In French one has no choice but to construct a phrase involving the use of two prepositions: Foire du Livre de Francfort. Approximate locations of Indo-European languages in contemporary Eurasia. In English, only nouns, pronouns (as in he, him, his), adjectives (as in big, bigger, biggest), and verbs are inflected. These words have been in the English language for many years, and often the corresponding word in the language of origin has a different meaning to the English meaning, or in some cases, does not even exist anymore. Openness of vocabulary implies both free admission of words from other languages and the ready creation of compounds and derivatives. English possesses a system of orthography that does not always accurately reflect the pronunciation of words; see below Orthography. English is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries of the world, and it is that status that has given it the position of a global lingua franca. English adopts (without change) or adapts (with slight change) any word really needed to name some new object or to denote some new process. In the other Indo-European languages, apart from rare exceptions in Scandinavian languages, nouns and verbs are never identical because of the necessity of separate noun and verb endings. Words from more than 350 languages have entered English in this way.

The parent tongue, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken about 5,000 years ago by nomads believed to have roamed the southeast European plains. Get kids back-to-school ready with Expedition: Learn! In addition to the simplicity of inflections, English has two other basic characteristics: flexibility of function and openness of vocabulary. A majority of English word roots come from Latin and Greek. It is also an official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa. One can speak, for example, of planning a table or tabling a plan, booking a place or placing a book, lifting a thumb or thumbing a lift. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Icelandic, which has changed little over the last thousand years, is the living language most nearly resembling Old English in grammatical structure. This makes it the most spoken language, ahead of Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion speakers) and Hindi (637 million speakers). As for verbs, if the Modern English word ride is compared with the corresponding words in Old English and Modern German, it will be found that English now has only 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden), whereas Old English ridan had 13, and Modern German reiten has 16.

Words formerly distinguished as nouns or verbs by differences in their forms are now often used as both nouns and verbs. The Fascinating Origins of 16 Common English Words. As of 2020 there are 1.27 billion English speakers around the world. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Though closely related to English, German remains far more conservative than English in its retention of a fairly elaborate system of inflections. English has become so ubiquitous that all pilots, regardless of their native language, must be able to communicate in English. Germanic, one of the language groups descended from this ancestral speech, is usually divided by scholars into three regional groups: East (Burgundian, Vandal, and Gothic, all extinct), North (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish), and West (German, Dutch [and Flemish], Frisian, and English). It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone. A quirk of the English language: the nonword "ghoti" can be pronounced as 'fish', with the 'gh' from words such as 'tough', the 'o' from words such as 'women', and the 'ti' from words such as 'station'. English stands in between, with four forms: man, man’s, men, men’s. Chinese has one form: ren.

The English language is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic language group. I think that understanding loan words can help us to understand English and our own language a little better. PDF | This new edition is concerned primarily with the learned vocabulary of English - the words borrowed from the classical languages. Writer and editor; Honorary Professor of Linguistics, Bangor University. The word "I" is the oldest word in the English language, as well as the the shortest and most frequently used. The online etymology dictionary is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms.

Although a Germanic language in its sounds and grammar , the bulk of English vocabulary is in fact Romance or Classical in origin. Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans. Once you know each word’s origin, you’ll begin to notice it in other words.