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130-684: EADP's activities include: The North American counterpart to the EADP is the Yellow Pages Association (YPA). An important aspect of the directory publishing industry is the creation of business directories that list companies in various categories. A notable example in the German-speaking region is the Branchenbuch Deutschland, a comprehensive database for business listings. A notable development in

260-553: A mixed language or a creole —a theory called the Middle English creole hypothesis . Although the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern English is widely acknowledged, most specialists in language contact do not consider English to be a true mixed language. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages including Dutch , German , and Swedish . These shared innovations show that

390-561: A writing system , built huge pyramids and temples , had a complex calendar , and developed the concept of zero around 400 CE. The first recorded European references to North America are in Norse sagas where it is referred to as Vinland . The earliest verifiable instance of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact by any European culture with the North America mainland has been dated to around 1000 CE. The site , situated at

520-644: A 2012 official Eurobarometer poll (conducted when the UK was still a member of the EU), 38 percent of the EU respondents outside the countries where English is an official language said they could speak English well enough to have a conversation in that language. The next most commonly mentioned foreign language, French (which is the most widely known foreign language in the UK and Ireland), could be used in conversation by 12 percent of respondents. A working knowledge of English has become

650-658: A distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms , and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns ( he , him , his ) and has a few verb inflections ( speak , speaks , speaking , spoke , spoken ), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings. Its closest relative

780-490: A foreign language, make up the "expanding circle". The distinctions between English as a first language, as a second language, and as a foreign language are often debatable and may change in particular countries over time. For example, in the Netherlands and some other countries of Europe, knowledge of English as a second language is nearly universal, with over 80 percent of the population able to use it, and thus English

910-520: A more standard version of English. They have many more speakers of English who acquire English as they grow up through day-to-day use and listening to broadcasting, especially if they attend schools where English is the medium of instruction. Varieties of English learned by non-native speakers born to English-speaking parents may be influenced, especially in their grammar, by the other languages spoken by those learners. Most of those varieties of English include words little used by native speakers of English in

1040-695: A number of other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian dialect and Yola language of Ireland. Like Icelandic and Faroese , the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, as it differs in vocabulary , syntax , and phonology . However, some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages. Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated,

1170-597: A part of Denmark) and Mexico classified as Latin American). It is unknown with certainty how and when first human populations first reached North America. People were known to live in the Americas at least 20,000 years ago, but various evidence points to possibly earlier dates. The Paleo-Indian period in North America followed the Last Glacial Period, and lasted until about 10,000 years ago when

1300-664: A period of mountain building called the Laramide orogeny , between 80 and 55 mya. The formation of the Isthmus of Panama that connected the continent to South America arguably occurred approximately 12 to 15 mya, and the Great Lakes (as well as many other northern freshwater lakes and rivers) were carved by receding glaciers about 10,000 years ago. North America is the source of much of what humanity knows about geologic time periods. The geographic area that would later become

1430-590: A powerful earthquake killed seven people in 2009. Volcanic eruptions are common in the region. In 1968, the Arenal Volcano , in Costa Rica, erupted and killed 87 people. Fertile soils from weathered volcanic lavas have made it possible to sustain dense populations in agriculturally productive highland areas. Central America has many mountain ranges ; the longest are the Sierra Madre de Chiapas ,

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1560-684: A requirement in a number of occupations and professions such as medicine and computing. English has become so important in scientific publishing that more than 80 percent of all scientific journal articles indexed by Chemical Abstracts in 1998 were written in English, as were 90 percent of all articles in natural science publications by 1996 and 82 percent of articles in humanities publications by 1995. International communities such as international business people may use English as an auxiliary language , with an emphasis on vocabulary suitable for their domain of interest. This has led some scholars to develop

1690-407: A rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order . Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses , aspects and moods , as well as passive constructions , interrogatives , and some negation . The earliest form of English

1820-758: A significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), South Africa (4.8 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages and new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. The inner-circle countries provide

1950-540: A variety of reactions, including curiosity, trading, cooperation, resignation, and resistance. The indigenous population declined substantially following European arrival, primarily due to the introduction of Eurasian diseases, such as smallpox , to which the indigenous peoples lacked immunity, and because of violent conflicts with Europeans. Indigenous culture changed significantly and their affiliation with political and cultural groups also changed. Several linguistic groups died out , and others changed quite quickly. On

2080-447: A verb ending ( present plural): From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Old English gradually transformed through language contact with Old Norse in some regions. The waves of Norse (Viking) colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in

