English is a Germanic language. Like German and Dutch it belongs to the western branch of Germanic languages.

English is the most widespread language in the world and official language of most international organizations. English applies as a world language. Today English is spoken world-wide from approximately 340 million people as a native language, that is approximately 340 million people are Anglophones. If you add also the bilinguals, than there are about 510 million English speaker.

Through the global influence of native English speakers in cinema, airlines, broadcasting, science, and the Internet in recent decades, English is now the most widely learned second language in the world, although other languages such as French and Spanish also retain much importance worldwide.

In the following countries English is the official language:

Antigua and Barbuda	Barbados
Belize	Botswana
Cameroon	Canada
Commonwealth of Australia	Dominica
Fiji	Ghana
Grenada	Guyana
India	Ireland
Jamaica	Kenya
Kiribati	Lesotho
Liberia	Malawi
Malta	Marshall Islands
Mauritius	Micronesia
Namibia	Nauru
New Zealand	Nigeria
Pakistan	Papua New Guinea
Rwanda	Salomon
Seychelles	Sierra Leone
Simbabwe	Singapore
South Africa	St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Lucia	St. Vincent and the Grenadinen
Swaziland	Tanzania
The Bahamas	The Gambia
The Philippines	Trinidad and Tobago
Tuvalu	Uganda
United Kingdom	United States of America
Vanuatu	Zambia

 

Many students worldwide are required to learn at least some English, and a working knowledge of English is required in many fields

Linguistic classification.

Linguistic classification the English belongs to the Indo-European languages which showed originally very strongly inflecting characteristic features. All Indo-European languages show more or less this characteristic until today. However, there is a tendency away from inflecting and towards isolating forms in all these languages. Into English this tendency has particularly been coined, so that it has strongly turned in the course of its development in the nature.

However, there is a tendency away from inflecting and towards isolating forms in all these languages. This tendency has particularly been coined into English, so that it has strongly turned in the course of its development in the nature.

Today the English language carries mainly isolating characteristic and resembles structurally partly stronger isolating languages like the Chinese as the genetically closely related languages like the German. Today, moreover, the language has divided itself by the long spreading in many dialects. Many European languages also form completely new notions on the basis of the English language (Anglicisms). Also in some technical languages the terms are stamped by Anglicisms, e.g., in the areas of Informatics and economy.

The Language code is en or close (after ISO 639); the code for Oldenglish (approximately 450 to 1100) is ang and the code for Middlenglish (approximately 1100 to 1500) is enm.

Linguistic variants of the English language.

Due to the world-wide spreading of the English, this language has developed many variants of its structure in different regions. The most famous and strangest variant of the English is a Pidginise. It means that a language begins to divide itself several languages which are hardly compatible together.

There are following linguistic variants:

Afro-American English
American English
Australian English (also "Strine")
British English
English of New Zealand
Hawaiian English
Hiberno English (in Ireland)
Hong Kong English
Indian English
Jamaican English
Canadian English
Caribbean English
Liberian English
Malaysian English (also Manglish)
Philippine English
Scottish English
Scots (do not mistake with below named!)
Singapore English (also Singlish)
South African English
Welsh English

A Basic global English has been developed for the rapid acquisition of the English as an international lingua franca.