English or English is a Germanic language that was first spoken in England in the Early Middle Ages and is currently the most commonly used language in the whole world. English is spoken as the first language by the majority of the population in various countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of Caribbean countries; as well as being the official language in nearly 60 sovereign countries. English is the third most spoken mother tongue in the entire world, after Mandarin and Spanish. English is also used as a second language and official language by the European Union, the Commonwealth, and the United Nations, and various other organizations.
English first developed in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of England and in the region that currently forms southeast Scotland. After the widespread influence of the United Kingdom in the 17th and 20th centuries through the British Empire, English was widespread throughout the world. In addition, the breadth of the use of English was also due to the spread of US culture and technology which dominated throughout the 20th century. These things have caused English today to be the main language and unofficially (de facto) considered the lingua franca in various parts of the world.
Historically, English originated from the amalgamation of various related dialects, which today are collectively known as Old English, which were brought to the east coast of Britain by Germanic Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century; the English word comes from the name Angles. The Anglo-Saxons are from the Angeln region (currently Schleswig-Holstein, Germany). Early English was also influenced by Ancient Norse after the Vikings conquered England in the 9th and 10th centuries.
The Normandy conquest of England in the 11th century caused English to also be influenced by Norman French, and English vocabulary and spelling began to be influenced by Roman Latin (although English itself was not a Roman family), which became known as English Mid. Vocal shifts that began in southern England in the 15th century were one of the historical events that marked the transition of Middle English to Modern English.
Besides Anglo-Saxons and Norman France, a large number of English words are also rooted in Latin, because Latin is the lingua franca of the Christian Church and the main language in European intellectual circles, and has become the basis of vocabulary for modern English.
Having experienced a combination of various words from various languages throughout history, modern English has a very large vocabulary, with complex and irregular spellings, especially vowels. Modern English is not only a combination of European languages, but also from various languages throughout the world. The Oxford English Dictionary contains a list of more than 250,000 different words, not including technical, scientific, and slang terms that are also very large in number.