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| English | |
|---|---|
| Pronunciation | /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/[1] |
| Region | British Isles (originally) Worldwide |
| Ethnicity | English |
Native speakers | 360–400 million[2] L2 speakers: 400 million; as a foreign language: 600–700 million |
Early forms | |
| Manually coded English (multiple systems) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | en |
| ISO 639-2 | eng |
| ISO 639-3 | eng |
| Glottolog | stan1293 |
| Linguasphere | 52-ABA |
.svg) Countries of the world where English is a majority native language
Countries where English is official but not a majority native language | |
English is a language that started in Anglo-Saxon England. It is originally from Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon dialects. English is now used as a global language. There are about 375 million native speakers (people who use it as their first language) in the world.[3]
Scots is the language closest to English. The vocabulary of English was influenced by other Germanic languages in the early Middle Ages and later by Romance languages, especially French.
English is the only official language or one of the official languages of nearly 60 countries. It is also the main language of more countries in the world than any other. It is the primary language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland. It is one of the official languages in Singapore, India, Hong Kong, and South Africa. It is widely spoken in parts of the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia.
In 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English.[4] English is the first foreign language for most learners who have another main language. It is an official language of the United Nations, European Union, and many other international organizations. It is the most widely-spoken Germanic language, with at least 70% of Germanic speakers speaking English. About 220 million others use it as their second language. It is, together with German, the most important language of science and technology. It is often used in work and travel and trade, and there are at least a billion people who are learning it. That makes English the largest language by number of speakers.
English has changed and developed over time, like all other languages.[5] The most obvious changes are the many words taken from Latin and Old French, which then came to Old English and then Modern English, which is used today.
English grammar has also become very different from other Germanic languages, but it stayed different from Romance languages. Because nearly 60% of the vocabulary comes from Latin, English is sometimes called the Germanic language that is the most Latin, and it is often mistaken for being a Romance language.[6]
- ↑ Oxford 2015, Entry: English – Pronunciation.
- ↑ Crystal, David (ed) 2005. The Penguin Concise Encyclopedia. London: Penguin Reference, pp. 424–426.
- ↑ Curtis, Andy. Color, race, and English language teaching: shades of meaning. 2006, page 192.
- ↑ Crystal, David (2008). "Two thousand million?". English Today. 24: 3–6. doi:10.1017/S0266078408000023. S2CID 145597019.
- ↑ Baugh, Albert C. & Cable, Thomas 2012. A history of the English language. 6th ed, London: Routledge. ISBN 0-41-565596-X
- ↑ "Comparison between English, German and Dutch (in Italian)". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
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