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English is the predominant language of the [[United States of America|United States]], [[The United Kingdom|Great Britain]], and other former members of the [[British Empire]]. Due to the enormous political and economic influence of the these nations, English functions as the world's major international language.

English is the predominant language of the [[United States of America|United States]], [[The United Kingdom|Great Britain]], and other former members of the [[British Empire]]. Due to the enormous political and economic influence of the these nations, English functions as the world's major international language.

English is a member of the Germanic language family, but with significant influence from [[French]], a Romance language.  This is largely due to the conquest of Saxon-speaking [[England]] by [[French]] speaking Normans in 1066 AD.  English owes some of its structure (it's system of auxilliary verbs, for example) to French.  In terms of the lexicon, Old English words are a minority (though they predominate when one looks at the most commonly-used words) whereas words from [[French]] are more numerous, followed by [[Latin]], [[Greek]], and other modern languages.  

English is a member of the Germanic language family, but with significant influence from [[French]], a Romance language.  This is largely due to the conquest of Saxon-speaking [[England]] by [[French]] speaking Normans in 1066 AD.  English owes some of its structure (it's system of auxiliary verbs, for example) to French.  In terms of the lexicon, Old English words are a minority (though they predominate when one looks at the most commonly-used words) whereas words from [[French]] are more numerous, followed by [[Latin]], [[Greek]], and other modern languages.  

Since that  time, English has continued to grow and evolve, borrowing thousands of words from other languages, among them [[French]], [[Latin]], [[Greek]], and [[Spanish]], as well as generating new words of its own.  In large part as a result, English has one of the largest lexicons (vocabularies) of any world language, and is particularly rich in [[synonym]]s and near-synonyms.  It is the primary (native) language of approximately 400 million people worldwide, as well as a secondary, or learned language of 600 million more.  There are estimated to be nearly one billion people currently learning English.   

Since that  time, English has continued to grow and evolve, borrowing thousands of words from other languages, among them [[French]], [[Latin]], [[Greek]], and [[Spanish]], as well as generating new words of its own.  In large part as a result, English has one of the largest lexicons (vocabularies) of any world language, and is particularly rich in [[synonym]]s and near-synonyms.  It is the primary (native) language of approximately 400 million people worldwide, as well as a secondary, or learned language of 600 million more.  There are estimated to be nearly one billion people currently learning English.