4. ... Donald Bowen, three hundred million people speak English as their mother tongue, and at least a further three hundred million use it as a second language or are able to communicate in English.
It is no question that English is the most important international language. English has a history of some hundred years, developing from the language of a small number of people in England to its present position as a language for all world.
But English has some families; two families of English, one coming from linguistic contact with Britain, the other from contact with the United States. At a first sight on the differences between American and British English, you don’t discover many of them but those which are commonly known, like different pronunciations… But there are more differences, even though they are small, they are still notable. ...
The English Standard Pronunciation is a type of pronunciation that has the status of standard. ...
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To make it shorter, the dialects, also called non-standard English, can also be divided into
four groups:
Scottish English, Irish English, Tyneside and Northumbrian English as well as Southern
British English
2.2
In earlier times, the English language did not possess the same functions than today. ... Until the fifteenth century, written forms of English appeared in a variety of different regional dialects.
Because the morphological forms of ‘standard English’ are used in the written and spoken English of the more powerful people in society, their use indicates the presence of and educated and cultured person. It is hardly surprising therefore, that these are the forms that are nor considered as ‘correct’ and ‘proper’ English. This is proven again by the fact that these are the forms that are taught to non-native learners, and that histories ad grammars of the language usually describe not ‘standard English’ but just ‘English’.
English is classified as a Teutonic language; it belongs to the group of languages like German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and so on. ... Then again, more than half of the English vocabulary has its sources from Latin. Unlike the German language, in which many new words are created by combining existing words, English borrowed numerous words from other languages.
The English language also went through a lot of changes. Like other languages, English has changed greatly so that an English speaker of 1300 would not have understood the
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English of 500 nor the English of today. ... Although the pronunciation of English has changed very much since the fifteenth century, the spelling of English words has changed very little over the same period. As a result, English spelling is not a reliable guide to the pronunciation of the language.
The vocabulary of English has naturally expanded, but many common modern words are derived from the lexicon of the earliest English
2. ...
Spoken by about four hundred and seventy million people throughout the world, English is the official language of about forty-five nations.
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