2015-08-21
486
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Chinese in the number of speakers. Over 350 million people speak English as their first language. The same number use it as the second language.
It became the international language. It is an official language in 44 countries. Over 60% of world’s mail, radio broadcast and periodicals are in English. In many countries it is the language of business, commerce and technology.
There are many varieties of English: American, Canadian, Australia and Pidgin English. English comes from a common Indo-European language. About 4,500 years ago, the people who spoke varying forms of this language split into groups that drifted into Europe and parts of Asia. Different speech communities developed, giving rise to several languages, including Latin. From Latin many languages spoken in Europe today developed.
Several factors contributed to establishing Standard English spelling. These factors included the introduction of the printing press into England in 1477 by William Caxton, the revival of interest in literature and growth of popular education. The need for standardization was recognized in the 13th century. The London dialect was gradually adopted from the four main dialects as the basis of Standard English. The choice was made because the London dialect was the language of contracts and commerce and the speech of the ruling court. All official documents originated there were written in the London dialect. The translation of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James’ version of the Bible became tremendous forces for elevated English.
Today the English vocabulary is half Germanic and half Romance. It has a lot of borrowings from other languages due to openness of vocabulary.
This made English an effective medium of international communication. The difficulties are caused by written English which is not systematically phonetic.
