English language
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The English language is the language created by tribes that moved to Britain from West Germany around 450 AD. The Germanic languages spoken by these tribes became Anglo-Saxon, or Old English.
Modern English is spoken in many countries around the world. There are about 375 million native speakers (people with first language as English),[1] which makes English the second most spoken language in the world. About 220 million more people speak it as a second language and there are as many as a billion people who are learning. English has changed, and has been changed by many different languages.
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[change] History
English began in England, a country on the island of Great Britain in Europe. Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) came to Britain from around 449 AD. They made their home in the south and east of the island, pushing out the Celtic Britons who were there before them, or making them speak the English language instead of the old Celtic language. There are still Celtic Britons today in Wales and Cornwall who speak Welsh or Cornish. The Germanic dialects of these different tribes became Old English. The word "English" comes from the name of the Angles: Englas. Old English did not sound or look much like the English we speak today. If English speakers today were to hear or read a passage in Old English, they would not understand most words, but might understand a few.
The closest language to English that is still used today is Frisian, spoken by about 500,000 people living in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Despite its similarity to English, speakers of the two languages would not be able to understand each other. But there are still some people that strongly suggest that the closest language to English is the Dutch language.
Many other people came to England later at different times, speaking different languages, and these languages added more words to make today's English.
For example, around 800 AD, many Danish and Norse pirates, also called Vikings, came to the country and English received many Norse loanwords. Their languages were Germanic languages, like Old English.
After William the Conqueror took over England in 1066 AD with his armies and became king, he brought his nobles, who spoke Norman, a language closely related to French, to be the new government. They stopped English from being taught in schools for a long time, and the language changed greatly, because it was mostly being spoken instead of written for about 300 years. English borrowed so many words from Norman at that time that it could be called a different language, Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer is a well known writer of Middle English. After more sound changes, Middle English became Modern English. Although the works of Shakespeare might seem very old, they are actually called modern.
English has continued to take new words from other languages, for example mainly from French (around 30% to 40% of its words), but also Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese. Because many scientists from different countries needed to talk to each other, they chose names for scientific things in the languages they all knew: Greek and Latin. Those words came to English also, for example, photography ("photo-" means "light" "and "-graph" means "picture" or "writing", in Greek. A photograph is a picture made using light), or telephone. So, English is made of Old English (closely related to German and Dutch), Danish, Norse, and French, and has been changed by Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish, and more words from even more languages.
The history of the British Empire has added to the spread of the English language. English is an important language in many places today, like in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, the Republic of India and Pakistan, South Africa, and the United States, English is the main language. Because the United Kingdom (the country where England is) and the United States have historically been powerful in money-making and government, many people find it helpful to learn English to communicate in science, business, and diplomacy. This is called learning English as an additional language, English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL).
Many famous stories and plays are in English. Shakespeare was a famous English writer of poems and plays. Today, many famous songs and movies (cinema films) use the English language.
[change] Spelling differences
English uses difficult and strange spelling when written. Sounds for the letters and combinations look the same but can be very different. For example "ough" is different in through (threw), rough (ruff), dough (doe) or cough (coff). This makes it a very hard language to learn.[2] Many English speaking countries spell words differently. There is a difference between some spellings in America on the one hand and the United Kingdom and many other countries (such as those of the British Commonwealth) where English is the main language on the other hand. These different ways of spelling are sometimes called "American English" and "British English". For example "colour" is spelled "color" in the USA, and "programme" is spelt "program" in the USA. However, with greater globalization, or globalisation (or spreading around the world), and the spread of US culture through television and US computer programmes, some British people now sometimes use American English terms.
[change] Related pages
- Indian English
- American English
- Australian English
- British English
- Canadian English
- Irish English
- Jamaican English
- New Zealand English
- Pakistani English
- Scottish English
[change] References
[change] Other websites
- BBC resources for English language students
- Resources for English language students
- The main points of English grammar, clearly presented with examples
- More than 20000 English words recorded by a native speaker
- Activities for English language students
- Re-Romanization of English
- The English Wikipedia
- Tools For English Language
- Simple English books about the Bible
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