Language Profile English
English is well-known to be the most widely spread language around the world. While it’s ranked as third for native speakers, the high number of people using it as a second or even third language brings it into first place. It’s very hard to estimate the number of English speakers worldwide, with overall somewhere between 0.5 and 1.8 billion speakers of English. It is used extensively as an official language throughout the world, especially in Commonwealth countries and in many international organizations.
One of the things that makes the English language so rich (and sometimes so overwhelming) is that English words come from — or are influenced by — lots of different languages. It is essentially a Germanic language, coming from the same root therefore as German, Dutch, Flemish, and the Scandinavian languages. English has a lot of words that reach back to its German roots: ox, cow, meadow, grass, pig, king, knife, knight, and skirmish are just a few. But, being the accommodating language that it is, English absorbed and adopted words (and parts of words) from lots of other languages, too, like Latin, Greek, French, and Spanish.
Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from Norman and French, via Anglo-Norman after the Norman Conquest and directly from French in subsequent centuries. As a result, a large portion of English vocabulary is derived from French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning, in so-called "faux amis", or false friends.
Learning English is easy because:
Despite the fact that English is a complex language, there are many words similar to a number of other languages. This helps enormously when trying to learn it, as these ‘loan words’ link the language to many people’s mother tongue, so you can guess the meaning of the word and get off to a good start! We have a useful system of suffixes and prefixes in English which means that finding the opposite of a word is often easy. Adding on to an adjective for example will often work: happy / unhappy; interesting / uninteresting - this way you can increase your vocabulary quickly.
Learning English is challenging because:
The pronunciation system in English is very complex. With an alphabet of 26 letters, we have over 40 different sounds and additional diphthongs and triphthongs to add into the muddle. Many words spelled similarly don't sound alike. Bomb, comb, and tomb don't rhyme with each other: You say "bom,""kohm,"and "toom."Sometimes, words spelled exactly the same are pronounced differently: tear (teer), "a teardrop," and tear (tehr), "to rip," for example. Many words spelled differently do sound alike: Write, wright, right, and rite are all pronounced the same but mean different things. These types of words are called homophones.
One word can have various meanings: Pool (the place to swim), pool (the billiards game), pool (to put together) — and that's not even all of the definitions of pool. These types of words are called homonyms, and English is absolutely full of them.
There are many dialects and regional variations, which means that learning British English for example doesn’t mean you will understand everything if you go to South Africa. This adds to the beauty of the language and its richness, but makes it a bit harder to master. English is constantly changing and evolving- language is like a living thing, and all the time new words are being added to the vocabulary. We will shortly hit the 1 million mark for words, although this is at best an educated guess.
English with Cactus:
Cactus provides English language training as 1:1 programs, closed groups for in-house company training, and on public evening courses across the UK. For more details on our range of English courses, simply call 0845 130 4775 and we'll guide you effortlessly through the whole process.