Few Facts about English (2)

There are about 400 million native speakers. This makes it the second most spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese. About 200 million people speak it as a second language and there are as many as a billion people to speak it at least a basic level. The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand.

English began when Cermanic tribes of Angles, and Jutes came to Britain from IV till VI AD from the territory of modern Denmark. They made their home in the south and east of the island, interacting with the local Celtic tribes. The Celts were in majority, but their language was ousted by the Germanic dialects. Those of different tribes became Old English. The word "English" comes from the name of the Angles - Englas. It goes back to the root "ang" – sharp item. The Angles were fishers and used sharp hooks for fishing. The world "Angles" is suggested to mean “people using sharp items”, “fishers”.

Many other people came to England later at different times, speaking different languages, and these languages added more words to make today's English. For example, around 800 AD, many Danish and Norse pirates, also called Vikings, came to the country and English received many Norse loanwords. Their languages were Germanic languages, like Old English.

After William the Conqueror from the territory of modern France called Normandy conquered England in 1066 AD and became king, he brought his nobles, who were French. They became the new government. They stopped English from being taught in schools for 300 years and the language changed greatly, because it was mostly being spoken instead of written. English borrowed many words from Old French relying to political life and law. In spite of the fact that England is the motherland of parliament, the word being French, as the Parliament started in the period of the French-speaking nobles.

As Latin and Greek were the languages of intellectual interaction in medieval Europe, English got a lot of words from these languages. Nowdays about 80% of the words in scientific, technical or juridical texts are of Latin and Greek origin.

English has a rather intricate system of spelling but simple grammar, having practically no gender for the nouns. That is one of the reasons of its turning the lingva franka of the modern world.

Computer Vocabulary

Match and select Russian equivalents

А A copy on floppy disk or tape, used in case the hard disk files are damaged.	1 CPU - Central Processing Unit
В You do it with your computer when you switch it on and wait while it prepares itself	2 Bug
С A (small) defect or fault in a program.	3 Font
D This is a PC's heart or 'brains'	4 Floppy disk
E A cheap, removable disk used for storing or transferring information	5 Backup
F A particular sort of lettering (on the screen or on paper). Times New Roman is a font	6 Resolution
G The main disk inside a computer used for storing programs and information.	7 Parallel port
Е A socket at the back of a computer for connecting external equipment	8 Boot, boot up, boot disk
I The number of dots or pixels per inch used to create the screen image	9 Hard disk