Search results
People also ask
Is English a universal language?
Why is English a world language?
Is English a 'common language'?
Does English have a system of orthography?
English is considered a versatile language because the size of the vocabulary makes it easy to say things in different ways, using either basic English words or more complex ones. This allows speakers a wide range of options to express ideas when communicating with others. English also provides flexibility for speakers in everyday conversations ...
- Overview
- Origins and basic characteristics
The English language is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic language group. Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of the world and is the standard language in a wide variety of fields, including computer coding, international business, and higher education.
How many people speak English?
As of 2020 there are 1.27 billion English speakers around the world. This makes it the most spoken language, ahead of Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion speakers) and Hindi (637 million speakers). More than 50 countries officially list English as an official language.
Is African American Vernacular English a dialect of English?
There has been much public and academic debate on whether African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English or its own separate language with African origins. In 1996 the Oakland Unified School District gained nationwide attention for officially recognizing AAVE as a second language.
Where did English come from?
English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and is therefore related to most other languages spoken in Europe and western Asia from Iceland to India. The parent tongue, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken about 5,000 years ago by nomads believed to have roamed the southeast European plains. Germanic, one of the language groups descended from this ancestral speech, is usually divided by scholars into three regional groups: East (Burgundian, Vandal, and Gothic, all extinct), North (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish), and West (German, Dutch [and Flemish], Frisian, and English). Though closely related to English, German remains far more conservative than English in its retention of a fairly elaborate system of inflections. Frisian, spoken by the inhabitants of the Dutch province of Friesland and the islands off the west coast of Schleswig, is the language most nearly related to Modern English. Icelandic, which has changed little over the last thousand years, is the living language most nearly resembling Old English in grammatical structure.
Modern English is analytic (i.e., relatively uninflected), whereas Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral tongue of most of the modern European languages (e.g., German, French, Russian, Greek), was synthetic, or inflected. During the course of thousands of years, English words have been slowly simplified from the inflected variable forms found in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Russian, and German, toward invariable forms, as in Chinese and Vietnamese. The German and Chinese words for the noun man are exemplary. German has five forms: Mann, Mannes, Manne, Männer, Männern. Chinese has one form: ren. English stands in between, with four forms: man, man’s, men, men’s. In English, only nouns, pronouns (as in he, him, his), adjectives (as in big, bigger, biggest), and verbs are inflected. English is the only European language to employ uninflected adjectives; e.g., the tall man, the tall woman, compared to Spanish el hombre alto and la mujer alta. As for verbs, if the Modern English word ride is compared with the corresponding words in Old English and Modern German, it will be found that English now has only 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden), whereas Old English ridan had 13, and Modern German reiten has 16.
Britannica Quiz
Ultimate Vocabulary Test: Part Two
In addition to the simplicity of inflections, English has two other basic characteristics: flexibility of function and openness of vocabulary.
Flexibility of function has grown over the last five centuries as a consequence of the loss of inflections. Words formerly distinguished as nouns or verbs by differences in their forms are now often used as both nouns and verbs. One can speak, for example, of planning a table or tabling a plan, booking a place or placing a book, lifting a thumb or thumbing a lift. In the other Indo-European languages, apart from rare exceptions in Scandinavian languages, nouns and verbs are never identical because of the necessity of separate noun and verb endings. In English, forms for traditional pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs can also function as nouns; adjectives and adverbs as verbs; and nouns, pronouns, and adverbs as adjectives. One speaks in English of the Frankfurt Book Fair, but in German one must add the suffix -er to the place-name and put attributive and noun together as a compound, Frankfurter Buchmesse. In French one has no choice but to construct a phrase involving the use of two prepositions: Foire du Livre de Francfort. In English it is now possible to employ a plural noun as adjunct (modifier), as in wages board and sports editor; or even a conjunctional group, as in prices and incomes policy and parks and gardens committee. Any word class may alter its function in this way: the ins and outs (prepositions becoming nouns), no buts (conjunction becoming noun).
Nov 29, 2010 · English became the lingua franca around WWII, but it was already used all through the British Colonial Empire, establishing it in North America and Australia among others. here is a citation of Wikipedia: It[English] has replaced French as the lingua franca of diplomacy since World War II.
- English became the lingua franca around WWII, but it was already used all through the British Colonial Empire, establishing it in North America a...
- This is a difficult question to answer because so many of the terms are vague. Even the term "English" is mutable, as there are many dialects and v...
- I am very surprised that none of the answers has mentioned the obvious: English is simple . Speaking English at the basic level needed to order a...
- I agree with the other answers which emphasize: a) the British empire, and b) the dominance of the US in business/science in the post-WWII era. I m...
- Usually the nation with the biggest power spreads its culture and language. Take the Greeks or Romans for example, when they were in power, the wor...
- Not really related, but I couldn't resist: It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad It's knowing they're foreign that makes them so mad...
- The BBC News magazine has an article on " How English evolved into a global language " As the British Library charts the evolution of English in a...
Feb 21, 2020 · Words are added because the Oxford English Dictionary recognises that English is a universal language. It believes that including words from varieties of English all over the world enables it to tell a more complete story of the language.
Apr 17, 2019 · English is the universal language for all; travelling to France and don’t know French? Don’t worry! Speak in English instead, and this stands true for all other countries as well. In this article, we will be looking at the top reasons why English is considered a universal language. English is the Language of Business
Nov 22, 2023 · To answer why is English considered a global language, one must delve not just in the story of English, but also ask about the historical, cultural, and technological forces that have propelled its influence. It’s all about discovering how did the English language spread around the world.
May 29, 2019 · What makes English such a universal language? Defining A Universal Language When linguists and language enthusiasts try to identify an “international,” “world” or “universal” language, they’re not trying to ascribe values to human languages, ranking them as “better” or “worse” than any other.
