Topic: GENEOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as
Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic, and originally spoken along the coasts of
Frisia, Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic
peoples known to the
historical record as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
Written in the Latin alphabet, it is most closely related to Frisian, German, and
Dutch. Its history began with the migration of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons from
Germany and Denmark to Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. The
Norman
Conquest of 1066 brought many French words into English.
The English language is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic
language group. Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of the
world and is the standard language in a
wide variety of fields, including computer
coding, international business, and higher education.
Here are some specific characteristics of the English Language:
Fairly easy to learn. English is one of the easiest and simplest natural
languages in the world. ...
Latin alphabet. ...
Its simple inflection. ...
Receptiveness. ...
Its (generally) fixed word order. ...
Pronunciation. ...
Continuous tense. ...
Articles (a, an, the)
Most speakers have some understanding that British English, American English,
Canadian English, and even South African English all exist and have some
differences. But you may be surprised by the many other English-based languages
and dialects that exist and are in use today. English gives you access to multiple
cultures. Good knowledge of English will allow you to access films, music and
literature from hundreds of countries around the globe. Not to mention the fact that
numerous books from across the world are translated into English.
Additionally, English is moderately analytic, and it and Africaans can be
considered as some of the most analytic of all Indo-European languages. However,
they are traditionally analyzed as fusional languages. English is a widely spoken
language
around the globe, and as such, it has many different varieties. One way to
classify these varieties is to divide them into seven categories: British English,
American English, Australian English, South African English, Canadian English,
New Zealand English, and Indian English.
In addition to the simplicity of inflections, English has two other basic
characteristics: flexibility of function and openness of vocabulary.
Flexibility of function has grown over the last five centuries as a consequence of
the loss of inflections. Words formerly distinguished as nouns or verbs by
differences in their forms are now often used as both nouns and verbs. One can
speak, for example, of planning a table
or tabling a plan, booking a place or
placing a book, lifting a thumb or thumbing a lift. In the other Indo-European
languages, apart from rare exceptions in Scandinavian languages, nouns and verbs
are never identical because of the necessity of separate noun and verb endings. In
English, forms for traditional pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs can also function
as nouns; adjectives and adverbs as verbs; and nouns, pronouns, and adverbs as
adjectives.
One speaks in English of the
Frankfurt Book Fair, but in German one must add the
suffix -er to the place-name and put attributive and noun together as a compound,
Frankfurter Buchmesse. In French one has no choice
but to construct a phrase
involving the use of two prepositions: Foire du Livre de Francfort. In English it is
now possible to employ a plural noun as adjunct (modifier), as in wages board and
sports editor; or even a conjunctional group, as in prices and incomes policy and
parks and gardens committee.
Any word class may alter its function in this way: the ins and outs (prepositions
becoming nouns), no buts (conjunction becoming noun).