Language

English

Germanic Languages

English is a West Germanic language that originated in early medieval England and is now the most widely spoken second language in the world and the primary language of international science, business and aviation. Its vocabulary was reshaped by centuries of contact, first with Old Norse through Viking settlement, then massively with Norman French after the Conquest of 1066, leaving a language whose grammar remains recognizably Germanic while a large share of its everyday vocabulary is of French or Latin origin. It is written in the Latin alphabet with famously irregular spelling, a legacy of its layered history that later standardization never fully reconciled with pronunciation.

Facts

ISO 639-3 Code

eng 3

Speaker Count

1,500,000,000 3

Ethnologue's total figure combines roughly 380 million first-language speakers with over a billion second-language speakers; the two populations are counted very differently across sources, so total speaker figures for English vary widely by methodology.

Status

Living 3

Attested From (Year)

from 450 2

Conventional start date of Old English, the earliest form of the language.

Region

Originated in early medieval England; today spoken natively across the United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and beyond 2

Region reflects origin plus current global spread; see source for detail on worldwide distribution.

Classification

Language Kind

Safe 1

Official Status

Official Language 2

Wikipedia 'English language': official, or one of the official languages, of 57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories; checked 2026-09-27.

Connections

Ancestor Of

African American Vernacular English

Source Wikipedia: African-American Vernacular English

Australian English

Source Wikipedia: Australian English

Canadian English

Source Wikipedia: Canadian English

Cockney

Source Wikipedia: Cockney

Geordie

Source Wikipedia: Geordie

Hiberno-English

Source Wikipedia: Hiberno-English

Indian English

Source Wikipedia: Indian English

Jamaican Patois

Source Wikipedia: Jamaican Patois

New Zealand English

Source Wikipedia: New Zealand English

Newfoundland English

Source Wikipedia: Newfoundland English

Nigerian English

Source Wikipedia: Nigerian English

Received Pronunciation

Source Wikipedia: Received Pronunciation

Scottish English

Source Wikipedia: Scottish English

Scouse

Source Wikipedia: Scouse

Singlish

Source Wikipedia: Singlish

South African English

Source Wikipedia: South African English

Southern American English

Source Wikipedia: Southern American English

Welsh English

Source Wikipedia: Welsh English

Yorkshire Dialect

Source Wikipedia: Yorkshire Dialect

Associated With

Braj Kachru

Bulgarian

This source names English directly: "order, a development that parallels English losing case rather than most of Bulgarians closer relatives."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)

Charles J. Fillmore

Developed Case Grammar and later frame semantics largely through analysis of English argument structure.

David Crystal

Encyclopaedia Britannica

This source names English directly: "Encyclopaedia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia, in continuous publication since 1768, whose linguistics and history entries are written and reviewed by subject specialists and..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Eve V. Clark

Source Wikipedia: Eve V. Clark

Geoffrey Leech

Geoffrey Pullum

George Lakoff

Developed conceptual metaphor theory largely through analysis of everyday English expressions, most influentially in Metaphors We Live By (1980).

Joan Bresnan

Developed lexical-functional grammar, a syntactic theory built substantially on the analysis of English argument structure and control constructions.

John Rupert Firth

Developed prosodic analysis and a contextual theory of meaning largely through the study of English phonology.

Latin

This source names Latin directly: "everyday vocabulary is of French or Latin origin."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)

Leonard Bloomfield

Source LanguageLeonard Bloomfield

Michael Halliday

Developed systemic functional grammar as a comprehensive account of English clause structure and its social functions.

Morris Halle

Noam Chomsky

Source Syntactic StructuresNoam Chomsky

Otto Jespersen

Source Wikipedia: Otto Jespersen

Ray Jackendoff

Developed conceptual semantics and the parallel architecture model of grammar largely through analysis of English syntax and lexical semantics.

Steven Pinker

William Labov

Source The Social Stratification of English in New York CityWilliam Labov

In Family

Germanic

Source Wikipedia: Germanic Languages

Indo-European

Source Glottolog

Written In

Latin Script

Source Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages

In the Other Atlases

Cases Where Used

Charter of the United Nations

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Common Sense

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Convention of Kanagawa

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Declaration of Sentiments

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Emancipation Proclamation

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Entente Cordiale

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Fourteen Points

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German Instrument of Surrender

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Gettysburg Address

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Good Friday Agreement

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Instrument of Government (1653)

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Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance

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Korean Armistice Agreement

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Kyoto Protocol

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Lacy-Zarubin Agreement

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Mayflower Compact

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McMahon-Hussein Correspondence

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Monroe Doctrine

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Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

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North Atlantic Treaty

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Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

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Outer Space Treaty

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Panchsheel Treaty

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Paris Agreement

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Provisions of Oxford

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Source Provisions of Oxford (Wikipedia)Article text

Quote, Article text

The Provisions were the first government documents to be published in English since the Norman Conquest two hundred years before.

Rome Statute

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Rush-Bagot Treaty

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Simla Agreement

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The Federalist Papers

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Treaty of Amiens

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Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)

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Treaty of Greenville

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Treaty of London (1915)

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Treaty of Nanking

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Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine

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Treaty of Paris (1783)

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Treaty of Portsmouth

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Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919)

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Treaty of San Francisco

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Treaty of Tlatelolco

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Treaty of Utrecht

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Treaty of Waitangi

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United States Constitution

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United States Declaration of Independence

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Virginia Declaration of Rights

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Washington Naval Treaty

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Aboriginal Australians

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Amish

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Apache

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Hutterites

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