17.

ENGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE

● BRIEF HISTORY
English is a West Germanic language. It is now the most widely used language in the world. It
is spoken as a first language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia,
Ireland, New Zealand and a number of Caribbean nations. It is an official language of the
European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United nations.
· OLD ENGLISH – (circa 400-1100) – was similar to modern German or Czech

· MIDDLE ENGLISH (circa 1100-1500) – changed dramatically under the influence of French

· EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (circa 1500 -1650) – the English of Shakespeare: the
vocabulary of English expanded greatly during the early modern period; it spread to other
continents (new colonies were established in America)

· LATE MODERN ENGLISH (1650 up to present-day) – By 1700, scholars had come to

prefer English over Latin as the language used in their publications; schools and universities
in the English speaking countries had moved away from Latin.

● STRUCTURE

· there are at least 600,000 words in English (the largest vocabulary of all living languages)

· educated native speakers of English use and understand between 20,000 and 25,000 words

· as far as Czech goes, it has at least 250,000 words

· English has always borrowed words from other languages

· the most frequent are as follows: Greek and Romance languages (especially Latin and
French, about 60%), borrowings from Germanic languages (25%) are less frequent

● WORLDWIDE LANGUAGE

How many people use it as their mother tongue?- total: 514 mil

Nowadays English is the second widely spoken language after Chinese, also it’s an official
language in over 70 countries and the official language in medicine, science, music. media,
business and finance. Nowadays 80% of English words come from other languages.

DIFFERENCES

The English language has many varieties. American English tends to simplify grammar and
spelling. Here are a few examples of differences between American and British English:

In vocabulary: secondary school X high school, pavement X sidewalk, underground X

subway, rubbish X trash, lift X elevator

In grammar: I have just seen her. X I just saw her., I haven’t got much time X I don’t have
much time.
 In spelling: travelled X traveled, colour X color, dialogue X dialog, programme X program

In pronunciation: Car [ka:] X car [kar], City [siti] X city [sidi]

Australian English uses a lot of shortenings, for example: brekkie for breakfast, footy for
football. There are also differences in vocabulary: station for a farm, good day instead of good
morning/afternoon/evening.

In British English there are many different Access and dialects. While an accent is just a
different way of pronunciation, a dialect includes changes in the language itself (such as
vocabulary).

But there are many other varieties of English around the world, including for example New
Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean
English.

● IDIOMS, SLANG, ABBREVIATIONS

idiom= phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached
to the phrase

ex: been in seventh heaven, cup of tea, raining cats and dogs, twenty-four seven, once in a
blue moon

slang= vocabulary of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in

formal writing

ex: hot, mate, LOL, bomb, whats up, lit

abbreviations= is a shortened form of a word or phrase

ex: AD (awesome dude), ASAP, IMO (in my opinion), LMK (let me know), , GOAT (greatest
of all time), BTW, YOLO