2210-563: Is Old Frisian , but even some centuries after the Anglo-Saxon migration, Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility with other Germanic varieties. Even in the 9th and 10th centuries, amidst the Danelaw and other Viking invasions, there is historical evidence that Old Norse and Old English retained considerable mutual intelligibility, although probably the northern dialects of Old English were more similar to Old Norse than

2340-883: Is a continent in the Northern and Western Hemispheres . North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean , to the east by the Atlantic Ocean , to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea , and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean . The region includes the Bahamas , Bermuda , Canada , the Caribbean , Central America , Clipperton Island , Greenland , Mexico , Saint Pierre and Miquelon , Turks and Caicos Islands , and

2470-665: Is a very large continent that extends from north of the Arctic Circle to south of the Tropic of Cancer . Greenland, along with the Canadian Shield , is tundra with average temperatures ranging from 10 to 20 °C (50 to 68 °F), but central Greenland is composed of a very large ice sheet. This tundra radiates throughout Canada, but its border ends near the Rocky Mountains (but still contains Alaska) and at

2600-466: Is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the United States as a world power. As of 2016 , 400 million people spoke English as their first language , and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language. English is the largest language by number of speakers . English

2730-610: Is also widely used in media and literature, and the number of English language books published annually in India is the third largest in the world after the US and UK. However, English is rarely spoken as a first language, numbering only around a couple hundred-thousand people, and less than 5% of the population speak fluent English in India. David Crystal claimed in 2004 that, combining native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in

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2860-524: Is an ancient craton which forms the geologic core of North America; it formed between 1.5 and 1.0 billion years ago during the Proterozoic eon. The Canadian Shield is the largest exposure of this craton. From the Late Paleozoic to Early Mesozoic eras, North America was joined with the other modern-day continents as part of the supercontinent Pangaea , with Eurasia to its east. One of

2990-407: Is an official language of countries populated by few descendants of native speakers of English. It has also become by far the most important language of international communication when people who share no native language meet anywhere in the world. The Indian linguist Braj Kachru distinguished countries where English is spoken with a three circles model . In his model, Kachru based his model on

3120-538: Is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon ( c.  450–1150 ). Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic , and originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia , Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles , Saxons , and Jutes . From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as

3250-546: Is in present-day Panama at the Darien Gap on the Colombia -Panama border, placing almost all of Panama within North America. Alternatively, some geologists physiographically locate its southern limit at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec , Mexico, with Central America extending southeastward to South America from this point. The Caribbean islands, or West Indies, are considered part of North America. The continental coastline

3380-648: Is long and irregular. The Gulf of Mexico is the largest body of water indenting the continent, followed by Hudson Bay . Others include the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Gulf of California . Before the Central American isthmus formed, the region had been underwater. The islands of the West Indies delineate a submerged former land bridge , which had connected North and South America via what are now Florida and Venezuela . There are several islands off

3510-536: Is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1150 to 1500. With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the now-Norsified Old English language was subject to another wave of intense contact, this time with Old French , in particular Old Norman French , influencing it as a superstrate. The Norman French spoken by

3640-561: Is part of North America geographically. In a geologic sense, Bermuda is not part of the Americas, but an oceanic island that was formed on the fissure of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge over 100 million years ago (mya). The nearest landmass to it is Cape Hatteras , North Carolina . However, Bermuda is often thought of as part of North America, especially given its historical, political and cultural ties to Virginia and other parts of

3770-424: Is routinely used to communicate with foreigners and often in higher education. In these countries, although English is not used for government business, its widespread use puts them at the boundary between the "outer circle" and "expanding circle". English is unusual among world languages in how many of its users are not native speakers but speakers of English as a second or foreign language. Many users of English in

3900-517: Is spoken by communities on every continent and on islands in all the major oceans. The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle" countries with many native speakers of English share an international standard of written English and jointly influence speech norms for English around the world. English does not belong to just one country, and it does not belong solely to descendants of English settlers. English

4030-707: Is the Morrison Formation of the western U.S. Canada is geologically one of the oldest regions in the world, with more than half of the region consisting of Precambrian rocks that have been above sea level since the beginning of the Palaeozoic era. Canada's mineral resources are diverse and extensive. Across the Canadian Shield and in the north there are large iron, nickel, zinc , copper, gold, lead, molybdenum , and uranium reserves. Large diamond concentrations have been recently developed in

