English language

English
Pronunciation	/ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/[1]
Region	British Isles (originally) United Kingdom United States Canada Ireland Australia New Zealand Singapore Nigeria South Africa India Pakistan Philippines Malawi Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Malta Jamaica Saint Lucia Malaysia Sri Lanka Barbados Saint Kitts and Nevis Antigua and Barbuda Trinidad and Tobago Namibia Eritrea Cyprus Ethiopia Papua New Guinea The Gambia Grenada Belize South Sudan Guyana Maldives Nauru Fiji Palau Tonga Kiribati Sudan Federated States of Micronesia Marshall Islands Solomon Islands Tanzania Kenya Uganda Zambia Sierra Leone and more in the English-speaking world
Ethnicity	English
Native speakers	360–400 million[2] L2 speakers: 400 million; as a foreign language: 600–700 million
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic English
Early forms	Old English Middle English Early Modern English
Writing system	Latin script (English alphabet) English Braille, Unified English Braille
Signed forms	Manually coded English (multiple systems)
Official status
Official language in	67 countries 27 non-sovereign entities Various organisations European Union Commonwealth of Nations Council of Europe ICC IMF IOC ISO NATO WTO NAFTA OAS OECD OIC OPEC GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development PIF UKUSA Agreement ASEAN ASEAN Economic Community SAARC CARICOM Turkic Council ECO
Language codes
ISO 639-1	en
ISO 639-2	eng
ISO 639-3	eng
Glottolog	stan1293
Linguasphere	52-ABA
Countries of the world where English is a majority native language   Countries where English is official but not a majority native language
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English is a language that started in Anglo-Saxon England. It is originally from Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon dialects. English is now used as a global language. There are about 375 million native speakers (people who use it as their first language) in the world.^[3]

Scots is the language closest to English. The vocabulary of English was 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. It is also the main language of more countries in the world than any other. It is the primary language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Ireland. It is one of the official languages in Singapore, India, Hong Kong, and South Africa. It is widely spoken in parts of the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia.

In 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English.^[4] English is the first foreign language for most learners who have another main language. It is an 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 others use it as their second language. It is, together with German, the most important language of science and technology. It is often used in work and travel and trade, and there are at least a billion people who are learning it. That makes English the largest language by number of speakers.

English has changed and developed over time, like all other languages.^[5] The most obvious changes are the many words taken from Latin and Old French, which then came to Old English and then Modern English, which is used today.

English grammar has also become very different from other Germanic languages, but it stayed different from Romance languages. Because nearly 60% of the vocabulary comes from Latin, English is sometimes called the Germanic language that is the most Latin, and it is often mistaken for being a Romance language.^[6]

1. ↑ Oxford 2015, Entry: English – Pronunciation. sfn error: no target: CITEREFOxford2015 (help)
2. ↑ Crystal, David (ed) 2005. The Penguin Concise Encyclopedia. London: Penguin Reference, pp. 424–426.
3. ↑ Curtis, Andy. Color, race, and English language teaching: shades of meaning. 2006, page 192.
4. ↑ Crystal, David (2008). "Two thousand million?". English Today. 24: 3–6. doi:10.1017/S0266078408000023. ISSN 0266-0784. S2CID 145597019.
5. ↑ Baugh, Albert C. & Cable, Thomas 2012. A history of the English language. 6th ed, London: Routledge. ISBN 0-41-565596-X
6. ↑ "Comparison between English, German and Dutch (in Italian)". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-06-01.