English language in Europe | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2018-11-11

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
English language in Europe

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SUMMARY
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The English language in Europe, as a native language, is mainly spoken in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Outside of these states, it has a special status in the Crown dependencies (Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey), Gibraltar (one of the British Overseas Territories) and Malta. In the Kingdom of the Netherlands, English has an official status as a regional language on the isles of Saba and Sint Eustatius (located in the Caribbean). In other parts of Europe, English is spoken mainly by those who have learnt it as a second language, but also, to a lesser extent, natively by some expatriates from some countries in the English-speaking world. 
The English language is the de facto official language of England, the sole official language of Gibraltar and one of the official languages of the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Malta, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and the European Union.
United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland makes "European anglosphere" with area of about 316,000 km² and population of over 70 million.
According to a survey published in 2006, 13% of EU citizens speak English as their native language. Another 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation, so the total reach of English in the EU is 51%.English is descended from the language spoken by the Germanic tribes of the German Bight along the southern coast of the North Sea, the Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around 449 AD, Vortigern, King of the Britons, issued an invitation to the "Angle kin" (Angles, led by Hengest and Horsa), to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the southeast. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles and Jutes). The Chronicle documents the subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex and Wessex.
These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants. The dialects spoken by these invaders formed what would be called Old English, which was also strongly influenced by yet another Germanic language, Old East Norse, spoken by Danish Viking invaders who settled mainly in the North-East. English, England and East Anglia are derived from words referring to the Angles: Englisc, Angelcynn and Englaland.
For 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Anglo-Norman language was the language of administration and few Kings of England spoke English. A large number of French words were assimilated into Old English, which lost most of its inflections, the result being Middle English. Around the year 1500, the Great Vowel Shift marked the transformation of Middle English into Modern English.
The most famous surviving work from Old English is Beowulf, and from Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.
The rise of Modern English began around the fifteenth century, with Early Modern English reaching its literary pinnacle at the time of William Shakespeare. Some scholars divide early Modern English and late Modern English at around 1800, in concert with British conquest of much of the rest of the world, as the influence of native languages affected English enormously.