Official Language	Official language of USA, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and many countries in West Indies, more than a dozen African countries (Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, etc) and Hong Kong
Number of speakers	Mother tongue 350 million
Origin	Germanic language and member of the Indo-European family. Language dates back to arrival of 3 Germanic tribes: Angles/Saxons/Jutes in Britain in the 5th Century. Subsequently splits into three periods - 1 Old English 5th Century -1150; 2 Middle English, 1150 - 1300; 3 Modern English 1500 - present day.
Alphabet & Scripts	Roman

English is often called the unofficial language of the world community, which is no wonder when you consider that half of the world’s scientific journals are written in English, three quarters of the world’s mail is written in English and three fifths of the radio stations of the world beam their messages in the English language!

In tracing the historical development of the English language, it is usual to divide it into three periods: Old English, which dates from the earliest times to 1150; Middle English 1150–1500; and Modern English, 1500 to the present day.

The history of the English language is said to have begun with the arrival in Britain of three Germanic tribes about the middle of the 5th century. Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the North Sea from what is now Denmark and the coast of Northwest Germany. The inhabitants prior to this invasion spoke a Celtic tongue.

The Jutes came from Jutland and settled in Kent, The Isle of Wight and along part of the Hampshire coast. The Saxons came from Holstein and settled in the rest of England south of the Thames. The Angles came from Schleswig and settled in the area extending northward from the Thames as far as Scotland and it is from them that the word ‘English’ evolved.

They came from the ‘angle’ or corner of land today known as Schleswig-Holstein. In Old English, their name was ‘Engle’ and their language was known as ‘englisc’.

During the centuries that followed, four distinct dialects of English emerged; Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Northumbria enjoyed cultural and political ascendancy in England but in the ninth century both Northumbria and Mercia were devastated by the Viking invasions.

Only Wessex preserved its independence and by the tenth century the West Saxon dialect came to be the official language of the country.

External Influences

The history of English is one of repeated invasions, the newcomers to the islands bringing their own language with them and leaving much of their vocabulary behind. In 1066 the Norman Conquest affected the English language by bringing in French as the official language of the new rulers, yet the English language was too well established to be supplanted by another language.

This is illustrated when one considers that 5 000 Old English words remain unchanged and in common use today. In other words, the heart of the language remains the Old English of Anglo Saxon times.

The pace of the history of the English language quickens after 1476 with the introduction of the printing press. Printing provided more opportunities for people to write and gave their work more circulation.

The dialect of London emerged as the literary standard and the English language began to spread all over the world.

Today English is the mother tongue of about 350 million people and although it is second to Chinese by way of the number of speakers, it is nevertheless much more widely spoken than Chinese over the world’s surface.

The most significant step in the progress of English towards its status as a world language took place towards the end of the sixteenth century with the expeditions commissioned by Walter Raleigh to the ‘New World’. The first permanent English settlement dates from 1607, when an expedition arrived at Chesapeake Bay, and called the settlement Jamestown, after James I.

Then in 1620, the first group of Puritan settlers arrived on the ‘Mayflower’ searching for a land where they could find a new religious kingdom. They landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

These two settlements resulted in different linguistic consequences; the southern explorers came mainly from the West Country and brought with them the characteristic west-country accent, whereas the Puritans came mainly from East Anglia and the surrounding counties.

New shiploads of settlers brought people with a variety of linguistic backgrounds and by 1700 the immigrant population of the continent had increased to around a quarter of a million. (In 1776 it was thought that no less than one in seven of the American population was Scots-Irish!)

During the nineteenth century, immigration increased with many people fleeing the results of revolution and famine in Europe. In the decades around the turn of the century, the United States welcomed five million Germans, four million Italians and two and a half million Jews. The linguistic result of the multilingual setting was a large number of loan words making the American language cosmopolitan in content.

It is interesting to note, however, that there has never been any real danger that English might not prove capable of completely assimilating these immigrant tongues. The literary language has in fact hardly diverged from that of the old country.

It is inevitable then that many accents and dialects developed within America, although three main divisions are evident; North, Midland and South.

Differences between American English and British English

The two main differences between these two languages are accent and vocabulary. The first is self-explanatory and most differences in accent are not marked enough to create an inability to understand or be understood. The differences in vocabulary however are a more complex issue. Firstly spelling can vary, for example Britain’s use a ‘u’ in words such as ‘colour’ and ‘honour’, whereas in American English this letter is omitted. The British use ‘re’ instead of ‘er’ in words such as ‘theatre’ and ‘centre’. Secondly different words are used in America and Britain for the same object which can often lead to great misunderstanding! Some examples are ‘queue’ (BE) = ‘line’ (AE), ‘chemist’ (BE) = ‘drugist’ (AE), and ‘flyover’ (BE) = ‘overpass’ (AE). Such differences are covered in the Linguaphone course.

