HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Origin:
English evolved from the Indo-European language family. The indo-European language family apart from having the widest geographical spread is spoken by the greatest number of people. The indo-European language was divided into Eastern and Western groups. English belonged to the Germanic - subgroup in the Western group. Others include the Celtic. Greek and Italic subgroups from which languages like non-English languages of Wales,Greek,French and Spanish emerged.The Germanic subgroup to which English belonged consist of the East,North and West Germanic.The West Germanic consist the High and Low German. The High German is spoken by the present day Germany and low Germany from which the present day English emerged is spoken by Dutch and Flemish.

       INDO_EUROPEAN LANGUAGE

Western Group and Eastern Group
Celtic|Greek Italic German
West Germanic and East Germanic
High German and Low German
Flemish and Dutch

     The scope of English Language

English is one of the major languages out of above 5000 estimated languages spoken in the world. About 200 years ago,English was simply the language of less than 15 million people. Today however,English is used by more than 300 million people and second only to Chinese as regards the number of people using particular language. English is one of the most influential and fast growing languages spoken across the globe.
One fifth of the earth's land surface use English either as native tongue or official language. Of all the world's languages English is the most widely studied language, especially in areas where it is not native. Today,English is used in several countries in the American continent including the United state of America and Canada,New Zealand,Republic of south Africa,Australia,Nigeria, and Ghana including other countries in the west African subcontinent. Though English was actually the language of colonization in these countries,like India they have since remained the official languages in most of the colonized territories. In other countries including Japan and China English is usually taught as the chief foreign language.
The Great invasions
The Modern English however began to develop as a result of invasion of Britain in the fifth century by three Germanic tribes known as the Angels,Saxon and Jutes. They gave England its name meaning "the land of the Angels". Several English words in use today came from these tribes. Some of these words include man,bread,eat,woman,work,and house.

        Evolution and Development

Several English words came from several sources worldwide especially when there is need to express ideas,concepts or inventions without English equivalent such as video,telephone and tea. Some words were equally taken from Greek like Lexicon. The learning and teaching of English was neglected in British schools in preference to Latin until about the 17th century. Subsequently about 80% of English vocabularies were borrowed from French and Latin languages. Other borrowings were from Portuguese,Italian,Spanish and Dutch and other various sources from across the Globe. The English vocabulary has therefore grown from about 60,000 in old English to about 750,000 words today. Most of the words spoken by English people however remain the native words of which the most frequently used remain " and" ,"be" "have", "of", "the", "to" "will", "you".
As knowledge and experience continue to grow,new words continue to be introduced into English language to " track" these knowledge and experience through words. There could therefore be no limits to the growth potentials as it concerns English language or any other language for that matter.
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