3. The English Language Family

• The English language belongs to the Indo-European language family, which includes languages spoken by over three billion people.
• Language family is a group of languages that share a common ancestor.
• The Indo-European language family, which includes languages like English, German, and Dutch, is the largest of the 142 different language families in the world.
• Indo-European languages are dominant in Europe as well as Central, Western, and South Asia.
• Romance languages, which include French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with more than 900 million native speakers worldwide, descended from Latin, which was the language of the Roman Empire.
• Slavic languages, including Russian, Polish, and Czech, are spoken by over 400 million people.
• Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, and Afrikaans, are spoken by approximately 515 million people.
• Celtic languages, which include Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic, have about two million of both native and non-native speakers.
• Iranian languages, including Persian and Pashto, have over 45 million speakers.
• Indo-Aryan languages, which include Hindi, Bengali, and Punjabi, are spoken by over one and a half billion people.
• Inner circle varieties are spoken in countries where English is the native language, like the UK, the US, and Commonwealth countries.
• The English language has a lot of varieties that can be divided into two groups – inner circle varieties and outer circle varieties.
• The most common varieties of English are British English, American English, Canadian English, and Australian English.
• Outer circle varieties are spoken in countries where English is not the native language but is used for official purposes like education or government.
• Linngua franca – a common language that is used for communication between speakers of different languages.
• Dialects can differ in pronunciation and vocabulary, but rarely in grammar.
• The standard dialect of English is known as Received Pronunciation or RP.
• RP is considered the “correct” way to speak English, and it is often used by news announcers and other public figures, for which it frequently is referred to as the Queen's English, Oxford English, or BBC English.
• RP is not necessarily the most common form of English, but it is the dialect that is considered standard for British English.
• The term “non-standard English,” on the other hand, refers to any dialect of English that is not RP.