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English is the predominant language of the [[United States of America|United States]], the [[United Kingdom]], 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]], 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 (its 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.  

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 (its 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.