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e. English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern ...
v. t. e. English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain. [4][5][6] The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain.
The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, [1] [2] making it the largest language by number of speakers, the third largest language by number of native speakers and the most widespread language geographically.
Most states where English is an official language are former territories of the British Empire. Exceptions include Rwanda and Burundi [also should be on map], which were formerly German and then Belgian colonies; Cameroon, where only part of the country was under the British mandate; and Liberia, the Philippines, the Federated States of ...
English as a first language is only spoken by 259,678 people, as a second language by 182,717,239 and as a third language by 45,562,173. [4] Nigeria: 206,200,000 125,039,680: 60.64 20,000,000 9.70: 103,198,040 50.05: English is the most widespread language in the country due to the many different languages spoken, with 60 million speakers. [5]
Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2024 [4] Language Family Branch First-language (L1) speakers Second-language (L2) speakers Total speakers (L1+L2) English (excl. creole languages) Indo-European: Germanic: 380 million 1.135 billion 1.515 billion Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties) Sino-Tibetan: Sinitic: 941 ...
Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) [2] or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed by the 17th century. With some differences in vocabulary, texts which ...
Old English (Englisċ or Ænglisc, pronounced [ˈeŋɡliʃ]), or Anglo-Saxon, [1] was the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English ...