Finally . . .

The spread of the English language over the world’s surface is phenomenal; it has a vocabulary more than twice the size of any other language and it is spoken as a national language by a greater number of nations than any other. Is it the language of the future?

 

English speaking countries	The United Kingdom
Languages	English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic
Capital	London
Other main cities	Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool
Area (km²)	244,820
Population	59,511,464
Currency	Pound sterling

The United Kingdom consists of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a queen and a Parliament that has two houses: the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Stonehenge and other examples of prehistoric culture are what remains of the earliest inhabitants of Britain. Celtic peoples followed. After 4 centuries of Roman rule, Britain fell prey to invading hordes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and it was not until the 10th century that the country became united under the kings of Wessex.

Following the death of Edward the Confessor (1066), William, duke of Normandy, invaded England, defeating the Saxon king, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings (1066). The Norman conquest introduced Norman French law and feudalism.

The reign of Henry II (1154–89) saw an increasing centralization of royal power, but in 1215 John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, awarding the people, especially the nobles, certain basic rights. Edward III's claim to the throne of France led to the Hundred Years' War (1338–1453) and the loss of almost all the English territory in France.

In England, the great poverty and discontent caused by the war were intensified by the outbreak of the Black Death. The Wars of the Roses (1455–85), a struggle for the throne between the House of York and the House of Lancaster, ended in the victory of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) at Bosworth Field (1485).

During the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47), the church in England asserted its independence from the Roman Catholic Church and Elizabeth I (1558–1603) went on to set up the Church of England. Elizabeth's heir - James VI of Scotland - joined the two crowns as James I (1603–25), but later Stuart kings incurred large debts and were forced either to depend on Parliament for taxes or to raise money by illegal means. In 1642, war broke out between Charles I and Parliament and Charles was defeated and executed in 1649.

The monarchy was abolished, but after the death of Oliver Cromwell, the lord protector, the Puritan Commonwealth fell to pieces and Charles II was placed on the throne in 1660. The struggle between the king and Parliament continued, and James II (1685–88) was ousted by the Revolution of 1688, which confirmed the primacy of Parliament. James's daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, then became the rulers.

Upon the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the distant claims of the elector of Hanover were recognized, and he became king of Great Britain and Ireland as George I. The unwillingness of the Hanoverian kings to rule resulted in the formation by the royal ministers of a cabinet, headed by a prime minister, which directed all public business.

Abroad, the constant wars with France expanded the British Empire all over the globe, particularly in North America and India. This imperial growth was checked by the revolt of the American colonies (1775–81). Struggles with France broke out again in 1793 and during the Napoleonic Wars, which ended at Waterloo in 1815.

The Victorian era, named after Queen Victoria (1837–1901), saw the growth of a democratic system of government that had begun with the Reform Bill of 1832, whilst the Boer War (1899–1902) extended Britain's influence in Africa.

Four years after the accession of George V in 1910, Britain entered World War I when Germany invaded Belgium. The nation was led by coalition cabinets, headed first by Herbert Asquith and then David Lloyd George. Postwar labour unrest culminated in the general strike of 1926.

King Edward VIII succeeded to the throne on January 20, 1936, but abdicated in December in favor of his brother, who became George VI.

The efforts of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to stem the rising threat of Nazism in Germany failed with the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Allied reverses in the spring of 1940 led to Chamberlain's resignation and the formation of another coalition war cabinet by the Conservative leader, Winston Churchill, who led Britain through most of World War II.

Churchill resigned shortly after V-E Day, May 7, 1945, but then formed a "caretaker" government that remained in office until after the parliamentary elections in July, which the Labour Party won overwhelmingly. The new government, formed by Clement R. Attlee, began a moderate socialist program.

In 1951, Churchill again became prime minister at the head of a Conservative government. George VI died on February 6, 1952, and was succeeded by his daughter Elizabeth II. Churchill stepped down in 1955 in favour of Sir Anthony Eden, who resigned on grounds of ill health in 1957, and was succeeded by Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

In 1964, Harold Wilson led the Labour Party to victory. A lagging economy brought the Conservatives back to power in 1970. Prime Minister Edward Heath won Britain's admission to the European Community. Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first woman prime minister for the Conservatives in 1979.

