English language

English language is a West Germanic one, originated from England, and the first language for almost everybody in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Commonwealth Caribbean, New Zealand, and the United States (also known as the Anglosphere). English is used extensively as an official language and as a second language throughout the world, mainly in Commonwealth countries such as South Africa, India and Pakistan, and also in international organisations.

Modern English is considered to be the global lingua franca. English is the most important international language in business, communications, aviation, science, entertainment and diplomacy. The first reason for the initial spread of English far beyond the British Isles is the influence of the British Empire. Following World War II, the flourishing economic and cultural influence of the United States has considerably helped to the spread of English.
English is spoken and studied by up to a billion people around the world since English is necessary for several fields or profession. One of the six official working languages of the United Nations is English.

History of English

English language is an Anglo-Frisian one. Around the fifth century AD, what is now known as Eastern England was invaded by Germanic-speaking people, coming from Northwest Germany (Angles and Saxons) and Jutland (Jutes).

It is not clear whether the Old English language spread by displacement of the original population, or the native Celts gradually adopted the language and culture of a new ruling class, or a combination of both of these processes.
Whatever their origin, these Germanic dialects eventually coalesced to a degree and formed what is today known as Old English, which resembled some coastal dialects in what are now north-west Germany and the Netherlands.

Throughout the history of written Old English, it retained a synthetic structure similar to that of Proto-Indo-European, adopting West Saxon scribal conventions. However, spoken Old English became increasingly analytic in nature, losing the complex noun case system, relying more heavily on prepositions and fixed word-order to convey meaning. This is obvious in the Middle English period, when literature was to an increasing extent recorded with spoken dialectal variation intact, after written Old English lost its condition as the literary language of the nobility. It is thought that Celtic substratum influenced in the early development of the language was influenced. Later, English was influenced by the related North Germanic language Old Norse, spoken by the Vikings who settled principally in the north and the east coast down to London, the area called the Danelaw.

The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 deeply influenced the evolution of English. For about 300 years after this, the Normans used Anglo-Norman, which was similar to Old French, as the language of the administration, court and law. Many Norman words found their way into Old English, especially legal and administrative ones. Later, many words were borrowed from Greek and Latin, giving rise to a parallel vocabulary that still exists into modern times. What it is now called Middle English was the result of the Norman inluence.

During the 15th century, Middle English was modified by the Great Vowel Shift, the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in administration and government, and the effect of printing. We can trace back Early Modern English to around the time of William Shakespeare.

-Translation English-

Classification and related languages

English belongs to the sub-branch of the Germanic branch, which is considered as a branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

A matter of discussion is which is the nearest living relative of English. Apart from such English-lexified creole languages, for example, Tok Pisin, Scots (spoken in the first place in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland) is the Germanic variety most closely associated with the English language. Like English, Scots descends from Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon. The closest relative to English, excluding Scots, is Frisian, which is spoken in the Northern Netherlands and Northwest Germany. Other less closely related living West Germanic languages are Afrikaans, German, Low Saxon and Dutch. The North Germanic languages of Scandinavia are less closely related to English than the West Germanic ones.

A large amount of French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often notably different) because English absorbed a signicant part of the vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. Consequently, about sixty percent of the English vocabulary is derived from French, but there are some minor spelling differences (use of old French spellings, word endings, etc.), as well as occasional differences in meaning, known as false friends.

Distribution in the geography

English is the first language for over 380 million people. By number of native speakers, English today is all probability the third largest language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. However, when combining native and non-native speakers English is likely to be the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly is the second to a combination of the Chinese Languages, depending on whether we classify the latter as “languages” or “dialects”. Estimates that include second language speakers change greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on the way in which literacy or mastery is defined. It is believed that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of three to one.

The countries in which we can find the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 millions), United Kingdom (58 million), Canada (17.7 million), Australia (15 million), Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand. Jamaica, Nigeria and Singapore also have many native speakers of dialect continuums 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 is the country where there are the most such speakers ('Indian English') and linguistics professor David Crystal affirms that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who understand or speak English than any other country. Following India is the People from Republic of China.

English is not an official language in either the United Kingdom or the United States., English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments in the United States, although this country has no official languages.