English Discussion

 

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Practical English

 English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England.^[3][4][5] It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots and then most closely related to the Low German and Frisian languages, English is genealogically Germanic. However, its vocabulary also shows major influences from French (about 28% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 28%),^[6] plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language).^[7][8][9] Speakers of English are called Anglophones.

The earliest forms of English, collectively known as "Old English", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th centuries. Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman Conquest of England, when considerable Old French (especially Old Norman French) and Latin-derived vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three hundred years.^[10][11] Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots into English, concurrent with the introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare.^[12][13]

Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order.^[14] Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspects and moods, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives, and some negation.

Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States of America. Through all types of printed and electronic media in these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation, and law.^[3] English is the most spoken language in the world^[15] and the third most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish.^[16] It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers. As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English.^[17] English is the majority native language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland (see Anglosphere) and is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.^[18] It is the co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other international and regional organisations. English accounts for at least 70% of speakers of the Germanic language branch of the Indo-European family.

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