Languages
Native
English
98%
Secondary languages
Welsh
19%
Scottish Gaelic
11%
Language Samples
Hello, how are you?
Hello, how are you?
I am very well, thanks.
I am very well, thanks.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
English is a West Germanic language that took shape in early medieval England following the Anglo-Saxon migrations of the 5th century. The Norman Conquest of 1066 overlaid it with a vast French and Latin vocabulary, producing Middle English. The Great Vowel Shift of the 15th–17th centuries transformed pronunciation dramatically, yielding Early Modern English — the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. British colonial expansion from the 17th century onward spread English across the globe, making it today's foremost international language. Within the UK, Welsh retains strong vitality in Wales with official status, while Scottish Gaelic and Irish (in Northern Ireland) are spoken by smaller communities.
Similar Languages
Dutch
67%
German
60%
Swedish
55%
Norwegian
55%
Media
The British Library in London holds one of the world's largest collections of written works, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and a Gutenberg Bible.
Photo: fsse8info from UK · CC BY-SA 2.0
Did You Know
01
The Oxford English Dictionary tracks over 600,000 words, making English one of the languages with the largest documented vocabulary in the world.
02
Welsh, spoken by around 900,000 people in Wales, is one of the oldest living languages in Europe and has official equal status with English throughout Wales.
03
The English word 'beef' comes from Norman French (boeuf), while 'cow' comes from Old English (cū) — a legacy of the post-Conquest social divide between Anglo-Saxon farmers and French-speaking nobility.