Why is English so mixed?

English is a language of mixed origins in terms of its vocabulary. A search in the dictionary reveals many of our words were borrowed from Latin, French, Dutch, or Greek; it's almost unexpected if a word can be traced back to Old English.


Why is English so diverse?

Thanks to the multiple invasions by different cultures and languages, thanks to influences from Latin and Celtic/Gaelic/Briton, there is a huge variety in the English language within a very small space.

What race spoke English first?

The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th centuries.


Why is English so irregular?

The English spelling system developed over the centuries and the irregularities came about because of various invaders and writers trying to fit their alphabet and sounds to English: English developed from the Anglo-Saxons & Vikings from northern Germany and Scandinavia.

Why is English so dominant?

This is because English is the world's lingua franca or common second language, as this table shows. English is the international language of business, commerce, science, medicine, and many other key areas. Even in diplomacy, where French once ruled supreme, English is now dominant in most regions of the world.


Why it sucks having a mixed accent.



What race speaks English the most?

Which Countries Have the Most English Speakers?
  • United States: 268M. ...
  • India: 125M. ...
  • Pakistan: 94M. ...
  • The Philippines: 90M. ...
  • Nigeria: 79M-100M. ...
  • The United Kingdom: 59.6M. ...
  • The Netherlands: 15M English Speakers. ...
  • Denmark: 4.8M English Speakers.


Are English accents genetic?

Unlike perfect pitch, accents are not influenced by a person's genetics. Generally speaking, the way we pronounce words can be molded by regular interaction with people in our environment.

Why is English hard for Asians?

Some sounds are not in their language

In some cultures and often Asian cultures the sounds around them are so completely different to the English sounds, the people's tongues literally grow comfortable in a certain way and it is very difficult to retrain it any other way.


Why does English have no accent marks?

The reason for this is no mystery; they have never been a prominent part of the English writing system, unlike most languages that use a Latin script. Although many people call them accents, the correct name for these symbols is diacritic mark or simply diacritic.

Why does English steal words?

Borrowing and lending of words happens because of cultural contact between two communities that speak different languages. Often, the dominant culture (or the culture perceived to have more prestige) lends more words than it borrows, so the process of exchange is usually asymmetrical.

What language did Jesus speak?

Jesus likely understood Hebrew, though his everyday life would have been conducted in Aramaic. Of the first four books of the New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark records Jesus using Aramaic terms and phrases, while in Luke 4:16, he was shown reading Hebrew from the Bible at a synagogue.


What are the 7 types of English?

The variety of English with the largest number of native speakers is American English, with 225 million native speakers. The other major varieties of English are Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English and Indian English.

How did the British accent develop?

But after the Revolutionary War, upper-class and upper-middle-class citizens in England began using non-rhotic speech as a way to show their social status. Eventually, this became standard for Received Pronunciation and spread throughout the country, affecting even the most popular British phrases.

What country has the most accents?

Despite a population of just 8.8 million, Papua New Guinea comes in first with a total of 840 languages spoken across the country.


Why is British accent attractive?

People tend to think a foreign accent is more interesting and more sexy, says Guy Winch, a psychotherapist from Britain who's long been based in the United States, “because in general we tend to value what's less common.” Americans associate a British accent with someone being “more intelligent, more sophisticated and ...

What is the least attractive accent in England?

The Birmingham accent is considered the least attractive accent in the British Isles – and Southern Irish the most appealing. A quick analysis of English dialects shows that there are roughly as many in the British Isles as there are in the whole of North America – including Canada, Bermuda and Native American dialects ...

What is a poor British accent called?

Perhaps the most famous British accent other than R.P. is Cockney. It developed as the dialect of the poorer working classes in the East End of London, and it's still regarded as a marker of 'true' East London heritage.


What is the hardest English accent to imitate?

The British Accent

The Great British accent proved to be the most difficult of all the accents to imitate – along with the regional Yorkshire and Cockney pronunciations, in particular.

Why is math easier for Asians?

Chinese number systems are more regular.

Another math advantage of speakers of Asian languages is the way these languages organize number systems. Asian language number systems are often more intuitive than the English system.

What is the hardest language in the world?

Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.


Why Asians are better at math language?

We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers — 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6 — right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds. Chinese number words are remarkably brief.

Are we born with an accent?

From the moment they're born, babies are, in their own way, communicating in the language of their families: Even before they have words, they have accents.

Can your accent change naturally?

The analysis showed that accent change over the medium term is ubiquitous: large daily fluctuations in each sound variable are the norm, while longer-term change over weeks to months occurs in a minority of cases.


Which English accent is real?

In all reality, the standard British accent was the one that changed significantly in the last two centuries while the American accent stayed more or less the same. During the American Revolution, the English language started to change in Britain.