English

English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England. The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Modern English is both the most spoken language in the world and the third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. It is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as in India, Ireland, and Canada). In some other nations, it is the sole or dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law (such as in the United States or United Kingdom). It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union, and many other international and regional organisations. English accounts for at least 70% of total speakers of the Germanic language branch, and as of 2005, it was estimated that there were over two billion speakers worldwide. Old English began as a group of dialects emerging among the West Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons who migrated to Britain. The late Old English period absorbed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Then, the Middle English period borrowed words extensively from French dialects, which contributes approximately 28% to Modern English vocabulary, and from Latin, which also provides about 28%. Thus, despite a majority of its vocabulary coming from the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family, Modern English is genealogically still classified under the Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and then is most closely related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages. Classification