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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
English Pronunciation /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/ ING-glish [1] Native to The English-speaking world , including the United Kingdom , United States , Canada , Australia , Ireland , New Zealand , Commonwealth Caribbean , South Africa and others Ethnicity English Speakers L1 : 380 million (2021)[2] L2 : 1.077 billion (2021)[3] Total : 1.457 billionLanguage family Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic Anglic English Early forms Proto-English Old English Middle English Early Modern English Dialects British English North American Caribbean Australian New Zealand South African Hiberno-English (full list )Writing system Latin (English alphabet )Anglo-Saxon runes (historical)English Braille , Unified English Braille Signed forms Manually coded English (multiple systems)Official status Official language in 57 countries and 30 dependent territories Organisations including the UN , EU , Commonwealth , ICC , IMF , IOC , ISO , NATO , WTO , ASEAN , OAS and OECD Language codes ISO 639-1 en ISO 639-2 eng ISO 639-3 eng Glottolog stan1293 Linguasphere 52-ABA This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support , you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA .
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that emerged in early medieval England and has since become a global lingua franca .[4] [5] [6] Angles , one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Britain after the end of Roman rule . English is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations ) and the United States . It is the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. However, English is only the third-most spoken native language , after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish .[3]
