English language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses of "English", see English (disambiguation).
English
Pronunciation /'??gl??/[1]
Region Originally Great Britain
now worldwide (see Geographical distribution, below)
Native speakers
360 400 million (2006)[2]
L2 speakers: 400 million;
as a foreign language: 600 700 million[2]
Language family
Indo-European
Germanic
West Germanic
North Sea Germanic
Anglo-Frisian
Anglic
English
Early forms
Old English
Middle English
Early Modern English
English
Writing system
Latin script (English alphabet)
English Braille, Unified English Braille
Signed forms
Manually coded English
(multiple systems)
Official status
Official language in
67 countries
27 non-sovereign entities
Various organisations[show]
Language codes
ISO 639-1
en
ISO 639-2
eng
ISO 639-3
eng
Glottolog
stan1293[3]
Linguasphere
52-ABA
{{{mapalt}}}
Countries of the world where English is a majority native language
Countries where English is official but not a majority native language
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, yo
u may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval Engl
and and is now a global lingua franca.[4][5] It is an official language of almos
t 60 sovereign states, the most commonly spoken language in the United Kingdom,
the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, and a widely spo
ken language in countries in the Caribbean, Africa, and southeast Asia.[6] It is
the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin and Spanish.
[7] It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the
United Nations, of the European Union, and of many other world and regional int
ernational organisations.
English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest for
ms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo
-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English. Middle English beg
an in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England.[8] Early Modern

English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing pr
ess to London and the Great Vowel Shift. Through the worldwide influence of the
British Empire, Modern English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th
centuries. Through newspapers, books, the telegraph, the telephone, phonograph
records, radio, satellite television, and the Internet, as well as the emergence
of the United States as a global superpower, English has become the leading lan
guage of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and in pr
ofessional contexts such as science.
There is little morphological inflection in Modern English, and the syntax is ge
nerally isolating. English relies on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expr
ession of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, int
errogatives and negation. Despite noticeable variation between the forms of Engl
ish spoken in different world regions, English-speakers from around the world ca
n communicate with one another effectively. Different accents are distinguished
only by phonological differences from the standard language, whereas dialects al
so display grammatical and lexical differences.