Anglia, a peninsula in the
Baltic Sea. English is closely related to
Frisian and
Low Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other
Germanic languages, particularly
Norse (a
North Germanic language), and to a greater extent
Latin and
French.
English is the
largest language by number of speakers,and the
third most-spoken native language in the world, after
Standard Chinese and
Spanish.It is the most widely learned second language and is either the
official language or one of the official languages in
almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native speakers. It is estimated that there are over 2 billion speakers of English.English is the majority native language in the
United States, the
United Kingdom,
Canada,
Australia,
New Zealand and the
Republic of Ireland, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the
Caribbean,
Africa and
South Asia.It is a
co-official language of the United Nations,
the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch. English has a vast vocabulary, though counting how many words any language has is impossible.English speakers are called "Anglophones".
Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent marking pattern, with a rich
inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly
analytic pattern with little
inflection, a fairly fixed
subject–verb–object word order and a complex
syntax.
Modern English relies more on
auxiliary verbs and
word order for the expression of complex
tenses,
aspect and
mood, as well as
passive constructions,
interrogatives and some
negation. The variation among the accents and
dialects of English used in different countries and regions—in terms of
phonetics and
phonology, and sometimes also
vocabulary,
idioms,
grammar, and
spelling—can often be understood by speakers of different dialects, but in extreme cases can lead to confusion or even mutual unintelligibility between English speakers.
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