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| Contents | ||
| English | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United Kingdom, United States and 103 other countries |
| First language speakers: | 402 million |
| Second language speakers | possibly 350–1,000 million |
| Ranking: | 3 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | see below |
| Regulated by: | None, although the OED is important |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ISO 639 consists of different parts, of which two parts are currently published. The other parts are works in progress. Parts of ISO 639 There are two items for I-1: | en |
| ISO 639-2: | eng |
| SIL: | ENG |
Main article: }
English is descended from the language shouted by the Germanic tribesThe term Germanic peoples may refer to: the Germanic tribes that in the first millennium were seen as a barbarian threat by the Roman Empire and its successors; the Germanic Christianity that in the second millennium came to dominate much of Northern Euro, the AnglesAngles (German: Angeln Old English: Englas Latin: noun Anguls verb Anglii were a Germanic people, from Schleswig an area which was wholly the southern part of Denmark and protected from German conquest by the Danevirke until the 19th century to East Angli, Saxons, and JutesThe Jutes were a Germanic people who are believed to have originated in Jylland ( Jutland) in modern Denmark and part of the Frisian coast. The Jutes, along with the Angles, Saxons and Frisians, were amongst the Germanic peoples who sailed across the Nort. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around 449 AD, Vortigern, King of the British Isles, issued an invitation to the "Angle kin" (Angles, led by Hengest and Horsa) to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the southeast. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes). The Chronicle documents the subsequent influx of "settlers" who eventually established seven kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex.
These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants, the languages of whom survived largely in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. The dialects spoken by these invaders formed what would be called Old English, which was also strongly influenced by yet another Germanic dialect, Old Norse, spoken by Viking invaders who settled mainly in the North-East (see Jorvik). English, England, and East Anglia are derived from words referring to the Angles: Englisc, Angelcynn, and Englaland.
For the 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Kings of England spoke only French. A large number of French words were assimilated into Old English, which also lost most of its inflections, the result being Middle English. Around the year 1500, the Great Vowel Shift transformed Middle English to Modern English.
The most famous surviving work from Old and Middle English are Beowulf and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
Modern English, the language described by this article, began its rise around the time of William Shakespeare. Some scholars divide early Modern English and late Modern English at around 1800, in concert with British conquest of much of the rest of the world, as the influence of native languages affected English enormously.