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
22. ^ How Air Conditioning Changed America. The Old House Web, Retrieved on April 4, 2007
23. ^ A Short History. Houston Geological Auxiliary, Retrieved on April 4, 2007
24. ^ "Shipbuilding". TSHA Handbook of Texas. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/SS/ets3.html. Retrieved 2007-02-18.
25. ^ Barks, Joseph V. (November 2001). "Powering the (New and Improved) "Eighth Wonder of the World"". Electrical Apparatus. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3726/is_200111/ai_n9011574. Retrieved 2007-01-16.
26. ^ "Polish-Texans". Texas Almanac 2004-2005. http://www.texasalmanac.com/culture/groups/polish.html. Retrieved 2007-02-06.
27. ^ "Lee P. Brown - Biography". TheHistoryMakers.com. http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=937&category=politicalMakers. Retrieved 2007-01-22.
28. ^ Ward, Christina (2001-06-18). "Allison's Death Toll Hits 43". RedCross.org. http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/floods/010618houston.html. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
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This article is about a U.S. city. For other uses, see Houston (disambiguation).
"Space City USA" redirects here. For other uses, see Space City.
City of Houston
— City —
Flag
Seal
Nickname(s): Space City
Location in Harris County, Texas
Coordinates: 29°45′46″N 95°22′59″W / 29.76278°N 95.38306°W / 29.76278; -95.38306Coordinates: 29°45′46″N 95°22′59″W / 29.76278°N 95.38306°W / 29.76278; -95.38306
Country United States
State Texas
Counties Harris
Fort Bend
Montgomery
Incorporated June 5, 1837
Government
- Mayor Bill White
Area
- City 601.7 sq mi (1,558 km2)
- Land 579.4 sq mi (1,501 km2)
- Water 22.3 sq mi (57.7 km2)
Elevation 43 ft (13 m)
Population (2007)[1][2]
- City 2,242,193 (4th)
- Density 3,828/sq mi (1,471/km2)
- Urban 3,822,509
- Metro 5,728,143 (6th Largest)
- Demonym Houstonian
Time zone CST (UTC-6)
- Summer (DST) CDT (UTC-5)
Area code(s) 713, 281, 832
FIPS code 48-35000[3]
GNIS feature ID 1380948[4]
Website houstontx.gov
Houston (pronounced /ˈhjuːstən/) is the fourth-largest city in the United States and the largest city within the state of Texas. As of the 2008 U.S. Census estimate, the city has a population of 2.2 million within an area of 600 square miles (1,600 km²). Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area—the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with a population over 5.7 million.
Houston was founded on August 30, 1836, by brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen on land near the banks of Buffalo Bayou.[5] The city was incorporated on June 5, 1837, and named after then-President of the Republic of Texas—former General Sam Houston—who had commanded at the Battle of San Jacinto, which took place 25 miles (40 km) east of where the city was established. The burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the city's population. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston became the home of the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located.
Rated as a beta world city,[6] Houston's economy has a broad industrial base in the energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, transportation, and health care sectors and is a leading center for building oilfield equipment; only New York City is home to more Fortune 500 headquarters in the city limits.[7] The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled.[8] The city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. It is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits—attracting more than 7 million visitors a year to the Houston Museum District. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District and is one of few U.S. cities that offer year-round resident companies in all major performing arts.[9]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Geography
o 2.1 Geology
o 2.2 Climate
o 2.3 Cityscape
* 3 Government and politics
* 4 Economy
* 5 Demographics
* 6 Culture
o 6.1 Arts and theatre
o 6.2 Tourism and recreation
o 6.3 Sports
o 6.4 Media
* 7 Architecture
* 8 Crime
* 9 Transportation
* 10 Healthcare and medicine
* 11 Education
o 11.1 Colleges and universities
* 12 Notes
* 13 Further reading
* 14 External links
[edit] History
Main article: History of Houston
See also: Historical events of Houston
Sam Houston
In August 1836, John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York City, purchased 6,642 acres (27 km²) of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city.[10] The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the popular general at the Battle of San Jacinto,[10] who was elected President of Texas in September 1836.
Houston was granted incorporation on June 5, 1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor.[11] In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County (now Harris County) and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas.[12] In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to promote shipping and waterborne business at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou.[13]
By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton.[12] Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont. During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General John Bankhead Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston.[14] After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more commerce between downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890 Houston was the railroad center of Texas.
Houston, circa 1873
In 1900, after Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane, efforts to make Houston into a viable deepwater port were accelerated.[15] The following year, oil discovered at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry.[16] In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel. By 1910 the city's population had reached 78,800, almost doubling from a decade before. An integral part of the city were African Americans, who numbered 23,929 or nearly one-third of the residents.[17] They were developing a strong professional class based then in the Fourth Ward.
President Woodrow Wilson opened the deepwater Port of Houston in 1914, seven years after digging began. By 1930, Houston had become Texas's most populous city and Harris the most populous county.[18]
When World War II started, tonnage levels at the port decreased and shipping activities were suspended; however, the war did provide economic benefits for the city. Petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants were constructed along the ship channel because of the demand for petroleum and synthetic rubber products during the war.[19] Ellington Field, initially built during World War I, was revitalized as an advanced training center for bombardiers and navigators.[20] The M. D. Anderson Foundation formed the Texas Medical Center in 1945. After the war, Houston's economy reverted to being primarily port-driven. In 1948, several unincorporated areas were annexed into the city limits, which more than doubled the city's size, and Houston proper began to spread across the region.[11][21]
In 1950, the availability of air conditioning provided impetus for many companies to relocate to Houston resulting in an economic boom and producing a key shift in the city's economy toward the energy sector.[22][23]
The space shuttle, atop its Boeing 747 SCA, flying over Johnson Space Center
The increased production of the local shipbuilding industry during World War II spurred Houston's growth,[24] as did the establishment in 1961 of NASA's "Manned Spacecraft Center" (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973), which created the city's aerospace industry. The Astrodome, nicknamed the "Eighth Wonder of the World,"[25] opened in 1965 as the world's first indoor domed sports stadium.
During the late 1970s, Houston experienced a population boom as people from Rust Belt states moved to Texas in large numbers.[26] The new residents came for the numerous employment opportunities in the petroleum industry, created as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo.
The population boom ended abruptly in the mid-1980s, as oil prices fell precipitously. The space industry also suffered in 1986 after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. The late 1980s saw a recession adversely affecting the city's economy.
Since the 1990s, as a result of the recession, Houston has made efforts to diversify its economy by focusing on aerospace and health care/biotechnology and by reducing its dependence on the petroleum industry. In 1997, Houstonians elected Lee P. Brown as the city's first African American mayor.[27]
Hurricane Rita evacuation. (With contraflow lane reversal.)
In June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 37 inches (940 mm) of rain on parts of Houston, causing the worst flooding in the city's history; the storm cost billions of dollars in damage and killed 20 people in Texas.[28] By December of that same year, Houston-based energy company Enron collapsed into the second-largest ever U.S. bankruptcy during an investigation surrounding fabricated partnerships that were allegedly used to hide debt and inflate profits.
In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans who evacuated from Hurricane Katrina.[29] One month later, approximately 2.5 million Houston area residents evacuated when Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This was the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States.[30][31]
[edit] Geography
Main article: Geography of Houston
A simulated-color image of Houston
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 601.7 square miles (1,558.4 km²); this comprises 579.4 square miles (1,500.7 km²) of land and 22.3 square miles (57.7 km²) of water. Most of Houston is located on the gulf coastal plain, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland and forest. Much of the city was built on forested land, marshes, swamp, or prairie, which are all still visible in surrounding areas. Flatness of the local terrain, when combined with urban sprawl, has made flooding a recurring problem for the city.[32] Downtown stands about 50 feet (15 m) above sea level,[33] and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about 125 feet (38 m) in elevation.[34][35] The city once relied on groundwater for its needs, but land subsidence forced the city to turn to ground-level water sources such as Lake Houston and Lake Conroe.[11][36]
Houston has four major bayous passing through the city. Buffalo Bayou runs through downtown and the Houston Ship Channel, and has three tributaries: White Oak Bayou, which runs through the Heights neighborhood north of downtown and then towards downtown; Braes Bayou, which runs along the Texas Medical Center; and Sims Bayou, which runs through the south of Houston and downtown Houston. The ship channel continues past Galveston and then into the Gulf of Mexico.
[edit] Geology
Underpinning Houston's land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, and poorly cemented sands up to several miles deep. The region's geology developed from river deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic matter, that over time, transformed into oil and natural gas. Beneath the layers of sediment is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward. As it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into salt dome formations, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. The thick, rich, sometimes black, surface soil is suitable for rice farming in suburban outskirts where the city continues to grow.[37][38]
The Houston area has over 150 active faults (estimated to be 300 active faults)[39] with an aggregate length of up to 310 miles (500 km),[40][41] including the Long Point-Eureka Heights Fault System which runs through the center of the city. There have been no significant historically recorded earthquakes in Houston, but researchers do not discount the possibility of such quakes occurring in the deeper past, nor in the future. Land in some communities southeast of Houston is sinking because water has been pumped out from the ground for many years. It may be associated with slip along faults; however, the slippage is slow and not considered an earthquake, where stationary faults must slip suddenly enough to create seismic waves.[42] These faults also tend to move at a smooth rate in what is termed "fault creep,"[36] which further reduces the risk of an earthquake.
[edit] Climate
Main article: Climate of Houston
Allen's Landing after Tropical Storm Allison, June 2001
Houston
Climate chart
J F M A M J J A S O N D
4.3
63
45
3
67
48
3.2
74
55
3.5
79
61
5.1
86
68
6.8
91
74
4.4
94
75
4.5
93
75
5.6
89
72
5.3
82
62
4.5
73
53
3.8
65
47
average max. and min. temperatures in °F
precipitation totals in inches
source: Weather.com / NWS
Metric conversion[show]
J F M A M J J A S O N D
108
17
7
76
19
9
81
23
13
88
26
16
130
30
20
174
33
23
111
34
24
115
34
24
143
32
22
134
28
17
115
23
12
96
18
8
average max. and min. temperatures in °C
precipitation totals in mm
Houston's climate is classified as humid subtropical (Cfa in Köppen climate classification system). Spring supercell thunderstorms sometimes bring tornados to the area. Prevailing winds are from the south and southeast during most of the year, bringing heat across the continent from the deserts of Mexico and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.[43]
During the summer months, it is common for the temperature to reach over 90 °F (32 °C), with an average of 99 days per year above 90 °F (32 °C).[44][45] However, the humidity results in a heat index higher than the actual temperature. Summer mornings average over 90 percent relative humidity and approximately 60 percent in the afternoon.[46][47] Winds are often light in the summer and offer little relief, except near the immediate coast.[48] To cope with the heat, people use air conditioning in nearly every vehicle and building in the city; in 1980 Houston was described as the "most air-conditioned place on earth".[49] Scattered afternoon thunderstorms are common in the summer. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Houston was 109 °F (43 °C) on September 4, 2000.[50]
Winters in Houston are fairly temperate. The average high in January, the coldest month, is 63 °F (17 °C), while the average low is 41 °F (5 °C). Snowfall is generally rare. Recent snow events in Houston include a storm on December 24, 2004 when one inch (2.5 cm) fell and more recent snowfalls on December 10 and December 24, 2008. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Houston was 5 °F (−15 °C) on January 23, 1940.[51] Houston receives a high amount of rainfall annually, averaging about 48 inches a year. These rains tend to cause floods over portions of the city.
Houston has excessive ozone levels and is ranked among the most ozone-polluted cities in the United States.[52] Ground-level ozone, or smog, is Houston’s predominant air pollution problem, with the American Lung Association rating the metropolitan area's ozone level as the 6th worst in the United States in 2006.[53] The industries located along the ship channel are a major cause of the city's air pollution.[54]
[edit] Cityscape
Further information: Geographic areas of Houston and List of Houston neighborhoods
Houston was incorporated in 1837 under the ward system of representation. The ward designation is the progenitor of the nine current-day Houston City Council districts. Locations in Houston are generally classified as either being inside or outside the Interstate 610 Loop. The inside encompasses the central business district and many residential neighborhoods that predate World War II. More recently, high-density residential areas have been developed within the loop. The city's outlying areas, suburbs and enclaves are located outside of the loop. Beltway 8 encircles the city another 5 miles (8 km) farther out.
Uptown (foreground) and Downtown (background)
Though Houston is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations, it has developed similarly to other Sun Belt cities because the city's land use regulations and legal covenants have played a similar role.[55][56] Regulations include mandatory lot size for single-family houses and requirements that parking be available to tenants and customers. Such restrictions have had mixed results. Though some[56] have blamed the city's low density, urban sprawl, and lack of pedestrian-friendliness on these policies, the city's land use has also been credited with a bounty of affordable housing, sparing Houston the worst effects of the 2008 real estate crisis.[57] The city issued 42,697 building permits in 2008 and was ranked first in the list of healthiest housing markets for 2009, according to Builder magazine.[58]
Voters rejected efforts to have separate residential and commercial land-use districts in 1948, 1962, and 1993. Consequently, rather than a single central business district as the center of the city's employment, multiple districts have grown throughout the city in addition to downtown which include Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Midtown, Greenway Plaza, Energy Corridor, Westchase, and Greenspoint.
[edit] Government and politics
Main article: Politics of Houston
Houston City Hall
The city of Houston has a strong mayoral form of municipal government.[59] Houston is a home rule city and all municipal elections in the state of Texas are nonpartisan.[59][60] The City's elected officials are the mayor, city controller and 14 members of the city council.[61] As of 2009, the mayor of Houston is William "Bill" White, a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot[62] who is serving his third and final term (due to term limits). Houston's mayor serves as the city's chief administrator, executive officer, and official representative. He is responsible for the general management of the city and for seeing that all laws and ordinances are enforced.[62] As the result of a 1991 referendum in Houston, a mayor is elected for a two-year term, and can be elected to as many as three consecutive terms.
The current city council line-up of nine district based and five at-large positions was based on a U.S. Justice Department mandate which took effect in 1979.[63] At-large council members represent the entire city.[61] Under the current city charter, if the population in the city limits goes past 2.1 million residents, the current nine-member city council districts will be expanded with the addition of two city council districts.[64]
The city controller is elected independently of the mayor and council. The controller's duties are to certify available funds prior to committing such funds, processing disbursements, and performing financial and performance audits of city departments. Annise Parker is the current (as of 2009) city controller, serving her third term in office. The city's fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30.
[edit] Economy
Main article: Economy of Houston
Further information: List of companies in Houston
Data from city-data.com[65]
Houston is recognized worldwide for its energy industry—particularly for oil and natural gas—as well as for biomedical research and aeronautics. Renewable energy sources—wind and solar—are also becoming popular economic bases in Houston.[66][67] The ship channel is also a large part of Houston's economic base. Because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network.[6]
Considered to be the energy capital of the world, five of the six supermajor energy companies maintain a large base of operations in Houston (international headquarters of ConocoPhillips; US operational headquarters of Exxon-Mobil; US headquarters for international companies Shell Oil (US subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell located in The Hague, Netherlands), and BP whose international headquarters are in London, England).[68] Specifically, the headquarters of Shell Oil Company, the US affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell, is located at One Shell Plaza. While ExxonMobil maintains its small, global headquarters in Irving, Texas, its upstream and chemical divisions as well as most operational divisions, are located in Houston. Chevron has offices in Houston, having acquired a 40 story building intended to be the headquarters of Enron.[69] The company's Chevron Pipe Line Company subsidiary is headquartered in Houston, and more divisions are being consolidated and moved to Houston each year.[70] Houston is headquarters for the Marathon Oil Corporation, Apache Corporation, and Citgo and alternative energy companies such as Horizon Wind Energy.[71]
Greater Houston is a leading center for building oilfield equipment.[72] Much of Houston's success as a petrochemical complex is due to its busy man-made ship channel, the Port of Houston.[73] The port ranks first in the United States in international commerce, and is the tenth-largest port in the world.[8][74] Unlike most places, where high oil and gasoline prices are seen as harmful to the economy, they are generally seen as beneficial for Houston as many are employed in the energy industry.[75]
Houston Ship Channel
The Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown MSA's Gross Area Product (GAP) in 2008 was $440.4 billion,[76] slightly larger than Belgium’s, Malaysia’s, Venezuela’s or Sweden’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). When comparing Houston's economy to a national economy, only 21 countries other than the United States have a gross domestic product exceeding Houston's regional gross area product.[76] Houston's MSA Gross Area Product for 2007 is estimated to be 416.6 billion, up 13.8 percent from 2006. Mining, which in Houston is almost entirely exploration and production of oil and gas, accounts for 26.3% of Houston's GAP, up sharply in response to high energy prices and a decreased worldwide surplus of oil production capacity; followed by engineering services, health services, and manufacturing.[77]
The Houston area added 42,400 private-sector jobs between November 2007 and November 2008 and registered the nation’s largest gain in private-sector employment among the nation's cities, according to employment statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.[78] The unemployment rate in the city was 3.8% in April 2008, the lowest level in eight years while the job growth rate was 2.8%.[79]
In 2006, the Houston metropolitan area ranked first in Texas and third in the U.S. within the Category of "Best Places for Business and Careers" by Forbes magazine.[80] Foreign governments have established 89 consular offices in metropolitan Houston. Forty foreign governments maintain trade and commercial offices here and 23 active foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations.[81] Twenty-five foreign banks representing 13 nations operate in Houston, providing financial assistance to the international community.[82]
In 2008, Houston received top ranking on Kiplinger's Personal Finance Best Cities of 2008 list which ranks cities on their local economy, employment opportunities, reasonable living costs and quality of life.[83] The city ranked fourth for highest increase in the local technological innovation over the preceding 15 years, according to Forbes magazine.[84] In the same year, the city ranked second on the annual Fortune 500 list of company headquarters,[7] ranked first for Forbes Best Cities for College Graduates,[85] and ranked first on Forbes list of Best Cities to Buy a Home.[86]
[edit] Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Houston
Historical populations
Census Pop. %±
1850 2,396
—
1860 4,845 102.2%
1870 9,332 92.6%
1880 16,513 77.0%
1890 27,557 66.9%
1900 44,633 62.0%
1910 78,800 76.6%
1920 138,276 75.5%
1930 292,352 111.4%
1940 384,514 31.5%
1950 596,163 55.0%
1960 938,219 57.4%
1970 1,232,802 31.4%
1980 1,595,138 29.4%
1990 1,630,553 2.2%
2000 1,953,631 19.8%
Est. 2007 2,208,180 13.0%
The annual Houston International Festival spotlights a different culture each year
Houston is a multicultural city, in part because of its many academic institutions and strong industries. Over 90 languages are spoken in the city.[87] Houston has among the youngest populations in the nation,[88][89][90] partly due to an influx of immigrants into Texas.[91] The city has the third-largest Hispanic and third-largest Mexican-American population in the United States. It also has more Hispanic Americans than any other city in Texas[92] An estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants reside in the Greater Houston area.[93] Houston has some of the largest communities of Indian and Pakistani descent in the United States.[94] The Nigerian-American community of Houston, estimated to be over 2.0% of the city's population, is the largest in the United States.[95][96]
As of the 2005-2007 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, White Americans made up 54.1% of Houston's population; of which 28.0% were non-Hispanic whites. Blacks or African Americans made up 24.3% of Houston's population; of which 24.0% were non-Hispanic blacks. American Indians made up 0.3% of Houston's population; of which 0.2% were non-Hispanic. Asian Americans made up 5.3% of Houston's population while Pacific Islander Americans made up 0.1%. Individuals from some other race made up 14.7% of the city's population; of which 0.2% were non-Hispanic. Individuals from two or more races made up 1.1% of the city's population; of which 0.6% were non-Hispanic. Hispanics or Latinos made up 41.7% of Houston's population.[97][98]
As of the 2000 Census, there were 1,953,631 people and the population density was 3,371.7 people per square mile (1,301.8/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 49.3% White, 25.3% African American, 5.3% Asian, 0.4% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.5% from some other race, and 3.1% from two or more races. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos made up 37.4% of Houston's population while non-Hispanic whites made up 30.8%.[99]
Houston has a large number of immigrants from Asia, including the largest Vietnamese American population in Texas and third-largest in the United States, with 30,000 people in 2007. Some parts of the city with high populations of Vietnamese and Chinese residents have Chinese and Vietnamese street signs, in addition to English ones. Houston has two Chinatowns: the original located in Downtown, and the more recent one north of Bellaire Boulevard in the southwest area of the city.[100][101] The city has a Little Saigon in Midtown and Vietnamese businesses located in the southwest area of Houston's Chinatown.[102] A "Little India" community referred to as the "Harwin District" exists along Hillcroft.[103]
Houston has a large gay community concentrated primarily in Montrose, Neartown and Houston Heights. It is estimated that the Houston metropolitan area has the twelfth-largest number of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals in the United States.[104]
Houston has routinely been named as one of the "fattest cities in America" in a prominent survey conducted yearly by Men's Fitness magazine.[105][106] However, a Houston Chronicle article has asserted that this ranking is unscientific and therefore meaningless.[107] Houston was labeled by the magazine as "fattest city" in five of the past nine years, and was deemed sixth fattest in 2009. [108] Houston Mayor Bill White formed the Mayor’s Wellness Council and initiated the "Get Moving Houston" fitness campaign in 2005 to address Houston’s ranking by Men’s Fitness magazine.[109][110]
[edit] Culture
Main article: Culture of Houston
See also: Nicknames of Houston, List of events in Houston, List of people raised in Houston, and Sister cities of Houston
Houston Art Car Parade
Houston is a diverse city with a large and growing international community.[111] The metropolitan area is home to an estimated 1.1 million (21.4 percent) residents who were born outside the United States, with nearly two-thirds of the area's foreign-born population from south of the United States–Mexico border.[112] Additionally, more than one in five foreign-born residents are from Asia.[112] The city is home to the nation’s third largest concentration of consular offices, representing 86 countries.[113]
Many annual events celebrate the diverse cultures of Houston. The largest and longest running is the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, held over 20 days from late February to early March.[114] Another large celebration is the annual night-time Houston Pride Parade, held at the end of June.[115] Other annual events include the Houston Greek Festival,[116] Art Car Parade, the Houston Auto Show, the Houston International Festival, the Westheimer Block Party[117] and the Bayou City Art Festival, which is considered to be one of the top five art festivals in the United States.[118][119]
Houston received the official nickname of "Space City" in 1967 because it is the location of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Other nicknames often used by locals include "Bayou City," "Magnolia City," "Clutch City," and "H-Town."
[edit] Arts and theatre
Wortham Center in the Theater District of Downtown
Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene. The Theater District is located downtown and is home to nine major performing arts organizations and six performance halls. It is the second-largest concentration of theater seats in a downtown area in the United States.[120][121][122] Houston is one of few United States cities with permanent, professional, resident companies in all major performing arts disciplines: opera (Houston Grand Opera), ballet (Houston Ballet), music (Houston Symphony Orchestra), and theater (The Alley Theatre).[9][123] Houston is also home to many local folk artists, art groups and various smaller progressive arts organizations.[124] Houston attracts many touring Broadway acts, concerts, shows, and exhibitions for a variety of interests.[125]
The Museum District has many popular cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year.[126][127] Notable facilities located in the district include The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Holocaust Museum Houston, and the Houston Zoo.[128][129][130] Located in the nearby Montrose area are The Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel.
Hobby Center for the Performing Arts
Bayou Bend, located in River Oaks, is a 14-acre (5.7 ha) facility of the Museum of Fine Arts that houses one of America's best collections of decorative art, paintings and furniture. Bayou Bend is the former home of Houston philanthropist Ima Hogg.[131]
Many venues scattered across Houston regularly host local and touring rock, blues, country, hip hop and Tejano musical acts. There has never been a widely renowned music scene in Houston. Artists seem to relocate to other parts of the United States once attaining some level of success.[132] A notable exception to the rule is Houston hip-hop, which celebrates the unique southern flavor and attitude of its roots. This has given rise to a strong, independent hip-hop music scene, influencing and influenced by the larger Southern hip hop and gangsta rap communities.[133] Many Houstonian hip-hop artists have attained commercial success. Houston is the home of chopped and screwed music.
Many non-hip hop artists that have come from Houston include the pop and R&B girl group Destiny's Child, hard Southern rock band ZZ Top, sixties psychedelic rock band Red Krayola, folk-country singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett, pop singer Hilary Duff, singer and actor Patrick Swayze, and indie-piano rock band Blue October. Houston also once had fledgling blues and folk scenes in the sixties and seventies with blues performers such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, "Texas" Johnny Brown, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, and Joe "Guitar" Hughes many of whom recorded with the hometown music label Peacock Records. Folk artists in the city in the sixties and seventies such as Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle and Guy Clark also called Houston home for many years playing at long standing venues like Anderson Fair and the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe.[134] The eighties and nineties produced punk and alternative rock such as Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, Verbal Abuse, Really Red, Culturcide, the Pain Teens and the outside musician Jandek. The new millennium has seen a continuance of Houston Noise Bands with contemporary performers such as Jana Hunter and Indian Jewelry.
[edit] Tourism and recreation
Reflection pool in Hermann Park
The Theater District is a 17-block area in the center of downtown Houston that is home to the Bayou Place entertainment complex, restaurants, movies, plazas, and parks. Bayou Place is a large multilevel building containing full-service restaurants, bars, live music, billiards, and art house films. The Houston Verizon Wireless Theater stages live concerts, stage plays, and stand-up comedy; and the Angelika Film Center presents art, foreign and independent films.[135]
Houston is home to 337 parks including Hermann Park, which houses the Houston Zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Terry Hershey Park, Lake Houston Park, Memorial Park, Tranquility Park, Sesquicentennial Park, Discovery Green and Sam Houston Park (which contains restored and reconstructed homes which were originally built between 1823 and 1905).[136] Of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, Houston has the most total area of parks and green space: 56,405 acres (228 km2).[137] The city also has over 200 additional green spaces—totaling over 19,600 acres (79 km2) that are managed by the city—including the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. The Williams Waterwall serves as a popular tourist attraction and sits in Uptown Houston. The Houston Civic Center was replaced by the George R. Brown Convention Center—one of the nation's largest—and the Jesse H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Society for the Performing Arts. The Sam Houston Coliseum and Music Hall have been replaced by the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.
Space Center Houston is the official visitors’ center of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Here one will find many interactive exhibits including moon rocks, a shuttle simulator, and presentations about the history of NASA's manned space flight program.
Other tourist attractions include the Galleria (Texas's largest shopping mall located in the Uptown District), Old Market Square, the Downtown Aquarium, and Sam Houston Race Park.
[edit] Sports
Main article: Sports in Houston
See also: Former professional sports teams in Houston
Revelers at "The Main Event" held Downtown during Super Bowl XXXVIII
Houston has teams for nearly every major professional sport. The Houston Astros (MLB), Houston Texans (NFL), Houston Rockets (NBA), Houston Dynamo (MLS), Houston Aeros (AHL), Houston Wranglers (WTT), Houston Takers (ABA), Houston Energy (IWFL), Houston Leones (PDL), and the H-Town Texas Cyclones (NWFA) all call Houston home.
Minute Maid Park (home of the Astros) and Toyota Center (home of the Rockets, and Aeros) are located in a revived area of downtown. The city has the Reliant Astrodome, the first domed stadium in the world; it also holds the NFL's first retractable-roof stadium, Reliant Stadium. Other sports facilities in Houston include Hofheinz Pavilion, Reliant Arena (former home of the Comets), and Robertson Stadium (both used for University of Houston collegiate sports, the latter also for the Houston Dynamo), and Rice Stadium (home of the Rice University Owls football team). The infrequently used Reliant Astrodome hosted World Wrestling Entertainment's WrestleMania X-Seven on April 1, 2001, where an attendance record of 67,925 was set.[138] The city also hosted WrestleMania XXV at Reliant Stadium on April 5, 2009.[139]
Houston has hosted major recent sporting events, including the 2004 Major League Baseball All-Star Game,[140] the 2000 IHL All-Star Game, the 2005 World Series, the 2005 Big 12 Conference football championship game, the 2006 NBA All-Star Game, the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships from 2001–2006, and the Tennis Masters Cup in 2003 and 2004, as well as the annual Shell Houston Open golf tournament. Starting in 2009, Houston will host the final official event in the LPGA golf season, the LPGA Tour Championship. The city hosts the annual NCAA College Baseball Minute Maid Classic every February and NCAA football's Texas Bowl in December. Houston has hosted the Super Bowl championship game twice. Super Bowl VIII was played at Rice Stadium in 1974 and Super Bowl XXXVIII was played at Reliant Stadium in 2004. From 1998 to 2001, the CART auto racing series held a yearly race, the Grand Prix of Houston, on downtown streets. After a five-year hiatus, CART's successor series, Champ Car, revived the race for 2006 and 2007 on the streets surrounding the Reliant Park complex. However, Champ Car merged with the rival Indy Racing League (IRL) in 2008, discontinuing the Houston race in the process.
[edit] Media
Further information: List of newspapers in Houston, List of television stations in Houston, List of radio stations in Houston, and List of films featured in Houston
LeRoy and Lucile Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting at the University of Houston
Houston is served by the Houston Chronicle, its only major daily newspaper with wide distribution. The Hearst Corporation, which owns and operates the Houston Chronicle, bought the assets of the Houston Post—its long-time rival and main competition—when Houston Post ceased operations in 1995. The Houston Post was owned by the family of former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby of Houston. The only other major publication to serve the city is the Houston Press—a free alternative weekly with a weekly readership of more than 300,000.[141]
The Houston area is served by a public television station, KUHT, and public radio station, KUHF. Both stations are licensed to and operated by the University of Houston. KUHT (Channel 8) is a PBS member station and the first public television station in the United States, and KUHF (88.7 FM) is an NPR member station. Both stations broadcast from the LeRoy and Lucile Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting at the University of Houston.
One of the leading media personalities in Houston is Dave Ward who is the longest running anchor at any station in all of Houston, and one of few in the country. Ward has led KTRK-TV for more than 40 years. Ron Stone led Channel 2 News for 20 years, 1972 to 1992. Ray Miller, host of The Eyes of Texas, a cultural anthology series broadcast for nearly three decades over KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate, is also well known, as was Marvin Zindler. In the late 1960s, Miller hired Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Galveston native as the first woman newswoman in Texas. She later served in the Texas House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
[edit] Architecture
Main article: Architecture of Houston
See also: List of tallest buildings in Houston
The JPMorgan Chase Tower stands as the tallest building in Texas.
Houston's skyline has been ranked fourth most impressive in the United States;[142] it is the third-tallest skyline in the United States and one of the top 10 in the world.[143] Houston has a seven-mile (11 km) system of tunnels and skywalks linking buildings in downtown which contain shops, restaurants, and convenience stores. This system enables pedestrians to avoid the intense summer heat and heavy rain showers while walking from one building to another.
In the 1960s, Downtown Houston consisted of a modest collection of mid-rise office structures, but has since grown into one of the largest skylines in the United States. Downtown was on the threshold of a boom in 1970 with huge projects being launched by real estate developers with the energy industry boom. A succession of skyscrapers were built throughout the 1970s—many by real estate developer Gerald D. Hines—culminating with Houston's tallest skyscraper, the 75-floor, 1,002-foot (305 m)-tall JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly the Texas Commerce Tower), which was completed in 1982. It is the tallest structure in Texas, 10th-tallest building in the United States and the 30th-tallest skyscraper in the world based on height to roof. In 1983, the 71-floor, 992-foot (302 m)-tall Wells Fargo Bank Plaza (formerly Allied Bank Plaza) was completed, which became the second-tallest building in Houston and Texas. Based on height to roof, it is the 13th-tallest in the United States and the 36th-tallest in the world. As of 2007, downtown Houston had over 43 million square feet (4,000,000 m²) of office space.[144]
Centered on Post Oak Boulevard and Westheimer Road, the Uptown District boomed during the 1970s and early 1980s when a collection of mid-rise office buildings, hotels, and retail developments appeared along Interstate 610 west. Uptown became one of the most impressive instances of an edge city. The highest achievement of Uptown was the construction of the 64-floor, 901-foot (275 m)-tall, Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed landmark Williams Tower (known as the Transco Tower until 1999). At the time, it was believed to the be the world's tallest skyscraper outside of a central business district. The Uptown District is also home to other buildings designed by noted architects such as I. M. Pei, César Pelli, and Philip Johnson. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a mini-boom of mid-rise and high-rise residential tower construction, with several over 30 stories tall.[145][146][147] In 2002, Uptown had more than 23 million square feet (2,100,000 m²) of office space with 16 million square feet (1,500,000 m²) of Class A office space.[148]
[edit] Crime
Police services are provided by the Houston Police Department. Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population).[149] The city's murder rate, however, ranked 3rd among U.S. cities with a population of 1,000,000 or more. Even those statistics were believed to be higher after local TV news investigator Mark Greenblatt found the Houston Police Department under-counted 2005 homicides. Officially counting just two more of the city's murders would have bumped up the city's murder rate to second place.[150] While nonviolent crime in the city dropped by 2 percent in 2005 compared to 2004, the number of homicides rose by 23.5 percent.[151] Since 2005, Houston has been experiencing a spike in crime, which is due in part to an influx of people from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.[152] After Katrina, Houston's murder rate increased 70 percent in November and December 2005 compared to levels in 2004. The city recorded 336 murders in 2005,[151] compared to 272 in 2004.[153] Houston's homicide rate per 100,000 residents increased from 16.33 in 2005 to 17.24 in 2006.[154] The number of murders in the city increased to 379 in 2006.[151] Among other cities, Houston is a major hub for drug traffickers, who supply cocaine, marijuana, heroin, MDMA, and methamphetamine to distributors in other American markets.[155]
In 2007, Houston ranked first for auto-theft in the state of Texas when more than 31,000 motor vehicles stolen in the Houston metropolitan area. [156]
[edit] Transportation
Main article: Transportation in Houston
Interstate 10 and Interstate 45 near Downtown
Houston's freeway system is made up of 739.3 miles (1,189.8 km) of freeways and expressways in a ten-county metropolitan area.[157] Its highway system uses a hub-and-spoke freeway structure serviced by multiple loops. The innermost loop is Interstate 610, which encircles downtown, the medical center, and many core neighborhoods with around a 10-mile (16 km) diameter. Beltway 8 and its freeway core, the Sam Houston Tollway, form the middle loop at a diameter of roughly 25 miles (40 km). A proposed highway project, State Highway 99 (The Grand Parkway), would form a third loop outside of Houston. Currently, only two out of eleven segments of State Highway 99 have been completed. Houston is located along the route of the proposed Interstate 69 NAFTA superhighway that would link Canada, the U.S. industrial Midwest, Texas, and Mexico. Other spoke freeways either planned or under construction include the Fort Bend Parkway, Hardy Toll Road, Crosby Freeway, and the future Alvin Freeway.
