Werrina

Verified answer

Only Mandarin (Chinese) isspoken by more people.
It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300million who use English as a second language.
It is listed as the official or second official language in 45countries.
This can be compared to 27 for French, 20 for Spanish and 17 for Arabic.
English is often spoken in other countries where it has noofficial status.
The number of people learning English is estimated as 200,000,000learners in Europe, 150,000,000 in South America, and more than 400,000,000 inAsia.
It was founded in 1934 as the British Committee for Relations with OtherCountries.
Half of all business deals are conducted in English.
Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English.
Over 70% of all post is written and addressed in English.
Most international tourism and diplomacy is conducted in English.
Soviet scientists were known all over the world for their works innuclear physics, chemistry, laser optics, metallurgy, medicine.
Their articles and reports were translated from Russian into many otherlanguages.
It was spoken all over the Soviet Union, it was learnt at schoolsand universities of Eastern Europe, in many countries of Asia, Africa and LatinAmerica.
It could be used for international communications in those countries.
After the destruction of the USSR Russian was replaced by English inmost of them.
Even on the territory of many former Soviet Republics English is morewidely used than Russian.
The history of the English language can be traced back to the arrival ofthree Germanic tribes to the British Isles during the 5th Century AD.
After the arrival of Germanic tribes most of the Celtic speakers were pushedinto Wales, Cornwall and Scotland.
Some The Celtic Language of Breton is still spoken there today.
The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin.
Written Old English is mainly known from this period.
It was written in an alphabet called Runic.
It was borrowed from the Scandinavian languages.
The Latin Alphabet was brought over from Ireland by Christianmissionaries later.
Old English was used until about 1100.
The Germanic form of plurals (house, housen; shoe, shoen) was replacedby the French method of making plurals: adding an В«sВ» (house, houses; shoe,shoes).
This language is called Middle English.
Many familiar words and phrases were coined or first recorded byShakespeare.
The dialect of London, where most publishing houses were located, becamethe standard. Spelling and grammar were fixed.
The first English dictionary was published in 1604.