English is the largest language by number of speakers, and the third most-spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. English speakers are called “Anglophones” or “Anglo-Saxons” in English-speaking countries. English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years.
About English language in brief
English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. English is the largest language by number of speakers, and the third most-spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native speakers. As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English. English speakers are called “Anglophones” or “Anglo-Saxons” in English-speaking countries. English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years and is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon. Its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanian languages, particularly Old Norse, as well as Latin and French. The development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, including Old Norse and Norman French. It has since evolved considerably but is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, in syntax and phonology, although some of these, such as Dutch or Dutch, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages. English was isolated from Icelandic and Faroese, which were also isolated from Germanic, by the development of British Isles and the extinction of the extinct Fingallian languages in the UK in the 18th century. English today is the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation and law.
The English language is the world’s most widely learned second language and is spoken by more people than any other language. The majority native language is English in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. The language is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It was first spoken in early medieval England which eventually became the leadinglanguage of international discourse in today’s world. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift. Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, asWell as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation. English evolved into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other Anglic languages, Scots and the Forth and Forth and Bargy dialect of Ireland. Like other Germanic dialects, English has evolved considerably since the development of the British Isles and isolated it from continental Germanic languages and influences.
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This page is based on the article English language published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 14, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
