Language Monday: English
January 1, 2018
In 2018, World Book Mondays will focus on the languages of the world. The use of language is one of the most important of human abilities, and communication, particularly across different cultures, is key to understanding the world around us. Languages have developed over time, just as human beings have, and the study of languages reveals the many similarities—and differences—of people of different cultures. World Book begins its Language Mondays with English, one of the six official languages of the United Nations (UN). Official UN business is also conducted in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish—just a few of the 53 languages World Book will explore every Monday of 2018.
English is, along with Chinese and Spanish, one of the three most widely spoken languages in the world. An estimated 400 million people speak English as their native language. Most of them live in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Another 400 million people, chiefly living in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and many African countries, speak English in addition to their own language. An additional 750 million people speak English as a foreign language.
English can be a tricky language to learn. With more than 600,000 words, it has a larger vocabulary than any other language. Those words have a wide ancestry, too. Aside from the language’s Germanic roots, English has borrowed words from Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish, and many other languages. For example, algebra is from Arabic, fashion from French, piano from Italian, and canyon from Spanish. Also, pronunciation and spelling in English sometimes seem illogical or inconsistent. Many words are spelled similarly though pronounced differently. Examples include cough, though, and through. Other words, such as blue, crew, to, two, and shoe, have similar pronunciations but are spelled differently. Many of these variations show changes that occurred during the development of English.
The earliest source of the English language was a prehistoric language that modern scholars call Proto-Indo-European (PIE). PIE was probably spoken about 5,000 years ago by people who lived in southeastern Europe. These people migrated and gradually developed new languages. Some PIE-speaking people went west and divided into groups who spoke languages that were the ancestors of the Germanic, Greek, and Latin tongues. The Germanic languages developed into English, Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, and Swedish.
In what is now the United Kingdom, Celtic languages prevailed until Germanic people invaded in the mid-400′s. The invaders belonged to three main tribes—the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons. All three tribes spoke their own Germanic dialect, but they probably understood one another. The Angles settled in central Britain. The word England came from a word meaning the Angle folk or land of the Angles, which was used by the late 800′s to refer to all the Anglo-Saxon people and their lands. The language of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes became known as English.
The history of the English language can be divided into three main periods. The language of the first period, which began about 500 and ended about 1100, is called Old English. Old English was mainly a mixture of the Germanic languages of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons. Old English resembles modern German more than it does modern English. During the next period, from about 1100 to 1485, the people spoke Middle English. Middle English is heavily influenced by French, the language of the Normans, who conquered England in 1066. The language of the period from about 1485 to the present is known as Modern English.
Beginning in the 1600′s, the English language spread throughout the world as the English explored and colonized Africa, Australia, India, and North America. Different dialects of the English language developed in these areas. Today, English is the international language of science and technology. In addition, the English language is used throughout the world in business and diplomacy.