English

History and Evolution

Originally spoken in the British Isles, English is a major world language that belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.

Around the 5th century CE, the Germanic Anglo-Saxon tribe invaded the British Isles, arriving in the southeast. Over the following centuries, these settlers moved into the interior and their Germanic language replaced indigenous Celtic vernaculars. By the 7th century, the first texts in Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) emerged. In the late 9th century, King Alfred the Great of Wessex launched a program to translate many religious and secular texts from Latin in order to make the spoken Old English vernacular the language of governance and education. The West Saxon dialect thus became the standard variety of Old English. Old English is nearly impossible for modern speakers to understand. It is grammatically closer to German, as it has an extensive case system with inflected endings for both nouns and verbs.

The first waves of Norse invasions occurred in the 8th century, bringing Old English into close contact with the North Germanic Old Norse language. With the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, Norse-influenced Old English came into contact with Old Norman, the Romance predecessor of modern French.

This period of Norman occupation marked the beginning of the development of Middle English, which lost the characteristic case system and gained a substantial Romance-influenced vocabulary. While Norman rulers and elites spoke Old Norman, the lower classes continued to speak English, resulting in a socio-linguistic divide that brought thousands of Romance and Latin loanwords into English, particularly for topics relating to politics, law, and culture. Today, the elevated register of the Norman influence is seen in the difference between the Norman and Anglo-Saxon words “beverage” and “drink” or “purchase” and “buy.” In the late 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Middle English collection of stories The Canterbury Tales popularized English as a legitimate literary language.

The Early Modern period began in the 16th century, which was marked by the Great Vowel Shift, a watershed change in vocalic pronunciation, along with increasing linguistic standardization. The introduction of the first printing press to London in 1476 helped establish the London dialect as the standard written form. Literature also flourished during this period, during which some of the most important texts in the English language were published, including the plays of William Shakespeare and a translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I.

While it took centuries for English to dominate the British Isles, the language spread quickly throughout the world, beginning in the 18th century. British explorers and scientists, in the service of the British Empire, brought English to every continent. This linguistic spread was facilitated by increasing standardization, aided by the modern conventions for grammar and orthography established in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s influential 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language.

The decline of the British Empire after World War II did not diminish the global importance of English. As former British colonies gained independence, they established their own standards for speaking and writing English, often in addition to indigenous languages. At the same time, the United States ascended rapidly, becoming a world economic and political superpower. By the end of the 20th century, English had become a global lingua franca.

Geographic Distribution

Worldwide, approximately 360 to 400 million people speak English as their native language, making it the third largest language in terms of native speakers, after Mandarin and Spanish. In the six countries of the Anglophone world, the greatest number of English-language speakers are found in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.

Though India does not belong to the Anglophone world, it has the second-highest number of native speakers of English, after the United States. English serves as a lingua franca between speakers of India’s diverse languages.

English is an official language in 67 countries, spanning every continent. Several countries throughout the world use English as a de facto official language, including numerous island nations throughout the Caribbean and Pacific that were historically under British or American colonial control.

The major varieties of English include North American, British, and Australian English, each of which has numerous sub-dialects. The oft-repeated joke that the United States and the United Kingdom are “two countries divided by a common language” is somewhat misleading. While English is a pluricentric language, meaning that there is no single standard, most varieties of English are mutually intelligible and differ largely in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary. For example, Americans live in apartments, wear pants, and eat cookies, while the British live in flats, wear trousers, and eat biscuits. In written English, though, the primary difference between the two varieties of English are minor spelling and punctuation conventions, such as “program” versus “programme” and the use of double or single quotes to mark speech.

Major British dialects are grouped as English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. Received Pronunciation, sometimes referred to as “The Queen’s English” or “Oxford English” is considered the standard, but it is only used by about two percent of the population. Major British subdialects include Cockney, which is associated with lower socioeconomic class, Estuary (southern) English, West Country, Midlands, and Northern English. Scottish and Irish accents use a characteristic rolled “r.” Most major British cities also have distinct dialects, such as Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester. British dialects tend to display greater variation than American dialects, perhaps due to ethnic factors, isolated geography, or a shorter history of standardized media.

