English language

The English language (proper name: English [ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ] abbreviated: en. ) is a Germanic language originally native to England, belonging to the West Germanic branch. It developed from the early Middle Ages through immigration to Britain of North Sea Germanic peoples, including the Angles - from whom the word English is derived - and the Saxons. The early forms of the language are therefore sometimes called Anglo-Saxon.

The closest living relatives are the Frisian languages and Low German on the mainland. In the course of its history, however, English has developed strong special developments: In sentence structure, English switched to a subject-verb-object scheme, unlike all its West Germanic cognates on the continent, and lost the verb-two property. The formation of word forms (inflection) in nouns, articles, verbs and adjectives was greatly reduced. In vocabulary, English was initially influenced in an early phase by language contact with North Germanic languages, which resulted from the temporary occupation by Danes and Norwegians in the 9th century. Later, there was a further strong influence from contact with French due to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Due to the diverse influences from West Germanic and North Germanic languages, French and the classical languages, today's English has an extraordinarily extensive vocabulary.

The English language is written with the Latin alphabet. A significant fixation of spelling occurred with the advent of printing in the 15th/16th century, despite ongoing phonetic change at the same time. The current spelling of English therefore represents a strongly historical orthography, which deviates from the representation of the actual phonetic structure in many ways.

Starting from its place of origin, England, English spread over the entire British Isles and gradually displaced the previously spoken, mainly Celtic languages, which, however, continue to exist today as smaller speaker communities in the midst of the English language area. In its wider history, English has become a world language, mainly as a result of Britain's historical colonialism in America, Australia, Africa and India, and is now more widely spoken (globally) than any other language (the language with the largest number of native speakers, however, is Mandarin Chinese). English-speaking countries and territories (mostly former British colonies and possessions) or their inhabitants are also called anglophones.

English is taught as the first foreign language in the schools of many countries and is the official language of most international organisations, many of which also use other official languages. In West Germany (excluding Saarland), the Länder agreed in 1955 in the Düsseldorf Agreement to introduce English as a compulsory foreign language in schools across the board.

The English-speaking world

Today, around 330 million people worldwide speak English as their first language. Estimates of the number of second language speakers vary widely depending on the source, as different degrees of language comprehension are used. Here we find figures ranging from under 200 million to over 1 billion people.

Geographical distribution

The English language area:

Official language

English is the official language in the following states and territories:

State	Mother-tongue	Status	State	Mother-tongue	Status	State	Mother-tongue	Status
Europe			Asia			Africa
Gibraltar Gibraltar		British overseas territory	Andaman and Nicobar Islands		ind. Union Territory	West Africa
Guernsey Guernsey		British possession of the Crown	India India	320.000		Ghana Ghana
Ireland Ireland	4 million		Hong Kong Hong Kong		chin. Special Administrative Region	Cameroon Cameroon
Isle of Man Isle of Man		British possession of the Crown	Cocos Islands Cocos Islands		Austrian territory	Liberia Liberia	69.000
Jersey Jersey		British possession of the Crown	Philippines Philippines	40.000	(mostly US-Americans)	Nigeria Nigeria
Malta Malta	2.400		Pakistan Pakistan			St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha		British overseas territory
United Kingdom United Kingdom	60 million		Singapore Singapore	227.000		Sierra Leone Sierra Leone
America			Christmas Island Christmas Island		Austrian territory	East Africa
North America			Oceania			Kenya Kenya
Bermuda Bermuda	50.000	British overseas territory	Australia Australia	16 million		Malawi Malawi	16.000
Canada Canada	20 million		Chatham Island		neus. (quasi) region	Mauritius Mauritius	3.000
United States United States	210 million	In some states (30), at the federal level only de facto	Cook Islands Cook Islands		newly associated	Rwanda Rwanda
Caribbean			Fiji Fiji	15.000		Seychelles Seychelles	1.600
Anguilla Anguilla		British overseas territory	Guam Guam		amer. Outer area	Sudan Sudan
Antigua and Barbuda Antigua and Barbuda			Kiribati Kiribati	340		Sudsudan South Sudan
Bahamas Bahamas			Marshall Islands Marshall Islands			Tanzania Tanzania		(mostly pro forma)
Barbados Barbados	13.000		Micronesia Federated States ofMicronesia	3.500		Uganda Uganda	4.500.000
Belize Belize	170.000		Nauru Nauru	560		Southern Africa
Cayman Islands Cayman Islands		British overseas territory	New Zealand New Zealand	3 million		Botswana Botswana
Dominica Dominica			Niue Niue		newly associated	Eswatini Eswatini
Grenada Grenada			Norfolk Island Norfolk Island		Austrian territory	Lesotho Lesotho
Jamaica Jamaica			Mariana Islands NorthernMariana Islands		amer. Outer area	Namibia Namibia	11.000
Virgin Islands AmericanVirgin Islands		amer. Outer area	Palau Palau	20.000		Zambia Zambia	41.000
Virgin Islands BritishVirgin Islands		British overseas territory	Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea	50.000		Zimbabwe Zimbabwe	375.000
Montserrat Montserrat		British overseas territory	Pitcairn Islands Pitcairn Islands		British overseas territory	Sud Africa South Africa	3.5 million
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico	514.000	amer. Outer area	Solomon Islands Solomon Islands
Saint Kitts Nevis Saint Kitts and Nevis			Samoa Samoa
Saint LuciaLucia			Samoa American American Samoa		amer. Outer area
Saint Vincent Grenadines Saint Vincent and the Grenadines			Tokelau Tokelau		new Property
Sint Maarten Sint Maarten		low autonomous country	Tonga Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago			Tuvalu Tuvalu
Turks and Caicos Islands Turks and Caicos Islands		British overseas territory	Vanuatu Vanuatu	1.900
South America
Guyana Guyana
Falkland Islands Falkland Islands		British overseas territory