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4160-527: Is the humid subtropical climate . This area has the wettest cities in the contiguous U.S. , with annual precipitation reaching 67 in (1,700 mm) in Mobile, Alabama . Stretching from the borders of the humid continental and subtropical climates, and going west to the Sierra Nevada , south to the southern tip of Durango , north to the border with tundra climate, the steppe / desert climates are

4290-777: Is the third person pronoun group beginning with th- ( they, them, their ) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h- ( hie, him, hera ). Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of Old English, particularly northern ones. Englischmen þeyz hy hadde fram þe bygynnyng þre manner speche, Souþeron, Northeron, and Myddel speche in þe myddel of þe lond, ... Noþeles by comyxstion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes, and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys asperyed, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbytting. Although, from

4420-454: The Age of Discovery and the early modern period . Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples , enslaved Africans , immigrants from Europe, Asia, and descendants of these respective groups. Europe's colonization in North America led to most North Americans speaking European languages, such as English , Spanish , and French , and

4550-978: The Anglic languages in the British Isles , and into the Frisian languages and Low German /Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages , are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the North Sea Germanic languages, though this grouping remains debated. Old English evolved into Middle English , which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into

4680-600: The Anglo-Saxons . Late Old English borrowed some grammar and core vocabulary from Old Norse , a North Germanic language . Then, Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects , which are the source of approximately 28% of Modern English words , and from Latin , which is the source of an additional 28% . As such, though most of its total vocabulary comes from Romance languages , Modern English's grammar, phonology, and most commonly used words in everyday use keep it genealogically classified under

4810-519: The Archaic period began. The classic stage followed the Archaic period, and lasted from approximately the 6th to 13th centuries. Beginning in 1000 AD, the Norse were the first Europeans to begin exploring and ultimately colonizing areas of North America. In 1492, the exploratory voyages of Christopher Columbus led to a transatlantic exchange , including migrations of European settlers during

4940-485: The Augustinian canon Orrm , which highlights the blending of both Old English and Anglo-Norman elements in English for the first time. In Wycliff'e Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis . Here the plural suffix -n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English

5070-567: The Bering Strait during the Early-Middle Holocene . Prior to the arrival of European explorers and colonists in North America, the natives of North America were divided into many different polities, ranging from small bands of a few families to large empires. They lived in several culture areas , which roughly correspond to geographic and biological zones that defined the representative cultures and lifestyles of

5200-600: The British Columbia Coast , Western Canada , and Northern Canada . In the U.S., they include New England , the Mid-Atlantic , South Atlantic states , East North Central states , West North Central states , East South Central states , West South Central states , Mountain states , and Pacific states . The Great Lakes region and the Pacific Northwest include areas in both Canada and

5330-913: The Caribbean Plate , whereas the Juan de Fuca Plate and Cocos Plate border the North American Plate on its western frontier. The continent can be divided into four great regions (each of which contains many subregions): the Great Plains stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian Arctic ; the geologically young, mountainous west, including the Rocky Mountains , the Great Basin , California , and Alaska ;

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5460-568: The Cordillera Isabelia , and the Cordillera de Talamanca . Between the mountain ranges lie fertile valleys that are suitable for the people; in fact, most of the population of Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala live in valleys. Valleys are also suitable for the production of coffee, beans, and other crops. The indigenous peoples of the Americas have many creation myths , based on which they assert that they have been present on

5590-546: The Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English . The centre of Norsified English was in the Midlands around Lindsey . After 920 CE, when Lindsey was incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today

5720-465: The East Coast to eastern North Dakota , and stretching down to Kansas , is the humid continental climate featuring intense seasons, with a large amount of annual precipitation, with places like New York City averaging 50 in (1,300 mm). Starting at the southern border of the humid continental climate and stretching to the Gulf of Mexico (whilst encompassing the eastern half of Texas)

5850-552: The European Free Trade Association , Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) set English as their organisation's sole working language even though most members are not countries with a majority of native English speakers. While the European Union (EU) allows member states to designate any of the national languages as an official language of

5980-620: The Inuit of the high Arctic arrived in North America much later than other native groups, evidenced by the disappearance of Dorset culture artifacts from the archaeological record and their replacement by the Thule people . During the thousands of years of native habitation on the continent, cultures changed and shifted. One of the oldest yet discovered is the Clovis culture (c. 9550–9050 BCE) in modern New Mexico . Later groups include

