Studying foreign languages is very important and almost necessary for everybody. People have many reasons to study them. We need foreign languages for traveling abroad, for business communication, for school, for corresponding with our friends or for culture reasons, for example watching films, visiting concerts, understanding songs et cetera.
The most popular language is English. Approximately 350 million people speak English as their first language. About the same number use it as a second language. It is language of aviation, shipping, international sport, banking and politics or pop music. It is an official language in 44 countries. In many others it is the language of business, commerce, science and technology.
We know different varieties of English because many people speak English in many different countries with their own cultures, so the language cannot be the same all around the world. The best form of English is called Standard English and it is the language of educated English speakers. American English is the kind of English spoken in the USA. Differences are in pronunciation, intonation, spelling and vocabulary or also in grammar. Australian and New Zealand English are very similar to British English, but many differences are in vocabulary and slang. Canadian English is different from both British and American English. Canadians borrowed many words from Canadian French, Indian language and Eskimo.
About history of English… First inhabitants of the British Islands were Celts with their own Celtic languages. These languages still survive in parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. After Celts there were Romans in Britain and Latin was the language of the government. Between 4th and 7th centuries the Anglo-Saxons arrived from northern Germany, Holland and Denmark and occupied England and northern Scotland. The Anglo-Saxons spoke a Germanic language, which forms the basic of modern English. This language was changed by arrival of Vikings, who came from Norway and Denmark. They spoke Old Norse and the Old Norse together with the Germanic language of Anglo-Saxons mixed and formed the vocabulary of English. Later England was conquered by Normans and French became a language of government. For the next centuries there co-exist three languages in England. French for the aristocracy, English for the ordinary people and Latin for the church. Today English is a mix of these three languages together with many words from other languages. Some words are loan for example from Australian Aborigines (for example kangaroo and boomerang), from Chinese (for example tea), from Classical Greek (for example theatre) or from Modern French (for example café and rendezvous) and Modern German (for example kindergarten and Wiener schnitzel).
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