English is also an official language of supranational organisations such as the African Union, the Organisation of American States, UNASUR, CARICOM, SAARC, ECO, ASEAN, the Pacific Islands Forum, the European Union, the Commonwealth of Nations and one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

The introduction of English as an administrative and subsequently as an official language in the constituent states of the European Union is also discussed. According to a representative YouGov survey from 2013, 59 percent of Germans would welcome English gaining the status of an official language throughout the European Union (in addition to the existing languages); in other European countries, the approval rates are in some cases over 60 percent.

Other use

English also serves as a language of transportation, commerce, business, or education to varying degrees in the following countries and regions:

Egypt Ethiopia Bahrain Bangladesh BES Islands and Curaçao (to Netherlands) Bhutan Brunei Eritrea European Union India Israel Jordan Qatar Kuwait Laos

Lebanon Malaysia Maldives Myanmar Oman East Timor Panama Philippines San Andrés and Providencia (to Colombia) Saudi Arabia Somaliland1 Sri Lanka Suriname United Arab Emirates Republic of Cyprus (see also Akrotiri and Dekelia)

¹ Is de facto a separate state, but is officially counted as part of Somalia.

Linguistic classification

English belongs to the Indo-European languages, which originally had very strong inflectional characteristics. All Indo-European languages still exhibit this characteristic to a greater or lesser extent today. However, in all these languages there is a more or less strong tendency from inflectional to isolating forms. In English this tendency has been particularly marked. Today, English bears predominantly isolating traits and structurally resembles in part isolating languages such as Chinese rather than the genetically closely related languages such as German.

In addition, the English language today has divided into many variants due to the global spread. Many European languages also form completely new terms based on English (anglicisms, pseudo-anglicisms). In some technical languages, too, terms are shaped by anglicisms, especially in highly globalized fields such as computer science or economics.

The language code is en or eng (according to ISO 639-1 and 2 respectively). The code for Old English or Anglo-Saxon (roughly the years 450 to 1100 AD) is ang, that for Middle English (roughly 1100 to 1500) is enm.

Countries in the world where English is spoken as an official language or as a national and lingua franca (dark blue): British Isles, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - exception: in eastern Canada, the province of Québec has French as an official and national language; in Nunavut, the languages spoken are predominantly those of the indigenous peoples. Countries where English is official but only a secondary language (light blue)

History

The language stages of English can be determined as follows:

• Old English or Anglo-Saxon (Old English) from: 450-1150
• Middle English from: 1150-1500
• Early Modern English from: 1500-1700
• New English (Modern English) from: 1700-today