dictionary English
The universal language English is the most common language at all.
In total about 510 million people are anglophone, i.e. they speak English. Only Mandarin is spoken by more people but without the global spread and importance that English has got. Moreover English is the language of world policy, economy, science, technology, internet and informatics. Due to the use of English as lingua franca variations of local languages influenced by English can be seen - mostly in underdeveloped regions. Those variations have intense divergences to the standard language. Read more...
The grammatical structure and the thesaurus of important words are originated in Germanic, whereas the continuing word formation is influenced by Romanic. As world language English is perpetually influenced by other languages that create new English words.
the English vocabulary is estimated to more than 1 million words. According to the spread no admitted pronunciation rules excist but for learners the British English rules „Received Pronunciation“ (also known as Oxford English) are valid. Vowels have a variety of pronunciations, e.g. the vowel „A“ has six different pronunciations plus diverse varieties of pronunciations on vowel combinations.
The English spelling is etymological instead of phonetical. This means many words are spoken like the pristine writing not like todays spelling.
An other distinctiveness is that the English language almost lost every flexion ending, e.g. conjugated verbs have no different endings to the normal verb.
