❖ English is extremely flexible , allowing the language to borrow words from other languages and to evolve. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, (475,000 main headwords
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De facto world language
❖ a large number of speakers,a substantial fraction of nonnative speakers . widely taught as a foreign language
❖ Economic and political reason
❖ History reason
❖ Language itself ❖ the linguistic community is not defined along ethnic lines种
族界限 ❖ official status in several countries
❖ cultural influence use in the academic community and significant body of literature
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❖ due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries ,
❖ United Kingdom are the largest colonial powers in modern times, the colony had been all over the world.

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❖ English speaking country (The United States, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Australia ),World ranking of economic strength among the forefront of total economic output in 2003 accounted for 67.5 percent of the world economy
❖ Their economic growth is enough to lead the world economic development
❖ international Trade organizations WTO ,APEC ,European Union and so on
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origin
❖ English is the language most often studied as a foreign language in the European Union (by 89% of schoolchildren)
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cause
❖ the British Empire spread to six continents. During the Age of Discoveryin the 15th and 16th centuries
❖ The English language is a result of the invasions of the island of Britain over many hundreds of years . Modern English developed from there and continues to adopt foreign words, especially from Latin and Greek.
❖ Use international organizations
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general situation
❖ Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.
❖ combining native and non-native speakers it is the most commonly spoken language in the world
❖ Experts say the people in about five thousand years ago spoke a language called Proto-Indo-European.
❖ it is believed to be the ancestor of most European languages. These include the languages that became ancient Greek, ancient German and the ancient Latin
❖ the United States from the mid 20th century to the present. It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in Commonwealth countries,and English was spread across the world through Holywood ,TV and music
❖ In 1876,it already has 22.5 million square kilometers of territory and population of 251,900,000
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❖ English is the official language of more than seventy-five countries including Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa