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Wall Street Crash of 1929
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"Black Tuesday" redirects here. For other uses, see Black Tuesday (disambiguation).
For other uses, see Wall Street Crash (disambiguation).
Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 1929 crash.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29),[1] the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 ("Black Thursday"), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States (acting as the most significant predicting indicator of the Great Depression), when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its after effects.[2] The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signalled the beginning of the 12-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries.[3]
Contents
[hide]
1 Timeline
2 Analysis
2.1 Economic fundamentals
2.2 Subsequent actions
2.3 World War II
3 Effects
3.1 Effect on Europe
4 Academic debate
5 See also
6 Notes
7 Further reading
8 External links
Timeline[edit]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, 1928–1930
The Roaring Twenties, the decade that followed World War I and led to the crash,[4] was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Americans migrated to the cities in vast numbers throughout the decade with the hopes of finding a more prosperous life in the ever-growing expansion of America's industrial sector.[5] While the American cities prospered, the overproduction of agricultural produce created widespread financial despair among American farmers throughout the decade.[5] This would later be blamed as one of the key factors that led to the 1929 stock market crash.[6]
Despite the dangers of speculation, many believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. On March 25, 1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a mini crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks at a rapid pace, exposing the market's shaky foundation.[7] Two days later, banker Charles E. Mitchell announced his company the National City Bank would provide $25 million in credit to stop the market's slide.[7] Mitchell's move brought a temporary halt to the financial crisis and call money declined from 20 to 8 percent.[7] However, the American economy showed ominous signs of trouble:[7] steel production declined, construction was sluggish, automobile sales went down, and consumers were building up high debts because of easy credit.[7] Despite all these economic trouble signs and the market breaks in March and May 1929, stocks resumed their advance in June and the gains continued almost unabated until early September 1929 (the Dow Jones average gained more than 20% between June and September). The market had been on a nine-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold, peaking at 381.17 on September 3, 1929.[7] Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."[8] The optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shaken after a well publicized early September prediction from financial expert Roger Babson that "a crash was coming". The initial September decline was thus called the "Babson Break" in the press. This was the start of the Great Crash, although until the severe phase of the crash in October, many investors regarded the September "Babson Break" as a "healthy correction" and buying opportunity.
On September 20, the London Stock Exchange crashed when top British investor Clarence Hatry and many of his associates were jailed for fraud and forgery.[9] The London crash greatly weakened the optimism of American investment in markets overseas.[9] In the days leading up to the crash, the market was severely unstable. Periods of selling and high volumes were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery.
Selling intensified in mid-October. On October 24 ("Black Thursday"), the market lost 11 percent of its value at the opening bell on very heavy trading. The huge volume meant that the report of prices on the ticker tape in brokerage offices around the nation was hours late, so investors had no idea what most stocks were actually trading for at that moment, increasing panic. Several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor.[10] The meeting included Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York. They chose Richard Whitney, vice president of the Exchange, to act on their behalf.
With the bankers' financial resources behind him, Whitney placed a bid to purchase a large block of shares in U.S. Steel at a price well above the current market. As traders watched, Whitney then placed similar bids on other "blue chip" stocks. This tactic was similar to one that ended the Panic of 1907. It succeeded in halting the slide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered, closing with it down only 6.38 points for the day. The rally continued on Friday, October 25, and the half day session on Saturday the 26th but, unlike 1907, the respite was only temporary.
The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1930, six months after the crash of 1929
Over the weekend, the events were covered by the newspapers across the United States. On October 28, "Black Monday",[11] more investors facing margin calls decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 38.33 points, or 13%.
The next day, "Black Tuesday", October 29, 1929, about 16 million shares traded as the panic selling reached its peak. Some stocks actually had no buyers at any price that day ("air pockets"). The Dow lost an additional 30 points, or 12 percent.[12][13][14][15] The volume of stocks traded on October 29, 1929, was a record that was not broken for nearly 40 years.[13]
On October 29, William C. Durant joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks to demonstrate to the public their confidence in the market, but their efforts failed to stop the large decline in prices. Due to the massive volume of stocks traded that day, the ticker did not stop running until about 7:45 p.m. The market had lost over $30 billion in the space of two days which included $14 billion on October 29 alone.[16]
Dow Jones Industrial Average on Black Monday and Black Tuesday[17]
Date
Change
% Change
Close
October 28, 1929 −38.33 −12.82 260.64
October 29, 1929 −30.57 −11.73 230.07
After a one-day recovery on October 30, where the Dow regained an additional 28.40 points, or 12 percent, to close at 258.47, the market continued to fall, arriving at an interim bottom on November 13, 1929, with the Dow closing at 198.60. The market then recovered for several months, starting on November 14, with the Dow gaining 18.59 points to close at 217.28, and reaching a secondary closing peak (i.e., bear market rally) of 294.07 on April 17, 1930. The following year, the Dow embarked on another, much longer, steady slide from April 1931 to July 8, 1932, when it closed at 41.22—its lowest level of the 20th century, concluding an 89 percent loss rate for all of the market's stocks. For most of the 1930s, the Dow began slowly to regain the ground it lost during the 1929 crash and the three years following it, beginning on March 15, 1933, with the largest percentage increase of 15.34 percent, with the Dow Jones closing at 62.10, with an 8.26 point increase. The largest percentage increases of the Dow Jones occurred during the early and mid-1930s. In late 1937, there was a sharp dip in the stock market, but prices held well above the 1932 lows. The market would not return to the peak closing of September 3, 1929, until November 23, 1954.[18][19]
Analysis[edit]
Economic fundamentals[edit]
The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s. During the later half of the 1920s, steel production, building construction, retail turnover, automobiles registered, even railway receipts advanced from record to record. The combined net profits of 536 manufacturing and trading companies showed an increase, in fact for the first six months of 1929, of 36.6% over 1928, itself a record half-year. Iron and steel led the way with doubled gains.[20] Such figures set up a crescendo of stock-exchange speculation which had led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. A significant number of them were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan,[21] more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. at the time.[16][22]
The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest; people hoped the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. Because of margin buying, investors stood to lose large sums of money if the market turned down—or even failed to advance quickly enough. The average P/E (price to earnings) ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929,[23] clearly above historical norms.[24] As per the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, this exuberance also resulted in a large number of people placing their savings and money in leverage investment products like Goldman Sachs' "Blue ridge trust" and "Shenandoah trust". These too crashed in 1929 resulting in losses of $475 billion in today's dollars to banks.[25]
Sir George Paish
Good harvests had built up a mass of 250 million bushels of wheat to be "carried over" when 1929 opened. By May there was also a winter-wheat crop of 560 million bushels ready for harvest in the Mississippi Valley. This oversupply caused a drop in wheat prices so heavy that the net incomes of the farming population from wheat were threatened with extinction. Stock markets are always sensitive to the future state of commodity markets, and the slump in Wall Street predicted for May by Sir George Paish arrived on time. In June 1929, the position was saved by a severe drought in the Dakotas and the Canadian West, plus unfavorable seed times in Argentina and eastern Australia. The oversupply would now be wanted to fill the big gaps in the 1929 world wheat production. From 97¢ per bushel in May, the price of wheat rose to $1.49 in July. When it was seen that at this figure the American farmers would get rather more for their smaller crop than for that of 1928, up went stocks again and from far and wide orders came to buy shares for the profits to come.
In August, the wheat price fell when France and Italy were bragging of a magnificent harvest, and the situation in Australia improved. This sent a shiver through Wall Street and stock prices quickly dropped, but word of cheap stocks brought a fresh rush of "stags", amateur speculators and investors. Congress had also voted for a 100 million dollar relief package for the farmers, hoping to stabilize wheat prices. By October though, the price had fallen to $1.31 per bushel.[26]
Other important economic barometers were also slowing or even falling by mid-1929, including car sales, house sales, and steel production. The falling commodity and industrial production may have dented even American self-confidence, and the stock market peaked on September 3 at 381.17 just after Labor Day, then started to falter after Roger Babson issued his prescient "market crash" forecast. By the end of September, the market was down 10% from the peak (the "Babson Break"). Selling intensified in early and mid October, with sharp down days punctuated by a few up days. Panic selling on huge volume started the week of October 21 and intensified and culminated on October 24, the 28th and especially the 29th ("Black Tuesday").[27]
The president of the Chase National Bank said at the time: "We are reaping the natural fruit of the orgy of speculation in which millions of people have indulged. It was inevitable, because of the tremendous increase in the number of stockholders in recent years, that the number of sellers would be greater than ever when the boom ended and selling took the place of buying."[28]
Subsequent actions[edit]
In 1932, the Pecora Commission was established by the U.S. Senate to study the causes of the crash. The following year, the U.S. Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act mandating a separation between commercial banks, which take deposits and extend loans, and investment banks, which underwrite, issue, and distribute stocks, bonds, and other securities.
After the experience of the 1929 crash, stock markets around the world instituted measures to suspend trading in the event of rapid declines, claiming that the measures would prevent such panic sales. However, the one-day crash of Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6%, was worse in percentage terms than any single day of the 1929 crash (although the combined 25% decline of October 28–29, 1929 was larger than October 19, 1987, and remains the worst two-day decline ever).
World War II[edit]
The American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941 moved approximately ten million people out of the civilian labor force and into the war.[29] World War II had a dramatic effect on many parts of the economy, and may have hastened the end of the Great Depression in the United States.[30] Government-financed capital spending accounted for only 5 percent of the annual U.S. investment in industrial capital in 1940; by 1943, the government accounted for 67 percent of U.S. capital investment.[30]
Effects[edit]
Further information: Causes of the Great Depression
Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression
Together, the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression formed the largest financial crisis of the 20th century.[31] The panic of October 1929 has come to serve as a symbol of the economic contraction that gripped the world during the next decade.[32] The falls in share prices on October 24 and 29, 1929 were practically instantaneous in all financial markets, except Japan.[33]
The Wall Street Crash had a major impact on the U.S. and world economy, and it has been the source of intense academic debate—historical, economic, and political—from its aftermath until the present day. Some people believed that abuses by utility holding companies contributed to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed.[34] Many people blamed the crash on commercial banks that were too eager to put deposits at risk on the stock market.[35]
In 1930, 1,352 banks held more than $853 million in deposits; in 1931, one year later, 2,294 banks went down with nearly $1.7 billion in deposits. Many businesses failed (28,285 failures and a daily rate of 133 in 1931).
The 1929 crash brought the Roaring Twenties to a shuddering halt.[36] As tentatively expressed by economic historian Charles P. Kindleberger, in 1929, there was no lender of last resort effectively present, which, if it had existed and were properly exercised, would have been key in shortening the business slowdown[s] that normally follows financial crises.[33] The crash marked the beginning of widespread and long-lasting consequences for the United States. Historians still debate the question: did the 1929 Crash spark The Great Depression,[37] or did it merely coincide with the bursting of a loose credit-inspired economic bubble? Only 16% of American households were invested in the stock market within the United States during the period leading up to the depression, suggesting that the crash carried somewhat less of a weight in causing the depression.
Unemployed men march in Toronto
However, the psychological effects of the crash reverberated across the nation as businesses became aware of the difficulties in securing capital market investments for new projects and expansions. Business uncertainty naturally affects job security for employees, and as the American worker (the consumer) faced uncertainty with regards to income, naturally the propensity to consume declined. The decline in stock prices caused bankruptcies and severe macroeconomic difficulties including contraction of credit, business closures, firing of workers, bank failures, decline of the money supply, and other economically depressing events.
The resultant rise of mass unemployment is seen as a result of the crash, although the crash is by no means the sole event that contributed to the depression. The Wall Street Crash is usually seen as having the greatest impact on the events that followed and therefore is widely regarded as signaling the downward economic slide that initiated the Great Depression. True or not, the consequences were dire for almost everybody. Most academic experts agree on one aspect of the crash: It wiped out billions of dollars of wealth in one day, and this immediately depressed consumer buying.[37]
The failure set off a worldwide run on US gold deposits (i.e. the dollar), and forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates into the slump. Some 4,000 banks and other lenders ultimately failed. Also, the uptick rule,[38] which allowed short selling only when the last tick in a stock's price was positive, was implemented after the 1929 market crash to prevent short sellers from driving the price of a stock down in a bear raid.[39]
Effect on Europe[edit]
The stock market crash of October 1929 led directly to the Great Depression in Europe. When stocks plummeted on the New York Stock Exchange, the world noticed immediately. Although financial leaders in the United Kingdom, as in the United States, vastly underestimated the extent of the crisis that would ensue, it soon became clear that the world's economies were more interconnected than ever. The effects of the disruption to the global system of financing, trade, and production and the subsequent meltdown of the American economy were soon felt throughout Europe.[40] During 1930 and 1931, in particular, unemployed workers went on strike, demonstrated in public, and otherwise took direct action to call public attention to their plight. Protests often focused on the so-called Means Test, which the government had instituted in 1931 as a way to limit the amount of unemployment payments made to individuals and families. For working people, the Means Test seemed an intrusive and insensitive way to deal with the chronic and relentless deprivation caused by the economic crisis. The strikes were met forcefully, with police breaking up protests, arresting demonstrators, and charging them with crimes related to the violation of public order.[40]
Academic debate[edit]
Economists and historians disagree as to what role the crash played in subsequent economic, social, and political events. The Economist argued in a 1998 article that the Depression did not start with the stock market crash,[41] nor was it clear at the time of the crash that a depression was starting. They asked, "Can a very serious Stock Exchange collapse produce a serious setback to industry when industrial production is for the most part in a healthy and balanced condition?" They argued that there must be some setback, but there was not yet sufficient evidence to prove that it will be long or that it need go to the length of producing a general industrial depression.[42]
But The Economist also cautioned that some bank failures were also to be expected and some banks may not have any reserves left for financing commercial and industrial enterprises. They concluded that the position of the banks is the key to the situation, but what was going to happen could not have been foreseen.[42]
Academics see the Wall Street Crash of 1929 as part of a historical process that was a part of the new theories of boom and bust. According to economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, Nikolai Kondratiev and Charles E. Mitchell, the crash was merely a historical event in the continuing process known as economic cycles. The impact of the crash was merely to increase the speed at which the cycle proceeded to its next level.
Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States, co-written with Anna Schwartz, advances the argument that what made the "great contraction" so severe was not the downturn in the business cycle, protectionism, or the 1929 stock market crash in themselves – but instead, according to Friedman and Schwartz, what plunged the country into a deep depression was the collapse of the banking system during three waves of panics over the 1930–33 period.[43]
See also[edit]
List of largest daily changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ "Depression & WWII (1929–1945)". Americaslibrary.gov. Retrieved August 12, 2013.
Jump up ^ Bone, James. "The beginner's guide to stock markets". The Times. London. Archived from the original on May 25, 2010. Retrieved January 29, 2012. The most savage bear market of all time was the Wall Street Crash of 1929–1932, in which share prices fell by 89 per cent.
Jump up ^ "Stock Market Crash of 1929". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
Jump up ^ "America gets depressed by thoughts of 1929 revisited" The Sunday Times
^ Jump up to: a b Dan Bryan. "The Great (Farm) Depression of the 1920s". American History USA. Retrieved November 10, 2013.
Jump up ^ http://millercenter.org/president/coolidge/essays/biography/8
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Timeline: A selected Wall Street chronology". PBS. Retrieved September 30, 2008.
Jump up ^ Teach, Edward (May 1, 2007). "The Bright Side of Bubbles". CFO. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
^ Jump up to: a b Harold Bierman, Jr. (April 1998). The Causes of the 1929 Stock Market Crash: A Speculative Orgy or a New Era?. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 19–29. ISBN 978-0-313-30629-7.
Jump up ^ The Great Depression, by Robert Goldston, pages 39–40
Jump up ^ "The Panic of 2008? What Do We Name the Crisis?" The Wall Street Journal
Jump up ^ "Timeline". NYSE Euronext. NYSE. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
^ Jump up to: a b Weeks, Linton. "History's Advice During A Panic? Don't Panic". NPR. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
Jump up ^ "The Crash of 1929". PBS. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
Jump up ^ Salsman, Richard M. "The Cause and Consequences of the Great Depression, Part 1: What Made the Roaring '20s Roar", The Intellectual Activist, ISSN 0730-2355, June 2004, p. 16.
^ Jump up to: a b New York: A Documentary Film PBS
Jump up ^ "Dow Jones Industrial Average All-Time Largest One Day Gains and Losses". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 11, 2011.
Jump up ^ "DJIA 1929 to Present", Yahoo! Finance
Jump up ^ "U.S. Industrial Stocks Pass 1929 Peak", The Times, November 24, 1954, p. 12.
Jump up ^ "Broad Facts of, Ilsa Crisis". The Daily News. Perth, Western Australia: National Library of Australia. November 1, 1929. p. 6 (Edition: Home Final Edition). Retrieved November 22, 2012.
Jump up ^ Lambert, Richard (July 19, 2008). "Crashes, Bangs & Wallops". Financial Times. Retrieved September 30, 2008. At the turn of the 20th century stock market speculation was restricted to professionals, but the 1920s saw millions of 'ordinary Americans' investing in the New York Stock Exchange. By August 1929, brokers had lent small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying on margin – more than $8.5bn was out on loan.
Jump up ^ Facing the facts: an economic diagnosis. Retrieved September 30, 2008.
Jump up ^ Shiller, Robert (March 17, 2005). "Irrational Exuberance, Second Edition". Princeton University Press. Retrieved February 3, 2007.
Jump up ^ Doug Short (April 3, 2013). "The Stock Market's Valuation Rarely Gets This High". Business Insider.
Jump up ^ Galbraith, John Kenneth (1954). "In Goldman Sachs We Trust". The Great Crash, 1929. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-85999-9. , cited in Taibbi, Matt (5 April 2010). "The great American bubble machine". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
Jump up ^ "Grain Plunges". The Courier-Mail. Brisbane, Qld: National Library of Australia. October 26, 1929. p. 19. Retrieved November 22, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Wild Selling. New York Panic". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, NSW: National Library of Australia. October 26, 1929. p. 17. Retrieved November 22, 2012.
Jump up ^ "Second Crash". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, NSW: National Library of Australia. October 30, 1929. p. 17. Retrieved November 20, 2012.
Jump up ^ Selective Service System. (May 27, 2003). Induction Statistics. In Inductions (by year) from World War I Through the End of the Draft (1973). Retrieved September 8, 2013.
^ Jump up to: a b Hyman, Louis (December 16, 2011). "How Did World War II End the Great Depression?: Echoes". Bloomberg. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
Jump up ^ "Paulson affirms Bush assessment", The Washington Times
Jump up ^ Scardino, Albert (October 21, 1987). "The Market Turmoil: Past lessons, present advice; Did '29 Crash Spark The Depression?". The New York Times.
^ Jump up to: a b "Crashes, Bangs & Wallops" Financial Times
Jump up ^ Jameson, Angela (August 10, 2005),"Pyramid structures brought down by Wall Street Crash" The Times, Retrieved March 17, 2010
Jump up ^ "Death of the Brokerage: The Future of Wall Street" National Public Radio
Jump up ^ "Kaboom!...and bust. The crash of 2008" The Times
^ Jump up to: a b "The Market Turmoil: Past lessons, present advice; Did '29 Crash Spark The Depression?" The New York Times
Jump up ^ "Practice has plenty of historical precedents" Financial Times
Jump up ^ "Funds want 'uptick' rule back" Financial Times
^ Jump up to: a b "Context :: European History". www.dhr.history.vt.edu. Retrieved 2016-11-04.
Jump up ^ "Economics focus: The Great Depression", The Economist (September 17, 1998)
^ Jump up to: a b "Reactions of the Wall Street slump", The Economist (November 23, 1929)
Jump up ^ "Panic control" The Washington Times
Further reading[edit]
Axon, Gordon V. The Stock Market Crash of 1929. London, England: Mason & Lipscomb Publishers Inc., 1974.
Bierman, Harold (March 26, 2008). Whaples, Robert, ed. "The 1929 Stock Market Crash". EH.Net Encyclopedia. Santa Clara, California: Economic History Association. Retrieved February 2, 2017.
Brooks, John. (1969). Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920–1938. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-393-01375-8.
Galbraith, John Kenneth. "1929: New York City." Lapham's Quarterly, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 145–146
Klein, Maury. (2001). Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513516-4.
Klingaman, William K. (1989). 1929: The Year of the Great Crash. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-016081-0.
Leone, Bruno. The Great Depression: Opposing Viewpoints, 14–25. San Diego, CA: Bender, David L., 1994.
Pendergast, Tom. American Decades: 1920–1929. Farmington Hills, MI: UXL American Decades Publishing, 2003.
Reed, Lawrence W. (1981 & 2008). Great Myths of the Great Depression. Midland, Michigan: Mackinac Center.
Rothbard, Murray N. (2000). America's Great Depression (PDF) (5th ed.). Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. ISBN 978-0-945466-05-5. Retrieved May 13, 2010.
Shachtman, Tom. (1979). The Day America Crashed: A Narrative Account of the Great Stock Market Crash of October 24, 1929. New York: G.P. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-11613-3.
Thomas, Gordon and Morgan-Witts, Max. (1979). The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-14370-2.
Watkins, Tom H. The Great Depression: America in the 1930s, 22–55. New York, NY: Little, Brown & Company, 1993.
External links[edit]
Media related to Wall Street Crash of 1929 at Wikimedia Commons
The Crash of 1929, American Experience documentary
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text:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Simplified parse tree S = sentence
NP = noun phrase
RC = relative clause
VP = verb phrase
PN = proper noun
N = noun
V = verb
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically correct sentence in American English, often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.
The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:
as a proper noun to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, the city of Buffalo, New York being the most notable;
as a verb (uncommon in regular usage) to buffalo, meaning "to bully, harass, or intimidate" or "to baffle"; and
as a noun to refer to the animal, bison (often called buffalo in North America). The plural is also buffalo.
More easily decoded, though semantically equivalent, would be: Buffalo from Buffalo that other buffalo from Buffalo bully [themselves] bully buffalo from Buffalo.
Contents
[hide]
1 Sentence construction
1.1 Usage
2 Origin
3 In popular culture
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Sentence construction[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Reed-Kellogg diagram of the sentence
Buffalo engaged in a contest of dominance. This sentence supposes they have a history of such bullying with other buffalo, and they are from Buffalo, New York.
A comic explaining the concept
The sentence is unpunctuated and uses three different readings of the word "buffalo". In order of their first use, these are:
a. a city named Buffalo. This is used as a noun adjunct in the sentence;
n. the noun buffalo (American bison), an animal, in the plural (equivalent to "buffaloes" or "buffalos"), in order to avoid articles.
v. the verb "buffalo" meaning to outwit, confuse, deceive, intimidate, or baffle.
The sentence is syntactically ambiguous; however, one possible parse (marking each "buffalo" with its part of speech as shown above) would be as follows:
Buffaloa buffalon Buffaloa buffalon buffalov buffalov Buffaloa buffalon.
When grouped syntactically, this is equivalent to: [(Buffalonian bison) (Buffalonian bison intimidate)] intimidate (Buffalonian bison).
The sentence uses a restrictive clause, so there are no commas, nor is there the word "which," as in, "Buffalo buffalo, which Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo." This clause is also a reduced relative clause, so the word that, which could appear between the second and third words of the sentence, is omitted.
An expanded form of the sentence which preserves the original word order is: "Buffalo bison, that other Buffalo bison bully, also bully Buffalo bison."
Thus, the parsed sentence reads as a claim that bison who are intimidated or bullied by bison are themselves intimidating or bullying bison (at least in the city of Buffalo – implicitly, Buffalo, New York):
Buffalo buffalo (the animals called "buffalo" from the city of Buffalo) [that] Buffalo buffalo buffalo (that the animals from the city bully) buffalo Buffalo buffalo (are bullying these animals from that city).
[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.
The buffalo from Buffalo who are buffaloed by buffalo from Buffalo, buffalo (verb) other buffalo from Buffalo.
Buffalo buffalo (main clause subject) [that] Buffalo buffalo (subordinate clause subject) buffalo (subordinate clause verb) buffalo (main clause verb) Buffalo buffalo (main clause direct object).
[Buffalo from Buffalo] that [buffalo from Buffalo] buffalo, also buffalo [buffalo from Buffalo].
A diagram explaining the sentence
Diagram using a comparison to explain the buffalo sentence.
Usage[edit]
Thomas Tymoczko has pointed out that there is nothing special about eight "buffalos";[1] any sentence consisting solely of the word "buffalo" repeated any number of times is grammatically correct. The shortest is "Buffalo!", which can be taken as a verbal imperative instruction to bully someone ("[You] buffalo!") with the implied subject "you" removed,[2]:99–100, 104 or as a noun exclamation, expressing e.g. that a buffalo has been sighted, or as an adjectival exclamation, e.g. as a response to the question, "where are you from?" Tymoczko uses the sentence as an example illustrating rewrite rules in linguistics.[2]:104–105
Origin[edit]
The idea that one can construct a grammatically correct sentence consisting of nothing but repetitions of "buffalo" was independently discovered several times in the 20th century. The earliest known written example, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo", appears in the original manuscript for Dmitri Borgmann's 1965 book Language on Vacation, though the chapter containing it was omitted from the published version.[3] Borgmann recycled some of the material from this chapter, including the "buffalo" sentence, in his 1967 book, Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.[4]:290 In 1972, William J. Rapaport, now a professor at the University at Buffalo but then a graduate student at Indiana University, came up with versions containing five and ten instances of "buffalo".[5] He later used both versions in his teaching, and in 1992 posted them to the LINGUIST List.[5][6] A sentence with eight consecutive "buffalo"s is featured in Steven Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct as an example of a sentence that is "seemingly nonsensical" but grammatical. Pinker names his student, Annie Senghas, as the inventor of the sentence.[7]:210
Neither Rapaport, Pinker, nor Senghas were initially aware of the earlier coinages.[5] Pinker learned of Rapaport's earlier example only in 1994, and Rapaport was not informed of Borgmann's sentence until 2006.[5] Even Borgmann's example may not be the oldest: computational linguist Robert C. Berwick, who used a five-"buffalo" version in a 1987 book,[8]:100 claims he had heard the sentence as a child ("before 1972, to be sure") and had assumed it was part of common parlance.[5]
Versions of the linguistic oddity can be constructed with other words which similarly simultaneously serve as collective noun, adjective, and verb, some of which need no capitalization (such as "police").[9]
In popular culture[edit]
A parsed version of the sentence is in the lyrics for the song "Buffalo" by Alt-J, from the soundtrack for Silver Linings Playbook.[10]
See also[edit]
List of linguistic example sentences
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den
Polyptoton
That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is
Semantic satiation
Neko no ko koneko, shishi no ko kojishi
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Henle, James; Garfield, Jay; Tymoczko, Thomas (2011). Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 1118078632.
^ Jump up to: a b Thomas Tymoczko; James M. Henle (2000). Sweet reason: a field guide to modern logic (2 ed.). Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-0-387-98930-3.
Jump up ^ Eckler, Jr., A. Ross (November 2005). "The Borgmann Apocrypha". Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics. 38 (4): 258–260.
Jump up ^ Borgmann, Dmitri A. (1967). Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. New York, NY, USA: Charles Scribner's Sons. OCLC 655067975.
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Rapaport, William J. (5 October 2012). "A History of the Sentence 'Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.'". University at Buffalo Computer Science and Engineering. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
Jump up ^ Rapaport, William J. (19 February 1992). "Message 1: Re: 3.154 Parsing Challenges". LINGUIST List. Retrieved 14 September 2006.
Jump up ^ Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York, NY, USA: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
Jump up ^ Barton, G. Edward, Jr.; Berwick, Robert C.; Ristad, Eric Sven (1987). Computational Complexity and Natural Language. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Jump up ^ Gärtner, Hans-Martin (2002). Generalized Transformations and Beyond. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. p. 58. ISBN 978-3050032467.
Jump up ^ "Buffalo - Alt-J". play.google.com. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
External links[edit]
Listen to this article (info/dl)

This audio file was created from a revision of the article "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" dated 2006-12-09, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)
More spoken articles
Look up buffalo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Buffaloing buffalo at Language Log, 20 January 2005
Easdown, David. "Teaching mathematics: The gulf between semantics (meaning) and syntax (form)" (PDF). (273 KB)
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text:
English language in Europe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Knowledge of English in the EU
Knowledge of English as a foreign and second language in the EU member states (plus Tu EU survey.[1]
The English language in Europe, as a native language, is mainly spoken in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Outside of these states, it has a special status in the Crown dependencies (Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey), Gibraltar (one of the British Overseas Territories) and Malta. In the Kingdom of the Netherlands, English has an official status as a regional language on the isles of Saba and Sint Eustatius. In other parts of Europe, English is spoken mainly by those who have learnt it as a second language, but also, to a lesser extent, natively by some expatriates from some countries in the English-speaking world.
The English language is the de facto official language of England, the sole official language of Gibraltar and one of the official languages of the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Malta, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and the European Union.
According to a survey published in 2006, 13% of EU citizens speak English as their native language. Another 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation, so the total reach of English in the EU is 51%.[1]
English is descended from the language spoken by the Germanic tribes of the German Bight along the southern coast of the North Sea, the Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around 449 AD, Vortigern, King of the Britons, issued an invitation to the "Angle kin" (Angles, led by Hengest and Horsa), to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the southeast. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles and Jutes). The Chronicle documents the subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex.
These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants. The dialects spoken by these invaders formed what would be called Old English, which was also strongly influenced by yet another Germanic language, Old East Norse, spoken by Danish Viking invaders who settled mainly in the North-East. English, England and East Anglia are derived from words referring to the Angles: Englisc, Angelcynn and Englaland.
For 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Anglo-Norman language was the language of administration and few Kings of England spoke English. A large number of French words were assimilated into Old English, which lost most of its inflections, the result being Middle English. Around the year 1500, the Great Vowel Shift marked the transformation of Middle English into Modern English.
The most famous surviving work from Old English is Beowulf, and from Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
The rise of Modern English began around the fifteenth century, with Early Modern English reaching its literary pinnacle at the time of William Shakespeare. Some scholars divide early Modern English and late Modern English at around 1800, in concert with British conquest of much of the rest of the world, as the influence of native languages affected English enormously.
Contents
[hide]
1 Classification and related languages
2 English in Britain and Ireland
2.1 Wales
2.2 Ireland
2.3 Northern Ireland
2.4 Scotland
2.5 Isle of Man
3 English in other British or formerly British territories
3.1 Channel Islands
3.2 Gibraltar
3.3 Cyprus
3.4 Malta
4 Other countries
5 English as lingua franca
6 References
Classification and related languages[edit]
English belongs to the western sub-branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest undoubted living relatives of English are Scots and the Frisian languages. West Frisian language is spoken by approximately half a million people in the Dutch province of Friesland (Fryslân). Saterland Frisian language is spoken in nearby areas of Germany. North Frisian language is spoken on a few islands in the North Sea. While native English speakers are generally able to read Scots, except for the odd unfamiliar word, Frisian is largely unintelligible (though it was much closer to modern English's predecessors, Middle English and especially Old English).
After Scots and Frisian, the next closest relative is modern Low German of the eastern Netherlands and northern Germany, which was the old homeland of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain. Other less closely related living languages include Dutch, Afrikaans, German and the Scandinavian languages. Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker, as English absorbed a tremendous amount of vocabulary from the Norman language after the Norman conquest and from French in later centuries; as a result, a substantial proportion of English vocabulary is very close to the French, with some slight spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.) and some occasional lapses in meaning.
English in Britain and Ireland[edit]
Wales[edit]
Main articles: Languages of Wales and Welsh English
In 1282 Edward I of England defeated Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Wales's last independent prince, in battle. Edward followed the practice used by his Norman predecessors in their subjugation of the English, and constructed a series of great stone castles in order to control Wales, thus preventing further military action against England by the Welsh. With ‘English’ political control at this time came Anglo-Norman customs and language; English did not displace Welsh as the majority language of the Welsh people until the anti Welsh language campaigns, which began towards the end of the 19th century (54% spoke Welsh in 1891; see Welsh language). The Welsh language is currently spoken by about one-fifth of the population. It has been enjoying support from the authorities for some decades, resulting in a revival, and is in a healthy position in many parts of Wales.
Ireland[edit]
Main articles: Languages of Ireland and Hiberno-English
The second English dominion was Ireland. With the arrival of the Normans in Ireland in 1169, King Henry II of England gained Irish lands and the fealty of many native Gaelic nobles. By the 14th century, however, English rule was largely limited to the area around Dublin known as the Pale. English influence on the country waned during this period to the point that the English-dominated Parliament was driven to legislate that any Irish of English descent must speak English (requiring those that did not know English to learn it) through the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1367.
English rule expanded in the 16th century by the Tudor conquest of Ireland, leading the Gaelic order to collapse at the start of the 17th century. The Flight of the Earls in 1607 paved the way for the Plantation of Ulster and a deepening of the English language culture in Ireland. The Cromwellian Plantation and suppression of Catholicism, including both native Irish and the "Old English" (those of Anglo-Norman descent), further cemented English influence across the country.
As the centuries passed and the social conditions in Ireland deteriorated, culminating in the Great Irish Famine, Irish parents didn't speak Irish to their children as they knew that the children might have to emigrate and Irish would be of no use outside the home country, in Britain, the United States, Australia or Canada. In addition, the introduction of universal state education in the national schools from 1831 proved a powerful vector for the transmission of English as a home language, with the greatest retreat of the Irish language occurring in the period between 1850 and 1900.
By the 20th century, Ireland had a centuries-old history of diglossia. English was the prestige language while the Irish language was associated with poverty and disfranchisement. Accordingly, some Irish people who spoke both Irish and English refrained from speaking to their children in Irish, or, in extreme cases, feigned the inability to speak Irish themselves. Despite state support for the Irish language in the Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland) after independence, Irish continued to retreat, the economic marginality of many Irish-speaking areas (see Gaeltacht) being a primary factor. For this reason Irish is spoken as a mother tongue by only a very small number of people on the island of Ireland. Irish has been a compulsory subject in schools in the Republic since the 1920s and proficiency in Irish was until the mid-1980s required for all government jobs.
It may be noted, however, that certain words (especially those germane to political and civic life) in Irish remain features of Irish life and are rarely, if ever, translated into English. These include the names of legislative bodies (such as Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann), government positions such as Taoiseach and Tánaiste, of the elected representative(s) in the Dáil (Teachta Dála), and political parties (such as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael). Ireland's police force, the Garda Síochána, are referred to as "the Gardaí", or "the Guards" for short. Irish appears on government forms, euro-currency, and postage stamps, in traditional music and in media promoting folk culture. Irish placenames are still common for houses, streets, villages, and geographic features, especially the thousands of townlands. But with these important exceptions, and despite the presence of Irish loan words in Hiberno-English, Ireland is today largely an English-speaking country. Fluent or native Irish speakers are a minority in the most of the country, with Irish remaining as a vernacular mainly in the relatively small Gaeltacht regions, and most Irish speakers also have fluent English.