Although there were continuing problems, an upswing in the economy in 1986–87 led Thatcher to win a near-unprecedented third consecutive term but by 1990 the Conservatives were losing the confidence of the electorate and in November, Mrs Thatcher resigned.

Even in the middle of a long recession, John Major called and won a national election in April 1992. After months of political maneuvering the U.K. ratified the Maastrict Treaty in August 1993.

Eighteen years of Conservative rule ended in May 1997 when Tony Blair and the Labour Party triumphed in the British elections. Blair has been compared to the former U.S. president Bill Clinton for his youthful, telegenic personality and centrist views.

He produced constitutional reform that partially decentralized the U.K., leading to the formation of separate Parliaments in Wales and Scotland by 1999. Britain turned over its colony Hong Kong to China in July 1997.

Blair's controversial meeting in October 1997 with Sinn Fein's political leader, Gerry Adams, was the first meeting in 76 years between a British prime minister and a Sinn Fein leader.

It infuriated numerous factions but was a symbolic gesture in support of the nascent peace talks in Northern Ireland. In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement, strongly supported by Tony Blair, held out the promise of peace between Catholics and Protestants, and talks continue.

English speaking countries	Scotland
Languages	English, Scots Gaelic
Capital	Edinburgh
Other main cities	Glasgow
Area (km²)	78,772
Population	5,128,000
Currency	British Pound

Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It is bounded by England in the south and on the other three sides by water: by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and north and by the North Sea on the east. Scotland is divided into three physical regions—the Highlands, the Central Lowlands and the Southern Uplands.

Scotland also includes the Outer and Inner Hebrides and other islands off the west coast and the Orkney and Shetland Islands off the north coast. The famous Scottish Highlands include a series of lochs (or lakes), the largest of which is Loch Ness, famous for its mythical monster.

The first inhabitants of Scotland were the Picts, though they were replaced by the Scots, a Celtic tribe from Ireland, in about 500.

Kenneth McAlpin, King of the Scots, united the tribes in 843 and by the 11th century, the monarchy had extended its borders to include much of what is Scotland today.

English influence expanded in the 11th-13th centuries, and in 1296 Edward I invaded. The following year Robert the Bruce led a revolt for independence, was crowned king of Scotland (Robert I) in 1306, and after years of battle, defeated the English in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn. In 1328 the English finally recognized Scottish independence.

In the 16th century John Knox introduced the Scottish reformation, and the Presbyterian church replaced Catholicism as the official religion. In 1567, Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, was forced to abdicate the Scottish throne, and was later executed by Elizabeth I of England.

Mary's son, James VI, was raised as a Protestant, and in 1603, he succeeded Elizabeth on the English throne, as King James I of England. James thus became ruler of both Scotland and England, though the countries remained separate.

In 1707, after a century of turmoil, Scotland and England passed the Act of Union, which united Scotland, England, and Wales under one rule as the Kingdom of Great Britain. The House of Hanover replaced the Stuart lineage on the throne in 1714, which caused a rebellion among Scots who still supported the Stuarts. The Jacobites, as the rebels were called, led two uprisings, in 1715 and again in 1745.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Scotland, whose chief product had been textiles, began developing in the industries of shipbuilding, coal mining, iron, and steel. In the late 20th century Scotland concentrated on electronics and high tech industries. The North Sea has also become an important source of oil and gas.

In May 1999, Scotland elected their first separate Parliament in three centuries. Labour won the largest number of seats in Parliament, defeating the Scottish National Party (SNP), which supports Scotland's independence from Britain.

English speaking countries	Australia
Languages	English
Capital	Canberra
Other main cities	Sydney, Melbourne,Brisbane,Perth,Adelaide
Area (km²)	7,741,220
Population	18,250,000
Currency	Australian dollar

The Commonwealth of Australia (Australia and Tasmania) lies south east of Asia and is the worlds 6th largest country and smallest continent. Aboriginal and other minority languages are spoken in ethnic communities but English remains the official language of the nation.

The folklore of Australia's original inhabitants, the Aborigines, suggests that they have always lived there, but scientific evidence suggests they migrated to the area some 40, 000 years ago.

The nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples are known for their adaptation to some of the harshest Australian environments. The aborigines had strong community ties with numerous distinct languages, circumstances that made multi-lingualism common.

The Dutch made the first European landing in 1606 (at the Gulf of Carpentaria) and had named their 'discovery' New Holland by 1616. Great Britain claimed the land in 1770 as New South Wales during Captain James Cooks voyage and a penal colony was established.