6110-719: The Mississippian culture and related Mound building cultures, found in the Mississippi River valley and the Pueblo culture of what is now the Four Corners . The more southern cultural groups of North America were responsible for the domestication of many common crops now used around the world, such as tomatoes, squash , and maize . As a result of the development of agriculture in the south, many other cultural advances were made there. The Mayans developed

6240-668: The United Nations at the end of World War II , English had become pre-eminent and is now the main worldwide language of diplomacy and international relations. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations. Many other worldwide international organisations, including the International Olympic Committee , specify English as a working language or official language of the organisation. Many regional international organisations such as

6370-403: The United States . North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), representing approximately 16.5% of the Earth 's land area and 4.8% of its total surface area. It is the third-largest continent by size after Asia and Africa , and the fourth-largest continent by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe . As of 2021 , North America's population

6500-420: The first official name given to Mexico. North America includes several regions and subregions, each of which have their own respective cultural, economic, and geographic regions. Economic regions include several regions formalized in 20th- and 21st-century trade agreements, including NAFTA between Canada , Mexico , and the United States , and CAFTA between Central America , the Dominican Republic , and

6630-454: The palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic (see Phonological history of Old English § Palatalization ). The earliest varieties of an English language, collectively known as Old English or "Anglo-Saxon", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Britain in the 5th century. Old English dialects were later influenced by Old Norse -speaking Viking invaders and settlers , starting in

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6760-505: The "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines , Jamaica , India , Pakistan , Singapore , Malaysia and Nigeria with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government. Those countries have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from an English-based creole to

6890-401: The 1490s, building cities, putting the resident indigenous populations to work, raising crops for Spanish settlers and panning gold to enrich the Spaniards. Much of the indigenous population died due to disease and overwork, spurring the Spaniards on to claim new lands and peoples. An expedition under the command of Spanish settler, Hernán Cortés , sailed westward in 1519 to what turned out to be

7020-427: The 8th and 9th centuries. Middle English began in the late 11th century after the Norman Conquest of England, when a considerable amount of Old French vocabulary was incorporated into English over some three centuries. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the start of the Great Vowel Shift and the Renaissance trend of borrowing further Latin and Greek words and roots, concurrent with

7150-448: The Angles. English may have a small amount of substrate influence from Common Brittonic, and a number of possible Brittonicisms in English have been proposed, but whether most of these supposed Brittonicisms are actually a direct result of Brittonic substrate influence is disputed. Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects ( Mercian and Northumbrian ) and the Saxon dialects ( Kentish and West Saxon ). Through

7280-462: The Arctic, making Canada one of the world's largest producers. Throughout the Shield, there are many mining towns extracting these minerals. The largest, and best known, is Sudbury , Ontario. Sudbury is an exception to the normal process of forming minerals in the Shield since there is significant evidence that the Sudbury Basin is an ancient meteorite impact crater . The nearby, but less-known Temagami Magnetic Anomaly has striking similarities to

7410-406: The British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies often did not reject English but rather continued to use it as independent countries setting their own language policies. For example, the view of the English language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India. English

7540-478: The Caribbean islands. France took the western half of Hispaniola and developed Saint-Domingue as a cane sugar producing colony worked by black slave labor. Britain took Barbados and Jamaica , and the Dutch and Danes took islands previously claimed by Spain. Britain did not begin settling on the North American mainland until a hundred years after the first Spanish settlements, since it sought first to control nearby Ireland . The first permanent English settlement

7670-418: The Cod fish", in reference to the abundance of cod fish on the East Coast . Waldseemüller used the Latin version of Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form of "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia", and "Africa". Americus originated from Medieval Latin Emericus (see Saint Emeric of Hungary ), coming from the Old High German name Emmerich . Map makers later extended

7800-434: The Early Modern period includes the works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I . Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn sw/ in knight , gnat , and sword were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent

7930-409: The English Language , which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of

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8060-429: The English-speaking inner circle countries outside Britain helped level dialect distinctions and produce koineised forms of English in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The majority of immigrants to the United States without British ancestry rapidly adopted English after arrival. Now the majority of the United States population are monolingual English speakers. English has ceased to be an "English language" in

8190-410: The Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and is then most closely related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages . English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into

8320-419: The North America's southeastern coast, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León , who had accompanied Columbus's second voyage, visited and named in 1513 La Florida . As the colonial period unfolded, Spain, England, and France appropriated and claimed extensive territories in North America eastern and southern coastlines. Spain established permanent settlements on the Caribbean islands of Hispaniola and Cuba in

