Association for English Studies of India (AESI)

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca. It is the national language of numerous sovereign states, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Irela ngdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and a number of Caribbean nations; moreover, it is an official language of almost 60 sovereign states. It is the third-most-common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many world organisations. Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic settlers (Anglo-Saxons) by the 5th century; the word English is simply the modern spelling of englisc, the name used by the Angles and Saxons for their language, after the Angles’ ancestral region of Angeln (in what is now Schleswig-Holstein). The language was also influenced early on by the Old Norse language through Viking invasions in the 9th and 10th centuries. Source: Wikipedia. The English language as we now know it began to emerge in the 14th century from a variety of dialects including Old Norse and Late West Saxon. 2. Language, grammar and particularly spelling only really became standardised with the publication of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755. 3. More English words begin with the letter 'S' than any other letter of the alphabet. 4. Mandarin Chinese is the only language spoken by more people around the world than English. 5. Around one in eight of all letters in written English is an ‘e’. 6. The longest common words that can be typed on the top row of a keyboard are 'proprietor', 'repertoire', 'perpetuity' and 'typewriter' itself. 7. The three words most common in spoken English are ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘the’ … 8.he top three words in written English are ‘the’, ‘of’ and ‘and’. 9. The word 'uncopyrightable' consists entirely of different letters. Along with 'dermatoglyphics’ (study of fingerprints), it is the longest such word. 10. The English language grows at a rate of about one new word every two hours.