The English language

Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Chinese in the number of speakers. Over 350 million people speak English as their first language. The same number use it as the second l anguage.

It became the international language. It is an official language in 44 countries. Over 60 % of world's mail, radio broadcast and periodicals are in English. In many countries it is the language of busi­ness, commerce and technology.

There are many varieties of English. There are differences in vocabulary, pronunciation and structure. There are American, Canadian, Australian, and Pidgin English.

English comes from a common Indo-European language. About 4, 500 years ago, the people whospoke varying forms of this language split into groups that drifted into Europe and parts of Asia. Different speech communities developed, giving rise to several languages including Latin. From Latin many lan­guages spoken in Europe today developed.Many years ago the British Isles were inhabited by people who spoke Celtic languages. These lan­guages still survive in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and Brittany in France. The Celts were conquered by Romans and Latin became the language of government for 500 years.

In the V century Anglo-Saxons arrived from Europe and occupied most of England and parts of Scotland. The Anglo-Saxons spoke Germanic language which forms the basis of Modern English.This language was modified by Vikings who came in the VIII century. They spoke Old Norse which was related to Anglo-Saxons. The mixing of two languages enriched the vocabulary of English. From Scandinavia came such words as skirt, skill, window, leg, birth, they, their, them. Over 900 words of Scandinavian origin have survived in modern Standard English.

The French-speaking Normans conquered England in 1066. French became the language of gov­ernment. For 300 years 3 languages co-existed. The aristocracy spoke French, the common people spoke English and Latin was used in the church. Very often we have two words that go back to the same Latin original – one brought in by the Normans, and one taken in directly. For example, words such as paint and picture.

Several factors contributed to establishing Standard English spelling. These factors included the introduction of the printing press into England in 1477 by William Caxton, the revival of interest in litera­ture, and growth of popular education. The need for standardization was recognized in the 13^th century. The London dialect was gradually adopted from the four main dialects as the basis for Standard English. The choice was made because the London dialect was the language of contracts and commerce and the speech of the ruling court. All official documents originated there were written in the London dialect. The translation of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James version of the Bible became tremendous forces for elevated English.

Today English vocabulary is half Germanic and half Romance. It has a lot of borrowings from other languages due to openness of vocabulary.

Old English was highly inflected language. Some modern forms still inflect, but much less than in other European languages. The trend towards simplicity of forms is a strength of English. Another strength is the flexibility of function of words. E.g.:

He won the first round. /noun/; The ball is round. /adjective/; It turns round. /adverb/, They run round the house. /preposition/, They had to round the corner. /verb/.

This made English an effective medium of international communication. The difficulties are caused by written English which is not systematically phonetic.