England and English
England
England (i/ˈɪŋɡlənd/) is the most populous country in the United Kingdom.[5][6][7] It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, while the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separate it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world.[8] The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law—the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world—developed in England, and the country's parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations.[9] The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation.[10]
England's terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north (for example, the mountainous Lake District, Pennines, and Yorkshire Dales) and in the south west (for example, Dartmoor and the Cotswolds). The former capital of England was Winchester until replaced by London in 1066. Today London is the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures.[nb 3] England's population is about 53 million, around 84% of the population of the United Kingdom, and is largely concentrated in London, the South East and conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East and Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century. Meadowlands and pastures are found beyond the major cities.
The Kingdom of England—which after 1284 included Wales—was a sovereign state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain.[11][12] In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the Irish Free State was established as a separate dominion, but the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 reincorporated into the kingdom six Irish counties to officially create the current United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is a country of the United Kingdom, and English people in England are British Citizens. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain after the fifth century AD.[7]
Historically, the English population is descended from several genetically similar peoples—the earlier Britons (or Brythons), the Germanic tribes that settled in the region, including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, who founded what was to become England (from the Old English Englaland), and the later Danes, Normans and other groups. Following the Act of Union in 1707, in which the Kingdom of England became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain,[8] English customs and identity became closely aligned with British customs and identity.
Today, some English people have recent forbears from other parts of the United Kingdom, while some are also descended from more recent immigrants from other European countries and from the Commonwealth.
The English people are the source of the English language, the parliamentary system, the common law system and numerous major sports. These and other English cultural characteristics have spread worldwide, in part as a result of the former British Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people
English language
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the most widely used language in the world.[4] It is spoken as a first language by the majority populations of several sovereign states, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and a number of Caribbean nations. It is the third-most-common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[5] It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many world organisations.
English arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and what is now southeast Scotland. Following the extensive influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 17th century to the mid-20th century, through the British Empire, and also of the United States since the mid-20th century,[6][7][8][9] it has been widely propagated around the world, becoming the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions.[10][11]
Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic settlers (Anglo-Saxons) by the 5th century – with the word English being derived from the name of the Angles,[12] and ultimately from their ancestral region of Angeln (in what is now Schleswig-Holstein). A significant number of English words are constructed on the basis of roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life.[13] The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language because of Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries.
The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman-French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages[14][15] to what had then become Middle English. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events that mark the emergence of Modern English from Middle English.
Owing to the assimilation of words from many other languages throughout history, modern English contains a very large vocabulary, with complex and irregular spelling, particularly of vowels. Modern English has not only assimilated words from other European languages, but from all over the world. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, and slang terms.[16][17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
English Proverbs
Endeavor
¶ Many a man has turned and left the dock just before his ship come in.
Notes
England
[nb 3]^ According to the European Statistical Agency, London is the largest Larger Urban Zone which uses conurbations and areas of high population as its definition. A ranking of population within municipal boundaries places London first. However, the University of Avignon in France claims that Paris is first and London second when including the whole urban area and hinterland, that is the outlying cities as well.
[5]^ Office for National Statistics. "The Countries of the UK". statistics.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 20 December 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
[6]^ "Countries within a country". number-10.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 9 February 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
[7]^ "Changes in the list of subdivision names and code elements (Page 11)" (PDF). International Organization for Standardization. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
[8]^ "England – Culture". britainusa.com. Archived from the original on 16 May 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
[9]^ "Country profile: United Kingdom". BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk). 26 October 2009. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
[10]^ "Industrial Revolution". Ace.mmu.ac.uk. Retrieved 1 February 2009.
[11]^ William E. Burns, A Brief History of Great Britain, p. xxi
[12]^ Acts of Union 1707 parliament.uk. Retrieved 27 January 2011
English people
[7]^ "Online Etymology Dictionary". Etymonline.com. Retrieved 8 July 2011.
[8]^ "Act of Union 1707". parliament.uk. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
English language
[4]^ Seth Mydans (14 May 2007) "Across cultures, English is the word" New York Times. Retrieved 21 September 2011
[5]^ a b "Ethnologue, 1999". Archived from the original on 29 April 1999. Retrieved 31 October 2010.
[6]^ Ammon, pp. 2245–2247.
[7]^ Schneider, p. 1.
[8]^ Mazrui, p. 21.
[9]^ Howatt, pp. 127–133.
[10]^ Crystal, pp. 87–89.
[11]^ Wardhaugh, p. 60.
[12]^ "English – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 25 April 2007. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
[13]^ a b Daniel Weissbort (2006). "Translation: theory and practice : a historical reader". p.100. Oxford University Press, 2006
[14]^ "Words on the brain: from 1 million years ago?". History of language. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
[15]^ Albert C. Baugh & Thomas Cable (1978). "Latin Influences on Old English". An excerpt from Foreign Influences on Old English. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
[16]^ "How many words are there in the English Language?". Oxforddictionaries.com.
[17]^ "Vista Worldwide Language Statistics". Vistawide.com. Retrieved 31 October 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
England and English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk
United Kingdom
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