Houston's freeway system is monitored by Houston TranStar—a partnership of four government agencies that are responsible for providing transportation and emergency management services to the region. Houston TranStar was the first center in the nation to combine transportation and emergency management centers, and the first to bring four agencies (Texas Department of Transportation, Harris County, Texas, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas and the City of Houston) together to share their resources.[158]
METRO light rail along the Main Street Corridor in Downtown
The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas, or METRO, provides public transportation in the form of buses, light rail, and lift vans. METRO's various forms of public transportation still do not connect many of the suburbs to the greater city. METRO began light rail service on January 1, 2004 with the inaugural track ("Red Line") running about 8 miles (13 km) from the University of Houston–Downtown (UHD), which traverses through the Texas Medical Center and terminates at Reliant Park. METRO is currently in the design phase of a 10-year expansion plan that will add five more lines to the existing system.[159]
Amtrak, the national rail passenger system, provides service to Houston via the Sunset Limited (Los Angeles–New Orleans), which stops at a train station on the north side of the downtown area. The station saw 14,891 boardings and alightings in fiscal year 2008.[160]
George Bush Intercontinental Airport
Houston is served by three airports, two of which are commercial that served 52 million passengers in 2007 and managed by the Houston Airport System.[161] The Federal Aviation Administration and the state of Texas selected the "Houston Airport System as Airport of the Year" for 2005,[162] largely because of its multi-year, $3.1 billion airport improvement program for both major airports in Houston. The primary city airport is George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), the eighth-busiest in the United States for total passengers, and sixteenth-busiest worldwide.[163] Bush Intercontinental currently ranks third in the United States for non-stop domestic and international service with 182 destinations.[164] In 2006, the United States Department of Transportation named George Bush Intercontinental Airport the fastest-growing of the top ten airports in the United States.[165] Houston is the headquarters of Continental Airlines and Bush Intercontinental is Continental Airlines' largest hub. The airline offers more than 700 daily departures from Houston.[166] In early 2007, Bush Intercontinental Airport was named a model "port of entry" for international travelers by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.[167] The Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center stands on the George Bush Intercontinental Airport grounds. The second-largest commercial airport is William P. Hobby Airport (named Houston International Airport until 1967) which operates primarily small to medium-haul domestic flights. Houston's aviation history is showcased in the 1940 Air Terminal Museum located in the old terminal building on the west side of the airport. Hobby Airport has been recognized with two awards for being one of the top five performing airports in the world and for customer service by Airports Council International.[168] Houston's third municipal airport is Ellington Airport (a former U.S. Air Force base) used by military, government, NASA, and general aviation sectors.[169]
[edit] Healthcare and medicine
Main article: Texas Medical Center
See also: List of hospitals in Texas
Texas Medical Center
Houston is the seat of the internationally renowned Texas Medical Center, which contains the world's largest concentration of research and healthcare institutions.[170] All 47 member institutions of the Texas Medical Center are non-profit organizations. They provide patient and preventive care, research, education, and local, national, and international community well-being. Employing more than 73,600 people, institutions at the medical center include 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and virtually all health-related careers. It is where one of the first—and still the largest—air emergency service, Life Flight, was created, and a very successful inter-institutional transplant program was developed. More heart surgeries are performed at the Texas Medical Center than anywhere else in the world.[171]
Some of the academic and research health institutions in the center include Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, The Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The Baylor College of Medicine has annually been considered within the top ten medical schools in the nation, and it is currently considering a merger with Rice University, a top-tier undergraduate university; likewise, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has consistently ranked as one of the top two U.S. hospitals specializing in cancer care by U.S. News & World Report since 1990.[172][173] The Menninger Clinic, a renowned psychiatric treatment center is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital System.[174]
[edit] Education
Main article: Education in Houston
There are 17 school districts serving the city. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the seventh-largest in the United States.[175] HISD has 112 campuses that serve as magnet or vanguard schools—specializing in such disciplines as health professions, visual and performing arts, and the sciences. There are also many charter schools that are run separately from school districts. In addition, some public school districts also have their own charter schools.
The Houston area is home to more than 300 private schools,[176][177][178] many of which are accredited by Texas Private School Accreditation Commission recognized agencies. The Houston Area Independent Schools offer education from a variety of different religious as well as secular viewpoints.[179] The Houston area Catholic schools are operated by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
[edit] Colleges and universities
Further information: List of colleges and universities in Houston
University of Houston
Houston has more than sixty colleges, universities and other degree-granting institutions with a total enrollment of approximately 360,000 students.[180] There are four public universities engaged in research and development in Houston. The University of Houston (UH) is Texas's third-largest public research university with 37,000 students from 130 countries. With over 300 degree programs and 40 research centers and institutes, UH is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System (UHS) and is one of the most ethnically diverse research university in the country.[181][182] Its law school—University of Houston Law Center—ranked No. 55 (Tier 1) of the "Top 100 Law Schools" in 2008 by U.S. News & World Report.[183] UH has the only optometry school and one of six pharmacy programs in Texas. The University of Houston–Clear Lake (UHCL) is an upper-level university with 89 degree programs and an enrollment of 7,700 located adjacent to NASA's Johnson Space Center. The University of Houston–Downtown (UHD) is an open admissions four-year university with an enrollment of 12,300 offering 46 degree programs. Texas Southern University (TSU) is a historically black four-year university with a pharmacy program and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.
Houston is home to many private institutions of higher learning—ranging from liberal arts colleges to a nationally recognized Tier One research university. Rice University is one of the leading teaching and research universities of the United States and ranked the nation's 17th-best overall university by U.S. News & World Report.[184] Two private liberal arts colleges are Houston Baptist University (HBU) and University of St. Thomas (UST). Founded in 1923, South Texas College of Law is a private and oldest law school in Houston located in Downtown.[185]
There are three community college districts with campuses in Houston. The Houston Community College System serves most of Houston and is the fourth-largest community college system in the United States.[186] The northwestern through northeastern parts of the city are served by various campuses of the Lone Star College System while the southeastern portion of Houston is served by San Jacinto College.
[edit] Notes
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