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English language
English language is the most widely spoken lan­guage in the world. It is used as either a primary or sec­ondary language in many countries.

During the 1500's, fewer than 2 million people spoke English. All of them lived in what is now the United Kingdom. Through the centuries, as the result of various historical events, English spread throughout the world. Today, about 400 million people speak English as their native language. Most of them live in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United King­dom, and the United States.

Another 100 million people, chiefly living in Bangla­desh, India, Pakistan, and in many African countries, speak English in addition to their own language. An ad­ditional 200 million people probably know at least some English.

Characteristics of English

Vocabulary. English has a larger vocabulary than any other language. There are more than 600,000 words in the largest dictionaries of the English language.

Some English words have been passed on from gen­eration to generation as far back as scholars can trace. These words, such as woman, man, sun, hand, love, go, and eat, express basic ideas and feelings. Later, many words were borrowed from other languages, including Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish. For example, algebra is from Arabic, fash­ion from French, piano from Italian, and canyon from Spanish.

A number of words, such as doghouse and splash­down, were formed by combining other words. New words are also created by blending words. For example, motor and hotel were blended into motel. Words can be shortened to form new words, as was done with his­tory to form story. Words called acronyms are formed by using the first letter or letters of several words. The word radar is an acronym for radio detection and rang­ing.

Pronunciation and spelling in English sometimes seem illogical or inconsistent. Many words are spelled similarly though pronounced differently. Examples in­clude cough, though, and through. Other words, such as blue, crew, too, and shoe, have similar pronuncia­tions but are spelled differently. Many of these varia­tions show changes that occurred during the develop­ment of English. The spelling of some words remained the same through the centuries, though their pronuncia­tion changed.

Grammar is the set of principles used to create sen­tences. These principles define the elements used to as­semble sentences and the relationships between the el­ements. The elements include parts of speech and inflections.

Parts of speech are the word categories of the English language. Scholars do not all agree on how to describe the parts of speech. The traditional description lists eight classes: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, ad­verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. The most important relationships of the parts of speech in­clude subject and verb, verb and predicate, and modi­fier and the word modified.

Some modern scholars also divide the parts of speech into two categories, content words and function words. Content words are the main parts of speech— nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives—and carry the basic vocabulary meanings. For example, dog, write, happy, and seldom are content words. These words are also called form classes. Function words express rela­tionships between content words in a sentence. For ex­ample, in, because, the, very, and not are function words. They show the grammatical, or structural, mean­ings of the sentence and are also called structure classes. Function words include articles, prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions. See Parts of speech.

English has fewer inflections than most other Euro­pean languages. An inflection is a variation of the form of a word that gives the word a different meaning or function. An English noun has only two inflections, the plural and the possessive. Inflections are used to change the tense and number of a verb or the case of a pro­noun. Inflections can change adjectives to the compara­tive or the superlative—for example, big, bigger, big­gest.

The subject of a sentence usually comes first in the word order in English. It is generally followed by the verb and then the object. Single words that modify nouns are usually placed before the noun, but phrases that modify nouns are usually placed after the noun. Words that modify verbs can be put before or after the verb. For more information on word order and sentence patterns, see Sentence.

The development of English

Origins. The earliest source of the English language was a prehistoric language that modern scholars call Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The PIE language was proba­bly spoken about 5,000 years ago by people who lived in the area north of the Black Sea, in southeastern Eu­rope. These people migrated through the centuries and gradually developed new languages. One group mi­grated west and divided into groups who spoke lan­guages that were the ancestors of the Germanic, Greek, and Latin tongues. The Germanic languages developed into English, Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, and Swedish. The ancient Greek language became modern Greek, and early Latin developed into French, Italian, and Spanish.

The earliest known language in what is now Great Britain was spoken by a people called the Celts. The Ro­mans started to conquer the Celts in A.D. 43 and ruled much of Britain until the early 400's, when they returned to Rome. During the mid-400's, Germanic people who lived along the North Sea invaded Britain. The invaders belonged to three main tribes—the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons. All three tribes spoke their own Ger­manic dialect, but they probably understood one an­other. The Angles settled in central Britain. This area be­came known as Angle-Landand, eventually, as England. The language of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes became known as English.

The history of the English language can be divided into three main periods. The language of the first pe­riod, which began about 500 and ended about 1100, is called Old English. During the next period, from about 1100 to 1485, the people spoke Middle English. The lan­guage of the period from about 1485 to the present is known as Modern English.

Old English was mainly a mixture of the Germanic languages of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Old English resembles modern German more than it does modern English. Old English had many inflections, as does mod­ern German, and its word order and pronunciation re­sembled those of modern German.

The vocabulary of Old English was chiefly Germanic, though some words came from the language of the Celts. The Germanic people had learned some Latin words while living on the European continent. They brought some of those words to the British Isles and

added them to Old English. More Latin words were added during the 500's and 600's, when Christianity spread in England.

During the late 800's, Viking invaders from Denmark and Norway settled in northeast England. As a result, many words from Scandinavian languages became part of Old English. They included words beginning with sc­ot sk-, such as scare, scowl, skin, and sky. The pronouns they, their, and them were also borrowed from the Scandinavians.

Gradually, many inflections of Old English were dropped. People also began to put words into a more regular order and to use more prepositions to indicate relationships between words.

Middle English. In 1066, England was conquered by the Normans, a people from the area in France that is now called Normandy. Their leader, William the Con­queror, became king of England. The Normans took control of all English institutions, including the govern­ment and the church.

Most of the English people continued to speak Eng­lish. However, many of the members of the upper class in England learned Norman French because they wanted influence and power. The use of French words eventually became fashionable in England. The English borrowed thousands of these words and made them part of their own language. The French-influenced lan­guage of England during this period is now called Mid­dle English.

The Normans intermarried with the English and, through the years, became increasingly distant—so­cially, economically, and culturally—from France. The Normans began to use English as the language of daily life. By the end of the 1300's, the French influence had declined sharply in England. English was used again in the courts and in business affairs, where French had re­placed it.

Modern English. By about 1485, English had lost most of its Old English inflections, and its pronunciation and word order closely resembled those of today. Dur­ing this period, the vocabulary of English expanded by borrowing words from many other languages. Begin­ning in the 1600's, the language spread throughout the world as the English explored and colonized Africa, Australia, India, and North America. Different dialects of the English language developed in these areas. Today, English is the international language of science and technology. English is also used throughout the world in business and diplomacy.

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