Northern Ireland[edit]
At the time of partition, English had become the first language of the vast majority in Northern Ireland. It had small elderly Irish-speaking populations in the Sperrin Mountains as well as in the northern Glens of Antrim and Rathlin Island. There were also pockets of Irish speakers in the southernmost part of County Armagh. All of these Irish speakers were bilingual and chose to speak English to their children, and thus these areas of Northern Ireland are now entirely English-speaking. However, in the 2000s a Gaeltacht Quarter was established in Belfast to drive inward investment as a response to a notable level of public interest in learning Irish and the expansion of Irish-medium education (predominantly attended by children whose home language is English) since the 1970s. In recent decades, some Nationalists in Northern Ireland have used it as a means of promoting an Irish identity. However, the amount of interest from Unionists remains low, particularly since the 1960s. About 165,000 people in Northern Ireland have some knowledge of Irish. Ability varies; 64,847 people stated they could understand, speak, read and write Irish in the 2011 UK census, the majority of whom have learnt it as a second language. Otherwise, except for place names and folk music, English is effectively the sole language of Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement specifically acknowledges the position both of Irish and of Ulster Scots in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland.
Scotland[edit]
Main articles: Languages of Scotland and Scottish English
Anglic speakers were actually established in Lothian by the 7th century,[citation needed] but remained confined there, and indeed contracted slightly to the advance of the Gaelic language. However, during the 12th and 13th centuries, Norman landowners and their retainers, were invited to settle by the king. It is probable that many of their retainers spoke a northern form of Middle English, although probably French was more common. Most of the evidence suggests that English spread into Scotland via the burgh, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I.[citation needed] Incoming burghers were mainly English (especially from Northumbria, and the Earldom of Huntingdon), Flemish and French. Although the military aristocracy employed French and Gaelic, these small urban communities appear to have been using English as something more than a lingua franca by the end of the 13th century.[citation needed] English appeared in Scotland for the first time in literary form in the mid-14th century, when its form unsurprisingly differed little from other northern English dialects. As a consequence of the outcome of the Wars of Independence though, the English of Lothian who lived under the King of Scots had to accept Scottish identity. The growth in prestige of English in the 14th century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland, made English the prestige language of most of eastern Scotland.
Thus, from the end of the 14th century, and certainly by the end of the 15th century, Scotland began to show a split into two cultural areas – the mainly English or Scots Lowlands, and the mainly Gaelic-speaking Highlands (which then could be thought to include Galloway and Carrick; see Galwegian Gaelic). This caused divisions in the country where the Lowlands remained, historically, more influenced by the English to the south: the Lowlands lay more open to attack by invading armies from the south and absorbed English influence through their proximity to and their trading relations with their southern neighbours.
In 1603 the Scottish King James VI inherited the throne of England, and became James I of England. James moved to London and only returned once to Scotland. By the time of James VI's accession to the English throne the old Scottish Court and Parliament spoke Scots. Scots developed from the Anglian spoken in the Northumbrian kingdom of Bernicia, which in the 6th century conquered the Brythonic kingdom of Gododdin and renamed its capital of Din Eidyn to Edinburgh (see the etymology of Edinburgh). Scots continues to heavily influence the spoken English of the Scottish people today. It is much more similar to dialects in the north of England than to 'British' English, even today. The introduction of King James Version of the Bible into Scottish churches also was a blow to the Scots language, since it used Southern English forms.
In 1707 the Scottish and English Parliaments signed a Treaty of Union. Implementing the treaty involved dissolving both the English and the Scottish Parliaments, and transferring all their powers to a new Parliament in London which then became the British Parliament. A customs and currency union also took place. With this, Scotland's position was consolidated within the United Kingdom.
Today, almost all residents of Scotland speak English, although many speak various dialects of Scots which differ markedly from Scottish Standard English. Approximately 2% of the population use Scottish Gaelic as their language of everyday use, primarily in the northern and western regions of the country. Virtually all Scottish Gaelic speakers also speak fluent English.
Isle of Man[edit]
The Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency. English and Manx Gaelic are the two official languages. Because so few speak Manx as a first language, all inhabitants of the Isle of Man speak English.
English in other British or formerly British territories[edit]
Channel Islands[edit]
The bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey are two Crown Dependencies. Besides English, some (very few) inhabitants of these islands speak regional languages[citation needed], or those related to French (such as Jèrriais, Dgèrnésiais and Sercquiais).
All inhabitants of the Channel Islands speak English.
Gibraltar[edit]
Gibraltar has been a British overseas territory since an Anglo-Dutch force led by Sir George Rooke seized "The Rock" in 1704 and Spain ceded the territory in perpetuity to Great Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.
The small territory's Gibraltarian inhabitants have a rich cultural heritage as a result of the mix of the neighbouring Andalusian population with immigrants from Great Britain, Genoa, Malta, Portugal, Morocco and India.
The vernacular language of the territory is Llanito. It consists of an eclectic mix of Andalusian Spanish and British English as well as languages such as Maltese, Portuguese, Italian of the Genoese variety and Haketia. Even though Andalusian Spanish is the main constituent of Llanito, it is also heavily influenced by British English, involving a certain amount of code-switching into English.
However, English remains the sole official language, used by Government. It is also the medium of instruction in schools and most Gibraltarians who go on to tertiary education do so in the UK. Although Gibraltar receives Spanish television and radio, British television is also widely available via satellite. Whereas a century ago, most Gibraltarians were monolingual Spanish speakers, the majority is now naturally bilingual in English and Spanish.
Cyprus[edit]
In 1914 the Ottoman Empire declared war against the United Kingdom and France as part of the complex series of alliances that led to World War I. The British then annexed Cyprus on 2 November 1914 as part of the British Empire, making the Cypriots British subjects. On 5 November 1914 the British and the French declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Most of Cyprus gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, with the UK, Greece and Turkey retaining limited rights to intervene in internal affairs. Parts of the island were excluded from the territory of the new independent republic and remain under UK control. These zones are what are known as the Sovereign Base Areas or SBAs.