8450-502: The Roman economy and administration collapsed . By the 7th century, this Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in Britain , replacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): Common Brittonic , a Celtic language , and British Latin , brought to Britain by the Roman occupation. At this time, these dialects generally resisted influence from the then-local Brittonic and Latin languages. England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc ) are both named after

8580-416: The Sudbury Basin. Its magnetic anomalies are very similar to the Sudbury Basin, and so it could be a second metal-rich impact crater. The Shield is also covered by vast boreal forests that support an important logging industry. The United States can be divided into twelve main geological provinces: Each province has its own geologic history and unique features. The geology of Alaska is typical of that of

8710-410: The U.S. North America occupies the northern portion of the landmass generally referred to as the New World, the Western Hemisphere , the Americas, or simply America, which, in many countries, is considered a single continent with North America a subcontinent . North America is the third-largest continent by area after Asia and Africa . North America's only land connection to South America

8840-442: The Union, in practice English is the main working language of EU organisations. Although in most countries English is not an official language, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language . In the countries of the EU, English is the most widely spoken foreign language in nineteen of the twenty-five member states where it is not an official language (that is, the countries other than Ireland and Malta ). In

8970-429: The United States has been the source of more varieties of dinosaurs than any other modern country. According to paleontologist Peter Dodson, this is primarily due to stratigraphy, climate and geography, human resources, and history. Much of the Mesozoic Era is represented by exposed outcrops in the many arid regions of the continent. The most significant Late Jurassic dinosaur-bearing fossil deposit in North America

9100-550: The United States, and Mexico. France , Italy , Portugal , Spain , Romania , Greece , and the countries of Latin America use a six-continent model , with the Americas viewed as a single continent and North America designating a subcontinent comprising Canada , the United States , Mexico, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon (politically part of France), and often including Greenland and Bermuda . North America has historically been known by other names, including Spanish North America, New Spain , and América Septentrional,

9230-527: The United States. North America is divided linguistically and culturally into two primary regions, Anglo-America and Latin America . Anglo-America includes most of North America, Belize , and Caribbean islands with English -speaking populations. There are also regions, including Louisiana and Quebec , with large Francophone populations; in Quebec , French is the official language. . The southern portion of North America includes Central America and non-English speaking Caribbean nations. The north of

9360-547: The area had shifted to the Aztec Empire , whose capital city Tenochtitlan was located further north in the Valley of Mexico . The Aztecs were conquered in 1521 by Hernán Cortés . During the so-called Age of Discovery , Europeans explored overseas and staked claims to various parts of North America, much of which was already settled by indigenous peoples. Upon Europeans' arrival in the " New World ", indigenous peoples had

9490-407: The base from which English spreads to other countries in the world. Estimates of the numbers of second language and foreign-language English speakers vary greatly from 470 million to more than 1 billion, depending on how proficiency is defined. Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. In Kachru's three-circles model,

9620-453: The basis for the required controlled natural languages Seaspeak and Airspeak, used as international languages of seafaring and aviation. English used to have parity with French and German in scientific research, but now it dominates that field. It achieved parity with French as a language of diplomacy at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919. By the time of the foundation of

9750-400: The beginning, Englishmen had three manners of speaking, southern, northern and midlands speech in the middle of the country, ... Nevertheless, through intermingling and mixing, first with Danes and then with Normans, amongst many the country language has arisen, and some use strange stammering, chattering, snarling, and grating gnashing. John Trevisa , c.  1385 Middle English

9880-705: The consensus of educated English speakers around the world, without any oversight by any government or international organisation. American listeners readily understand most British broadcasting, and British listeners readily understand most American broadcasting. Most English speakers around the world can understand radio programmes, television programmes, and films from many parts of the English-speaking world. Both standard and non-standard varieties of English can include both formal or informal styles, distinguished by word choice and syntax and use both technical and non-technical registers. The settlement history of

10010-432: The continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of North America, which encompasses the whole North American continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used more narrowly to refer only to four nations, Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and the U.S. The U.S. Census Bureau includes Saint Pierre and Miquelon, but excludes Mexico from its definition. The term Northern America refers to

10140-981: The continent's coasts; principally, the Arctic Archipelago, the Bahamas , Turks and Caicos , the Greater and Lesser Antilles , the Aleutian Islands (some of which are in the Eastern Hemisphere proper), the Alexander Archipelago , the many thousand islands of the British Columbia Coast, and Newfoundland. Greenland , a self-governing Danish island, and the world's largest , is on the same tectonic plate (the North American Plate ) and

