From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
English is an Indo-European, West Germanic language originating in England, and is the first language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Anglophone Caribbean. It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language throughout the world, especially in Commonwealth countries and in many international organizations.
Significance
Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca,[7][8] is the dominant international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy.[9] The initial reason for its enormous spread beyond the bounds of the British Isles where it was originally a native tongue was the British Empire, and by the late nineteenth century its influence had won a truly global reach.[10] It is the dominant language in the United States and the growing economic and cultural influence of that federal union as a global superpower since World War II has significantly accelerated adoption of English as a language across the planet.[8]
A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number
of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and as a
consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic
level (see English language learning and teaching).
Linguists such as David Crystal recognize 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 historically, most particularly in Australasia and North America, and its huge influence continues to play an important role in language attrition. By a similar token, historical linguists, aware of the complex and fluid dynamics of language change,
are always alive to 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.[citation needed]
English is one of six official languages of the United Nations.
History
-
English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers and Roman auxiliary troops from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Northern Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England.
One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate.
The original Old English language was then influenced by two waves of
invasion. The first was by language speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family; they conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman.
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 significant
grammatical simplification and 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 Italic
branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English
largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into
a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary.
Classification and related languages
The English language belongs to the western sub-branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest living relative of English is Scots,
spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland, which is
viewed by linguists as either a separate language or a group of
dialects of English. The next closest relative to English after Scots
is Frisian, spoken in the Northern Netherlands and Northwest Germany. Other less closely related living West Germanic languages include Dutch, Low German, German and Afrikaans. The North Germanic languages of Scandinavia are less closely related to English than the West Germanic languages.[citation needed]
Many 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, in so-called "faux amis", or false friends.
The pronunciation of French loanwords in English has become completely
anglicized and follows a typically Germanic pattern of stress.[citation needed]
Geographical distribution
- See also: List of countries by English-speaking population
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The Anglosphere |
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Dark blue: Countries and territories where English is the official, de facto official or primary national language.
Light blue: countries (in the case of Quebec: province) where English is an official language but not primary. English is also one of the official languages of the European Union. Click on the coloured regions to get to the related article:
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Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.[11] English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[12][5]
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][13] Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined.[14][15] There are some who claim that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.[16]
The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million),[17] United Kingdom (58 million),[18] Canada (18.2 million),[19] Australia (15.5 million),[20] Ireland (3.8 million),[18] South Africa (3.7 million),[21] and New Zealand (3.0-3.7 million).[22] 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') and linguistics professor David 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.[23] Following India is the People's Republic of China.[24]
Countries in order of total speakers
| Rank |
Country |
Total |
Percent of population |
Classical
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