With over 1.5 billion native and second language speakers, English is the most widely spoken language on earth. About a quarter of the world's population speaks English, most of them having learned it as a second language. In this brief article we will discuss the interesting history of English.
When Germanic tribes invaded Britain in the 5th century AD, the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. The three tribes that conquered the region were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. The Angles spoke a language called Englisc — from which the words English and England were derived.
In fact, all of the Germanic tribes conversed in languages that were strikingly similar. The British inhabitants of the islands slowly began to adopt these new tongues and make them their own. The language they spoke is now known as Old English. If you were trying to rent London or Rome apartments in Old English, the agent would have difficulty understanding you.
When William the Conqueror took control of England in 1066, the Norman conquers spoke a kind of early French. Once they were defeated and expelled from the country, English became the most dominant language again. But many of the French words made their way into the new version of English that is now known as Middle English.
Over time, there was a major change in the pronunciation of vowels (the Great Vowel Shift), which is the most salient distinction between Middle English and Modern English. Though many agree that it began a century earlier, Modern English was clearly dominant by the time the first English dictionary was published in 1604.
