Essay on growth and development of english language
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So how exactly has the English Language grown over the years? And how many people speak English today?
Well, in 2006 it was believed that there were around 400 million native speakers of English. Also, there were 400 million speakers of English as a second language. This was emphasised by Professor David Crystal in his book "English Worldwide".
Furthermore, there were around 600 - 700 million people who spoke English as a foreign language. So, that's over one billion people that could communicate in English to some extent.
These figures are from over ten years ago. It can be said that the number of English speakers has grown in the last decade too. Today, there are over 1.8 billion people who are capable of speaking English.
That in itself is significant growth over the course of ten years. It means that English is the most common spoken language in the world. From a total of 195 countries, 67 nations have English as their primary language. Also, 27 countries have English as their secondary language. That's almost half the world that speaks English as their first or second language.
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Development of English language
Appunto in lingua inglese che descrive la storia della lingua inglese, con analisi della sua evoluzione nel corso della storia.
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storia e sviluppo della lingua inglese
The Development of English language
English belongs to the Germanic languages and it was preceded by Celtic. Then it was influenced by Latin, Germanic and Scandinavian dialects and finally by French. There are three main periods: Old English, Middle English and Modern English.
1. Old English: it is the fusion of the languages spoken by the Saxons, Angles and Jutes. It had four different dialects: Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon. There were cases for nouns and adjectives and a particular alphabet made up of runes.
2. Middle English: at the beginning it was confused. When it emerged it was different from Old English. The words were accented and stressed in a different way; there was one article; the infinitive of the verbs developed from "an" into the form "to"; many words changed after the Norman Conquest.
3. Modern English: Early English: the final vowels became silent and it was the introduction of new words from Greek and Latin; Modern English: Dictionaries began to appear and the language was enriched with new words.