General American English distinguishes itself from most other varieties of English spoken around the world with its rhotic accent, or the “hard ‘r’.” The non-rhotic accent characteristic of modern British English’s Received Pronunciation actually emerged among the upper classes of southern England during the early 19th century as a way of distinguishing themselves from commoners, some of whom had become wealthy during the Industrial Age.

The major American dialects are regional, including the Midwest, Southern, Texan, and New England dialects, or cultural, such as African-American Vernacular English or Chicano English. The Midwestern variety is considered a neutral accent and is the favored form in broadcasting media. New York, Boston, and Southern American accents are less rhotic than most other American dialects. These regions were heavily involved in trade with England during the 19th century, and linguists believe wealthy American colonists adopted the elite British pronunciation as a marker of status.

English-based creole languages, which vary greatly in terms of morphology and lexicon, are commonly spoken in Nigeria, the Philippines, India, and Jamaica. In some cases, the pronunciation and vocabulary of these creole languages are so different from standard American and British English that they are not mutually intelligible.

Prominence in Society

English is considered the world’s first truly global language and serves as the international lingua franca of business, diplomacy, transportation, entertainment, technology, and research. It is one of the official languages of the United Nations, among other prominent international organizations.

As the most commonly taught foreign language in the world, knowledge of English is considered essential for a wide variety of careers, particularly business, medicine, science, and tourism.

English dominates global media, from Hollywood movies and popular music to Indian Bollywood films. Twenty-eight percent of all books published in the world are written in English, and approximately one-third of all internet websites are in English.

English is the official language of the seas and skies by various international treaties; all seafarers and aviation pilots must speak English.

Unique Characteristics

English spelling is highly irregular, and pronunciation often has little to do with spelling, as illustrated with the following sentence with words containing “-ough,” pronounced nine different ways: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

Punctuation is important in English to mark grammatical function. Simply compare these two sentences: “Let’s eat, grandma” and “Let’s eat grandma.” Without the comma, “grandma” becomes the direct object, rather than the addressee.

English makes extensive use of phrasal verbs, which are often quite idiomatic in meaning. For example, “to hang in,” “to hang on,” “to hang out,” and “to hang up” all have very different meanings.

As English lacks an inflected case system (with the exception of who/whom and he/him), word order is extremely important in communicating meaning. The subject-verb-object sequence is used almost exclusively and word order is quite inflexible. Compare, for example, “The dog bites the man” and “The man bites the dog.”

Neologisms (new words) are formed by the following processes: (1) conversion, using nouns as verbs or verbs as nouns (e.g., “to find” and “a find”); (2) compounding, putting two words together (e.g., homesick); or (3) adding suffixes such as “-ness,” “-hood,” or “-ing” to new or existing words.

Modern English derives approximately 29 percent of its words from Latin, 29 percent from French, 26 percent from Germanic languages, 6 percent from Greek, and another 10 percent from 120 other languages. Latin and Greek, for example, gave English much of its medical and scientific vocabulary, while French heavily influenced English’s lexicon pertaining to legal topics, military, politics, and cuisine. The motley origins of English vocabulary are a testament to its early history of foreign domination, and its emergence in the modern period as a global language.

Say Whaaat?

With well over a million words, English is believed to have the largest lexicon of any language in the world. The Oxford English dictionary adds approximately 4,000 new words per year, meaning that a new word is coined every two hours.

William Shakespeare alone contributed an estimated 3,000 new words, sayings, and phrases to the English language. If you bid goodbye saying “Good riddance,” find yourself “in a pickle,” or “refuse to budge an inch,” you are quoting Shakespeare.

English is believed to be the first major language in human history to have more non-native speakers than native speakers.

The oldest, shortest, and most commonly used word in English is “I,” both in written and spoken contexts.

“Go” and “I am” are the shortest complete sentences in English.

The letter “e” is the most frequently used letter in English, comprising 11 percent of all words.

Writer: Carly Ottenbreit