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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 Speaker CountEthnologue'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. Attested From (Year)Conventional start date of Old English, the earliest form of the language. RegionOriginated 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. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names English directly: "order, a development that parallels English losing case rather than most of Bulgarians closer relatives."
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..."
This source names Latin directly: "everyday vocabulary is of French or Latin origin."
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