English 

is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and

eventually became a global lingua franca.[4][5] It is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic
tribes that migrated to the area of Great Britainthat later took their name, as England. Both names
derive from Anglia, a peninsula in the Baltic Sea. The language is closely related to Frisian and Low
Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages,
particularly Norse (a North Germanic language), and to a greater extent by Latin and French.[6]
English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a
group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlersin the
5th century, are collectively called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with
the Norman conquest of England; this was a period in which the language was influenced by French.
[7]
 Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing
press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.[8]
Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States, Modern English has
been spreading around the world since the 17th century. Through all types of printed and electronic
media, and spurred by the emergence of the United States as a global superpower, 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.[9]
English is the largest language by number of speakers,[10]and the third most-spoken native
language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish.[11] It is the most widely learned second
language and is either the official languageor one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign
states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native
speakers. It is estimated that there are over 2 billion speakers of English.[12] English is the most
commonly spoken language in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, and it is widely spoken in some areas of
the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia.[13] It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the
European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely
spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch.
English has a vast vocabulary, though counting how many words any language has is impossible. [14]
[15]
 English speakers are called "Anglophones".
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, a fairly fixed SVO word order and a complex syntax.
[16]
 Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of
complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and
some negation. The variation among the accents and dialects of Englishused in different countries
and regions—in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, grammar, and
spelling—can often be understood by speakers of different dialects, but in extreme cases can lead to
confusion or even mutual unintelligibility between English speakers.

Contents

 1Classification
 2History
o 2.1Proto-Germanic to Old English
o 2.2Middle English
o 2.3Early Modern English
o 2.4Spread of Modern English
 3Geographical distribution
 o 3.1Three circles of English-speaking countries
o 3.2Pluricentric English
o 3.3English as a global language
 4Phonology
o 4.1Consonants
o 4.2Vowels
o 4.3Phonotactics
o 4.4Stress, rhythm and intonation
o 4.5Regional variation
 5Grammar
o 5.1Nouns and noun phrases
 5.1.1Adjectives
 5.1.2Pronouns, case, and person
 5.1.3Prepositions
o 5.2Verbs and verb phrases
 5.2.1Tense, aspect and mood
 5.2.2Phrasal verbs
 5.2.3Adverbs
o 5.3Syntax
 5.3.1Basic constituent order
 5.3.2Clause syntax
 5.3.3Auxiliary verb constructions
 5.3.4Questions
 5.3.5Discourse level syntax
 6Vocabulary
o 6.1Word formation processes
o 6.2Word origins
o 6.3English loanwords and calques in other languages
 7Writing system
 8Dialects, accents, and varieties
o 8.1United Kingdom and Ireland
o 8.2North America
o 8.3Australia and New Zealand
o 8.4Southeast Asia
o 8.5Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
 9References
 10Bibliography
 11External links

Classification
Anglic languages
  English
  Scots
Anglo-Frisian languages
Anglic and
  Frisian (West, North, Saterland)
North Sea Germanic languagesAnglo-Frisian and
  Low German/Low Saxon
West Germanic languages
North Sea Germanic and
  Dutch; in Africa: Afrikaans
...... German (High):
  Central; in Lux.: Luxembourgish
  Upper
...... Yiddish

The West Germanic languages

English is an Indo-European languageand belongs to the West Germanicgroup of the Germanic
languages.[17] Old English originatedfrom a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along
the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into the Anglic languages in
the British Isles, and into the Frisian languages and Low German/Low Saxonon the continent. The
Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages, are
the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and
sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic
(North Sea Germanic) languages, though this grouping remains debated.[18] Old English evolved
into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English.