10270-599: The continent. The vast majority of North America is on the North American Plate. Parts of western Mexico, including Baja California, and of California , including the cities of San Diego , Los Angeles , and Santa Cruz , lie on the eastern edge of the Pacific Plate , with the two plates meeting along the San Andreas Fault . The southernmost portion of the continent and much of the West Indies lie on

10400-659: The cordillera, while the major islands of Hawaii consist of Neogene volcanics erupted over a hot spot . Central America is geologically active with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occurring from time to time. In 1976 Guatemala was hit by a major earthquake , killing 23,000 people; Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, was devastated by earthquakes in 1931 and 1972, the last one killing about 5,000 people; three earthquakes devastated El Salvador, one in 1986 and two in 2001; one earthquake devastated northern and central Costa Rica in 2009, killing at least 34 people; in Honduras

10530-685: The cultures of the region commonly reflect Western traditions . However, relatively small parts of North America in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America have indigenous populations that continue adhering to their respective pre-European colonial cultural and linguistic traditions. The Americas were named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann . Vespucci explored South America between 1497 and 1502, and

10660-521: The de facto lingua franca of diplomacy, science , technology, international trade, logistics, tourism, aviation, entertainment, and the Internet . English accounts for at least 70% of total speakers of the Germanic language branch, and as of 2021 , Ethnologue estimated that there were over 1.5 billion speakers worldwide. Old English emerged from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by

10790-476: The development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, particularly Old Norse and French dialects . These left a profound mark of their own on the language, so that English shows some similarities in vocabulary and grammar with many languages outside its linguistic clades —but it is not mutually intelligible with any of those languages either. Some scholars have argued that English can be considered

10920-405: The directory publishing sector occurred when an online small business directory was shut down by a court ruling in the UK. This case highlights the importance of regulatory oversight in the industry, as it involved fraudulent practices targeting small businesses. The court ordered the closure of the directory after it was found to have misled its users. North America North America

11050-528: The distinct characteristics of Early Modern English. In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, "The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests." This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject–verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and

11180-447: The driest in the U.S. Highland climates cut from north to south of the continent, where subtropical or temperate climates occur just below the tropics, as in central Mexico and Guatemala . Tropical climates appear in the island regions and in the subcontinent's bottleneck, found in countries and states bathed by the Caribbean Sea or to the south of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean . Precipitation patterns vary across

11310-401: The early period of Old English were written using a runic script . By the 6th century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms . It included the runic letters wynn ⟨ ƿ ⟩ and thorn ⟨ þ ⟩ , and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ ð ⟩ , and ash ⟨ æ ⟩ . Old English is essentially

11440-551: The educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex , the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety . The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon's Hymn , is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from

11570-695: The elite in England eventually developed into the Anglo-Norman language . Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking English, the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases

11700-470: The end of the Canadian Shield, near the Great Lakes . Climate west of the Cascade Range is described as being temperate weather with average precipitation 20 inches (510 millimeters). Climate in coastal California is described to be Mediterranean , with average temperatures in cities like San Francisco ranging from 57 to 70 °F (14 to 21 °C) over the course of the year. Stretching from

11830-408: The expanding circle use it to communicate with other people from the expanding circle, so that interaction with native speakers of English plays no part in their decision to use the language. Non-native varieties of English are widely used for international communication, and speakers of one such variety often encounter features of other varieties. Very often today a conversation in English anywhere in

11960-562: The first American inhabitants sailed from Beringia some 13,000 years ago, with widespread habitation of the Americas during the end of the Last Glacial Period , in what is known as the Late Glacial Maximum , around 12,500 years ago. The oldest petroglyphs in North America date from 15,000 to 10,000 years before present. Genetic research and anthropology indicate additional waves of migration from Asia via

12090-911: The geographic center of either the 50 states, the conterminous United States, or the North American continent." Nonetheless, there is a 4.6-meter (15 ft) field stone obelisk in Rugby claiming to mark the center. The North American continental pole of inaccessibility is located 1,650 km (1,030 mi) from the nearest coastline, between Allen and Kyle, South Dakota at 43°22′N 101°58′W  /  43.36°N 101.97°W  / 43.36; -101.97  ( Pole of Inaccessibility North America ) . Canada can be divided into roughly seven physiographic divisions: The lower 48 U.S. states can be divided into roughly eight physiographic divisions: Mexico can be divided into roughly fifteen physiographic divisions: North America

12220-721: The growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been. As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published, and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of

