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About 10,000 French and Norman loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food. [20] See English language word origins and List of English words of French origin. Although English is a Germanic language, it has a deep connection to Romance languages. The roots of ...
The English language was introduced to the Americas by the arrival of the British, beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.The language also spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and settlement and the spread of the former British Empire, which, by 1921, included 470–570 million people, about a quarter of the world's population.
American English has always shown a marked tendency to use nouns as verbs. [13] Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun ("shoot"), author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was ...
The words "Samuel Johnson" and "English Language" were printed in red; the rest was printed in black. The preface and headings were set in 4.6 mm "English" type, the text—double columned—was set in 3.5 mm pica. This first edition of the dictionary contained a 42,773-word list, to which only a few more were added in subsequent editions.
The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Actual writing is first recorded in Uruk (modern Iraq), at the end of the 4th millennium BCE, and soon after in various parts of the Near East. [30] An ancient Sumerian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing:
Englisċ, from which the word English is derived, means 'pertaining to the Angles'. [4] The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in many parts of Britain in the 5th century. [5] By the 9th century, all speakers of Old English, including those who claimed Saxon or Jutish ancestry, could be referred to as Englisċ.
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, [b] is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. [4] English is the most widely spoken language in the United States; an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states; and the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce throughout the nation. [5]
In America in 1765, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, founder and first president of King's College in New York City (now Columbia University) published An English Grammar; the First Easy Rudiments of Grammar Applied to the English Tongue. It "appears to have been the first English grammar prepared by an American and published in America."