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| English-English and
English-Persian dictionaries. |
English
English is a West Germanic language, that was born in
Anglo-Saxon England, originally from Anglo-Frisian and
Old Saxon dialects brought to Britain by Germanic
settlers from Jutland and the Rhine Valley in the Early
Middle Ages, and now has the status of a global lingua
franca, due to being used by traders, and from the
British Empire's colonies. word "English" is derived
from the Germanic tribes moved to England Anglo
(Angles), and "Anglo" named after the Baltic Sea
peninsula Anglia (Anglia). Frisian is the language
closest to English. English vocabulary was heavily
influenced by other Germanic languages in the early
Middle Ages, and later by Romance languages, especially
French. English is the only official language or one of
the official languages of nearly 60 countries, and it is
also the official language of most countries in the
world, as for example, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the
United States, Canada, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, and
South Africa. It is also the most commonly used
languages in Australia and New Zealand, and also
widely spoken in parts of the Caribbean, Africa and
South Asia. There are about 375 million native English
speakers (people who use English as their first
language) in the world, which is the largest after
Chinese Mandarin and Spanish. English is the first
foreign language most learners, and the official
language of the United Nations, European Union and many
other international organizations. It is the most widely
spoken Germanic language, with at least 70% of Germanic
speakers speaking English. About 220 million more people
use it as their second language. It is often used in
work and travel and trade, and there are at least a
billion people who are learning it. This makes English
the second most spoken language, and the most
international language in the world.
EN English Language Symbol ISO 639-1 IETF Language Tag
Icon
EN language code (ISO 639-1)
English has changed and developed over time, as all
languages do. The most obvious changes are the many
words taken from Latin and Old French, which then came
to Old English, and now the English we know today.
English grammar has also become very different from
other Germanic languages, without becoming much like
Romance languages. Because nearly 60% of the vocabulary
comes from Latin, English is sometimes called the most
Latin of the Germanic languages, and is often mistaken
for being a Romance language. |
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History
Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) came to
Britain from around 449 AD. They made their home in the
south and east of the island, pushing out the Celtic
Britons who were there before them, or making them speak
the English language instead of the old Celtic
languages. Some people still speak Celtic languages
today, in Wales (Welsh) and elsewhere. Gaelic is the
Scottish Celtic language, still spoken by some in the
Scottish Highlands and Islands. "Scots" is a dialect of
English (although some call it a separate language).
Irish Gaelic is spoken by very few people today.
The Germanic dialects of these different tribes became
what is now called Old English. The word "English" comes
from the name of the Angles: Englas. Old English did not
sound or look much like the English spoken today. If
English speakers today were to hear or read a passage in
Old English, they would understand just a few words.
The closest language to English that is still used today
is Frisian, spoken by about 500,000 people living in the
Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. It is much like
English, and many words are the same. The two languages
were even closer before Old English changed to Middle
English). Today, speakers of the two languages would not
be able to understand each other. Dutch is spoken by
over 20 million people, and is more distant from
English. German is even bigger, and even more distant.
All these languages belong to the same West Germanic
family as English.
Many other people came to England later at different
times, speaking different languages, and these languages
added more words to make today's English. For example,
around 800 AD, many Danish and Norse pirates, also
called Vikings, came to the country, established Danelaw.
So, English got many Norse loanwords. Their languages
were Germanic languages, like Old English, but are a
little different. They are called the North Germanic
languages.
When William the Conqueror took over England in 1066 AD,
he brought his nobles, who spoke Norman, a language
closely related to French. English changed a lot because
it was mostly being spoken instead of written for about
300 years, because all official documents were written
in Norman French. English borrowed many words from
Norman at that time, and also began to drop the old word
endings. English of this time is called Middle English.
Geoffrey Chaucer is a well known writer of Middle
English. After more sound changes, Middle English became
Modern English.
English continued to take new words from other
languages, for example mainly from French (around 30% to
40% of its words), but also Chinese, Hindi and Urdu,
Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. Because
scientists from different countries needed to talk to
one another, they chose names for scientific things in
the languages they all knew: Greek and Latin. Those
words came to English also, for example, photography
("photo-" means "light" and "-graph" means "picture" or
"writing", in Greek. A photograph is a picture made
using light), or telephone. So, English is made of Old
English, Danish, Norse, and French, and has been changed
by Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Dutch and
Spanish, and some words from other languages.
English grammar has also changed, becoming simpler and
less Germanic. The classic example is the loss of case
in grammar. Grammatical case shows the role of a noun,
adjective or pronoun in a sentence. In Latin (and other
Indo-European languages) this is done by adding
suffixes, but English usually does not. The style of
English is that meaning is made clear more by context
and syntax.
The history of the British Empire has added to the
spread of English. English is an important language in
many places today. In Australia, Canada, India,
Pakistan, South Africa, and the United States, among
others (like those in the Commonwealth of Nations),
English is the main language. Because the United Kingdom
(the country where England is) and the United States
have historically been powerful in commerce and
government, many people find it helpful to learn English
to communicate in science, business, and diplomacy. This
is called learning English as an additional language,
English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a
Foreign Language (EFL).
English literature has many famous stories and plays.
William Shakespeare was a famous English writer of poems
and plays. His English is Early Modern English, and not
quite like what people speak or write today. Early
Modern English sounded different, partly because the
language was beginning a "great vowel shift". Later,
many short stories and novels also used English. The
novel as we know it is first seen in 18th century
English. Today, many famous songs and movies (cinema
films) use the English language. |
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