English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.
English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain.
The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians who settled in Southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans, and the partially Romanised Celtic Britons who already lived there.
Old English – the earliest form of the English language – was spoken and written in Anglo-Saxon Britain from c. 450 CE until c. 1150 (thus it continued to be used for some decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066).
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the English language itself really took off with the invasion of Britain during the 5th century. Three Germanic tribes, the Jutes, Saxons and Angles were seeking new lands to conquer, and crossed over from the North Sea.
The oldest human remains so far found in England date from about 500,000 years ago, and belonged to a six-foot tall man of the species Homo heidelbergensis. Shorter, stockier Neanderthals visited Britain between 300,000 and 35,000 years ago, followed by the direct ancestors of modern humans.
3) The Anglo-Saxon migration
Old English was first spoken in the 5th century, and it looks incomprehensible to today's English-speakers. To give you an idea of just how different it was, the language the Angles brought with them had three genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral).
The first king of England
It was Edward's son, Æthelstan, who first controlled the whole area that would form the kingdom of England. Æthelstan's sister had married Sihtric, the Viking ruler of the Northumbrians. When Sihtric died in 927, Æthelstan succeeded to that kingdom.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Except for Frisian, Dutch is linguistically the closest language to English, with both languages being part of the West Germanic linguistic family. This means many Dutch words are cognates with English (meaning they share the same linguistic roots), giving them similar spelling and pronunciation.
Geographers and Social Scientists estimate there are 7 Main groups of Dialects in the United States: Western American English, North Central American English, Northern American English, Midland American English, Southern American English, New York City American English and Northern New England American English.
The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, and Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his voyage of discovery to the island around 325 BC.
In the 16th Century, Britain began to build its empire – spreading the country's rule and power beyond its borders through a process called 'imperialism'. This brought huge changes to societies, industries, cultures and the lives of people all around the world.
Oliver Cromwell united the whole of the British Isles by force and created the Commonwealth of England.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages.
The likely "first human", she says, was Homo erectus. These short, stocky humans were a real stayer in human evolutionary history. Estimates vary, but they're thought to have lived from around 2 million to 100,000 years ago, and were the first humans to walk out of Africa and push into Europe and Asia.
Around 10,000 years ago, the last ice age finally ended. Temperatures rose, probably to levels similar to today's. As the weather got warmer, forests expanded farther. Pine, birch, and alder forest replaced the Arctic environment.
Around 800,000 years ago Britain was joined to continental Europe by a wide land bridge allowing humans to move around the whole region. Animal bones and flint tools found in East Anglia show that humans (Homo antecessor) were present in Britain at this time alongside animals such as the mammoth.
The rich variety of dialects in Britain can to a large extent be attributed to the fact that English has been spoken on this island for more than 1500 years. This long time period has allowed for the language to develop into regional varieties of English.
It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period.
We owe the name of Britain to Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek explorer from present-day Marseille, who travelled to Britain in around 325BCE and recorded the local names of the places he visited.