12350-546: The history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation. The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift , meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised , and close vowels were broken into diphthongs . For example,

12480-407: The history of how English spread in different countries, how users acquire English, and the range of uses English has in each country. The three circles change membership over time. Countries with large communities of native speakers of English (the inner circle) include Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English, and South Africa, where

12610-419: The indigenous people who lived there, including the bison hunters of the Great Plains and the farmers of Mesoamerica . Native groups also are classified by their language families , which included Athapascan and Uto-Aztecan languages. Indigenous peoples with similar languages did not always share the same material culture , however, and were not necessarily always allies. Anthropologists speculate that

12740-403: The inner-circle countries, and they may show grammatical and phonological differences from inner-circle varieties as well. The standard English of the inner-circle countries is often taken as a norm for use of English in the outer-circle countries. In the three-circles model, countries such as Poland, China, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Egypt, and other countries where English is taught as

12870-531: The introduction of loanwords from French ( ayre ) and word replacements ( bird originally meaning "nestling" had replaced OE fugol ). By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. English

13000-475: The introduction of the printing press to London. This era notably culminated in the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare . The printing press greatly standardised English spelling, which has remained largely unchanged since then, despite a wide variety of later sound shifts in English dialects. Modern English has spread around the world since the 17th century as a consequence of

13130-468: The land since its creation, but there is no evidence that humans evolved there. The specifics of the initial settlement of the Americas by ancient Asians are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that hunters entered the Bering Land Bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska from 27,000 to 14,000 years ago. A growing viewpoint is that

13260-431: The languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic . Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs , and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm's and Verner's laws . English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as

13390-714: The mainland in Mexico. With local indigenous allies, the Spanish conquered the Aztec empire in central Mexico in 1521. Spain then established permanent cities in Mexico, Central America, and Spanish South America in the sixteenth century. Once Spaniards conquered the high civilization of the Aztecs and Incas, the Caribbean was a backwater of the Spanish empire. Other European powers began to intrude on areas claimed by Spain, including

13520-927: The middle into the main range of the Rockies and the coast ranges in California , Oregon , Washington , and British Columbia , with the Great Basin—a lower area containing smaller ranges and low-lying deserts—in between. The highest peak is Denali in Alaska. The U.S. Geographical Survey (USGS) states that the geographic center of North America is "6 miles [10 km] west of Balta, Pierce County, North Dakota " at about 48°10′N 100°10′W  /  48.167°N 100.167°W  / 48.167; -100.167 , about 24 kilometers (15 mi) from Rugby, North Dakota . The USGS further states that "No marked or monumented point has been established by any government agency as

13650-454: The name America to North America. In 1538, Gerardus Mercator used the term America on his world map of the entire Western Hemisphere . On his subsequent 1569 map , Mercator called North America "America or New India" ( America sive India Nova ). The Spanish Empire called its territories in North and South America "Las Indias", and the name given to the state body that oversaw the region

13780-493: The northernmost countries and territories of North America: the U.S., Bermuda , Canada, Greenland, and St. Pierre and Miquelon. Although the term does not refer to a unified region, Middle America includes Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. North America's largest countries by land area are Canada and the U.S., both of which have well-defined and recognized subregions. In Canada, these include (from east to west) Atlantic Canada , Central Canada , Canadian Prairies ,

13910-440: The northernmost extent of the island named Newfoundland , has provided unmistakable evidence of Norse settlement. Norse explorer Leif Erikson (c. 970–1020 CE) is thought to have visited the area. Erikson was the first European to make landfall on the continent (excluding Greenland). The Mayan culture was still present in southern Mexico and Guatemala when the Spanish conquistadors arrived, but political dominance in

14040-484: The official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as India , Ireland , and Canada ). In some other countries, it is the sole or dominant language for historical reasons without being explicitly defined by law (such as in the United States and United Kingdom ). It is a co-official language of the United Nations , the European Union , and many other international and regional organisations. It has also become

14170-426: The prestige varieties among the middle classes. In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him , she and her , who and whom ), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support , have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word "do" as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first it

14300-605: The raised but relatively flat plateau of the Canadian Shield in the northeast; and the varied eastern region, which includes the Appalachian Mountains, the coastal plain along the Atlantic seaboard, and the Florida peninsula. Mexico, with its long plateaus and cordilleras , falls largely in the western region, although the eastern coastal plain does extend south along the Gulf. The western mountains are split in

