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- The vocabulary of Modern English is approximately a quarter Germanic (Old English, Scandinavian, Dutch, German) and two-thirds Italic or Romance (especially Latin, French, Spanish, Italian), with copious and increasing importations from Greek in science and technology and with considerable borrowings from more than 300 other languages.
www.britannica.com/topic/English-language/VocabularyEnglish language - Vocabulary, Grammar, Dialects | Britannica
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Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) [2] or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed by the 17th century.
- Old English, Middle English, and Modern English
- Standardization of English
- The Normative Tradition
- Syntactic and Morphological Changes by 1776
- Global English
"Old English (used until the 12th century) is so different from Modern English that it has to be approached as we would a foreign language. Middle English(used until the 15th century) is very much more familiar to modern eyes and ears, but we still feel that a considerable linguistic difference separates us from those who wrote in it--Chaucer and h...
"The early part of the modern English period saw the establishment of the standard written language that we know today. Its standardization was due first to the need of the central government for regular procedures by which to conduct its business, to keep its records, and to communicate with the citizens of the land. Standard languages are often t...
"From its very early days, the Royal Society concerned itself with matters of language, setting up a committee in 1664 whose principal aim was to encourage the members of the Royal Society to use appropriate and correct language. This committee, however, was not to meet more than a couple of times. Subsequently, writers such as John Dryden, Daniel ...
"By 1776 the English language had already undergone most of the syntactic changes which differentiate Present-Day English (henceforth PDE) from Old English (henceforth OE) ... Older patterns of word order with the verb at the clause end or in second constituent position had long been replaced by an unmarked order framed by the sequence subject-verb...
"As for the view of English beyond Britain, the tentative optimism of the 18th century gave way to a new view of 'global English,' an outlook in which confidence turned into triumphalism. A turning point in this emergent idea occurred in January 1851 when the great philologistJacob Grimm declared to the Royal Academy in Berlin that English 'may be ...
- Richard Nordquist
Oct 12, 2024 · The English language is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic language group. Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of the world and is the standard language in a wide variety of fields, including computer coding, international business, and higher education.
- As of 2020 there are 1.27 billion English speakers around the world. This makes it the most spoken language, ahead of Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billio...
- There has been much public and academic debate on whether African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English or its own separate la...
- Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English...
- English is not the official language of the United States of America. The country does not have an official language on the federal level. Many sta...
Let's take a look at the evolution of the English language and how it came to be one of the most influential languages in the modern world. Old English. During the 5th century AD, Britain was invaded by three Germanic tribes: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
English began to be praised, in contrast with other languages, for its copious vocabulary, linguistic economy (in using words of mainly one or two syllables), and simple grammar. For example, a lengthy and spirited defence of English, as compared with Latin, is given by the educationist Richard Mulcaster.
Modern English syntax language is moderately analytic. [221] It has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.
Early Modern English – the language used by William Shakespeare – is dated from around 1500. It incorporated many Renaissance-era loans from Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as borrowings from other European languages, including French, German and Dutch.