The British colonial history of Cyprus has left Cypriots with a good level of English but it is no longer an official language in either the Greek south side of the island, formally known as the Republic of Cyprus or the Turkish north, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus though English remains official in the SBAs. Since the effective partition of the island in 1974, Greek and Turkish Cypriots have had little opportunity or inclination to learn the others language, and are more likely to talk to each other in English. Older Turkish Cypriots who worked or lived with Greek Cypriots prior to partition often speak Greek quite fluently. Indeed, many Ottoman soldiers took Greek wives and were allowed to marry up to four.[2]
English is also commonly used on Cyprus to communicate with foreign visitors. The large number of British tourists (and other, largely Northern European ones, who use English as a lingua franca) who visit Cyprus regularly has contributed largely to the continued use of English on Cyprus, especially in its thriving tourist industry.
After independence in the 1960s there was some attempt to encourage French, which was still the most important European language. This policy would have been in line with that in place in Greece at the time. Furthermore, in the 1960s, affluent French-speaking tourists (both from France and Lebanon) in terms of percentage were more important than today. Overall though, the French policy was indicative of a desire to distance Cyprus from the former British colonial power, against which a bitter war of independence had recently been fought and won.
However, knowledge of English is helped by the large Cypriot migrant communities in the UK and Australia, leading to diffusion of culture and language back to their country of origin, and negative sentiments towards the UK have waned or disappeared. There is now a large British expatriate population, in addition to the British military presence in the Sovereign Base Areas, as well as the UN buffer zone, whose peacekeepers usually also use English as a lingua franca. All of the above maintains an English-speaking presence on the island.
Malta[edit]
Main articles: Languages of Malta and Maltenglish
In 1814, Malta became part of the British Empire, under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna. Prior to the arrival of the British, the language of the educated Maltese elite had been Italian, and all legal statutes, taxation, education and clerical discourses were conducted either in Italian or in Latin.
However, this was increasingly downgraded by the increased use of English. The British began scripting and codifying Maltese – hitherto an unscripted vernacular – as a language in or around 1868. From this point on, the Maltese language gradually gained currency as the main language on the islands, its grammars and conventions evolving in a mix between Italian, Arabic and English.
Between the 1870s and 1930s, Malta had three official languages, Italian, Maltese and English, but in 1934, English and Maltese were declared the sole official languages. The British associated Italian with the Benito Mussolini regime in Italy, which had made territorial claims on the islands, although the use of Italian by nationalists was more out of cultural affinities with Italy than any sympathy with Italian Fascism. With the outbreak of World War II, the Maltese lost their sense of fraternity with the Italian world, and there was a decline in Italian spoken in Malta.[citation needed]
English remains an official language in Malta, but since independence in 1964, the country's cultural and commercial links with Italy have strengthened, owing to proximity. Italian television is widely received in Malta and is highly popular.
Other countries[edit]
There are also pockets of native English speakers to be found throughout Europe, such as in southern Spain, France, the Algarve in Portugal, as well as numerous U.S. and British military bases in Germany. There are communities of native English speakers in some European cities aside from the cities of the U.K. and Ireland, e.g., Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Paris, Athens, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Rome.
Sectors of tourism, publishing, finance, computers and related industries rely heavily on English due to Anglophone trade ties. Air traffic control and shipping movements are almost all conducted in English.[citation needed]
In areas of Europe where English is not the first language, there are many examples of the mandated primacy of English: for example, in many European companies, such as Airbus, Ford[clarification needed], G.M., Philips, Renault[citation needed], Volvo, etc. have designated English to be the language of communication for their senior management, and many universities are offering education in English. The language is also a required subject in most European countries.[3] Thus, the percentage of English speakers is expected to rise.
English as lingua franca[edit]
See also: Languages of the European Union
English is the most commonly spoken foreign language in 19 out of 25 European Union countries (excluding the U.K. and Ireland)[4] In the EU25, working knowledge of English as a foreign language is clearly leading at 38%, followed by German and French (at 14% each), Russian and Spanish (at 6% each), and Italian (3%).[5] "Very good" knowledge of English is particularly high in Malta (52%), Denmark (44%), Cyprus (42%) and Sweden (40%). Working knowledge varies a lot between European countries. It is very high in Malta, Cyprus and Denmark but low in Russia, Spain (12%), Hungary (14%) and Slovakia (14%). On average in 2012, 38% of citizens of the European Union (excluding the United Kingdom and Ireland) stated that they have sufficient knowledge of English to have a conversation in this language.[6]
English has become the preeminent second language of Europe in the absence of any colonial history or diaspora, but rather as a concerted effort to increase fluency in English by Europeans since the Second World War. English has become the most useful language to connect different language groups in Europe. The impact of Brexit on EU language policy remains to be seen, but it is possible that the EU, in retaining English as a key working language without the dominant presence of British English speakers, would claim ownership over its own dialect of English and develop it for its own needs.[7]
References[edit]
^ Jump up to: a b Europeans and their Languages (2006)
Jump up ^ The Turnstone: A Doctor's Story page 216
Jump up ^ http://www.euractiv.com/culture/english-dominates-eu-language-cu-news-220783
Jump up ^ Europeans and their Languages. "Special Eurobarometer 386" of the European Commission (2012)[1], p. 21
Jump up ^ including native speakers, the figures are: English 38%, German 14%, French 14%, Spanish 6%, Russian 6%, Italian 3%. Europeans and their Languages. "Special Eurobarometer 243" of the European Commission (2006)[2], p. 152
Jump up ^ Europeans and their Languages. "Special Eurobarometer 386" of the European Commission (2012)[3], p. 24
Jump up ^ English in a post-Brexit European Union by Marko Modiano, World Englishes 19 September 2017
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History of the English language

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