14430-500: The region, and as such rainforest , monsoon , and savanna types can be found, with rains and high temperatures throughout the year. Notable North American fauna include the bison , black bear , jaguar , cougar , prairie dog , turkey , pronghorn , raccoon , coyote , and monarch butterfly . Notable plants that were domesticated in North America include tobacco , maize , squash , tomato , sunflower , blueberry , avocado , cotton , chile pepper , and vanilla . Laurentia

14560-678: The reign of Henry V . Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents , and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard , developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands . In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English. Literature from

14690-487: The results of the formation of Pangaea was the Appalachian Mountains , which formed some 480 mya, making it among the oldest mountain ranges in the world. When Pangaea began to rift around 200 mya, North America became part of Laurasia , before it separated from Eurasia as its own continent during the mid- Cretaceous period. The Rockies and other western mountain ranges began forming around this time from

14820-468: The sense of belonging only to people who are ethnically English . Use of English is growing country-by-country internally and for international communication. Most people learn English for practical rather than ideological reasons. Many speakers of English in Africa have become part of an "Afro-Saxon" language community that unites Africans from different countries. As decolonisation proceeded throughout

14950-474: The southern dialects. Theoretically, as late as the 900s AD, a commoner from certain (northern) parts of England could hold a conversation with a commoner from certain parts of Scandinavia. Research continues into the details of the myriad tribes in peoples in England and Scandinavia and the mutual contacts between them. The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings ( nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and

15080-455: The study of English as an auxiliary language. The trademarked Globish uses a relatively small subset of English vocabulary (about 1500 words, designed to represent the highest use in international business English) in combination with the standard English grammar. Other examples include Simple English . The increased use of the English language globally has had an effect on other languages, leading to some English words being assimilated into

15210-473: The word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages. English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during

15340-785: The world may include no native speakers of English at all, even while including speakers from several different countries. This is particularly true of the shared vocabulary of mathematics and the sciences. English is a pluricentric language , which means that no one national authority sets the standard for use of the language. Spoken English, including English used in broadcasting, generally follows national pronunciation standards that are established by custom rather than by regulation. International broadcasters are usually identifiable as coming from one country rather than another through their accents , but newsreader scripts are also composed largely in international standard written English . The norms of standard written English are maintained purely by

15470-539: The world, but the number of English speakers in India is uncertain, with most scholars concluding that the United States still has more speakers of English than India. Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca , is also regarded as the first world language . English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy. English is, by international treaty,

15600-480: The world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations ) and the United States . English is the third-most spoken native language , after Standard Chinese and Spanish ; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of

15730-438: The worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media in these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation , and law. Its modern grammar is the result of a gradual change from a dependent-marking pattern typical of Indo-European with

15860-405: Was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Oceania, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent states that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century

15990-549: Was called the Council of the Indies . The United Nations and its statistics division recognize North America as including three regions: Northern America, Central America , and the Caribbean . "Northern America" is a distinct term from "North America", excluding Central America, which itself may or may not include Mexico . In the limited context of regional trade agreements, the term is used to reference three nations: Canada,

16120-513: Was estimated as over 592 million people in 23 independent states , or about 7.5% of the world's population. In human geography , the terms "North America" and "North American" can refer to Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Greenland or, alternatively, Canada, Greenland and the US (Mexico being classified as part of Latin America ) or simply Canada and the US (Greenland being classified as either Arctic or European (due to its political status as

16250-518: Was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , and Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur . In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer. The next period in

16380-817: Was in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, followed by additional colonial establishments on the east coast from present-day Georgia in the south to Massachusetts in the north, forming the Thirteen Colonies of British America. The English did not establish settlements north or east of the St. Lawrence Valley in present-day Canada until after the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War . Britain's early settlements in present-day Canada included St. John's, Newfoundland in 1630 and Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1749. The first permanent French settlement

16510-530: Was in Quebec City, Quebec in 1608 English language English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , whose speakers, called Anglophones , originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain . The namesake of the language is the Angles , one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain . It is the most spoken language in

16640-505: Was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession . The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible. The transition from Old to Middle English can be placed during the writing of the Ormulum . The oldest Middle English texts that were written by

16770-533: Was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in -ing , appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt ), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of politer ). British English

16900-473: Was the first European to suggest that the Americas represented a landmass not then known to the Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller published a world map, and placed the word "America" on the continent of present-day South America. The continent north of present-day Mexico was then referred to as Parias. On a 1553 world map published by Petrus Apianus , North America was called "Baccalearum", meaning "realm of

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