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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.
A short word list was collected by James King in 1778. 1823: Xhosa: John Bennie's Xhosa reading sheet: Complete Bible translation 1859 c. 1833: Vai: Vai syllabary created by Momolu Duwalu Bukele. 1833: Sotho: reduced to writing by French missionaries Casalis and Arbousset: First grammar book 1841 and complete Bible translation 1881 1837: Zulu
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:
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 ...
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]
Literature of the American Revolution included A Summary View of the Rights of British America by Thomas Jefferson and Common Sense by Thomas Paine. [142] The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown was the first American novel, written in a realistic style with a clear moral message. [143]
The first page of Beowulf. Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England (Jutes and the Angles) c. 450, after the withdrawal of the Romans, and "ending soon after the ...