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96-465: Gribshunden or Griffen ( English : " Griffin - Hound " or "Griffin"), also known by several variant names including Gribshund , Gripshunden , Gripshund , Griff , and Griffone , was a Danish warship , the flagship of Hans ( John), King of Denmark (r. 1481–1513). Gribshunden sank in 1495 after an explosion while in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Ronneby in southeastern Sweden ;

192-546: 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

288-695: A mythical beast was recovered from the forward part of the wreck. Suggestive of the ship's Gribshunden (" Griffin -Hound") name, the chimeric figurehead is described as a dog -like or dragon -like sea monster with lion ears, devouring a person in its crocodilian mouth. The figurehead was conserved at the Danish National Museum, and is now curated and exhibited at Blekinge Museum in Sweden. In 2002, nine oak beds for artillery pieces were recovered by archaeologists for study and exhibition. Since that recovery, additional oak gun beds have been identified on

384-635: 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

480-556: A crown-like symbol, fine leather shoes, and exotic spices and foodstuffs including clove, ginger, saffron, pepper, and almonds. A 2021 episode of the American science show NOVA profiles the 2019 underwater archeological investigation of Gribshunden . English language English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , whose speakers, called Anglophones , originated in early medieval England on

576-651: 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

672-484: 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

768-430: A habitat in the archipelago include Osmoderma eremita and Lecanographa amylacea . The towns of Karlshamn and Karlskrona are both located within the archipelago area; indeed, Karlskrona is mainly situated on Trossö island. The latter, having been founded as a naval base , is noted for its Baroque architecture and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site . Shipbuilding has been a traditional local trade within

864-520: 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

960-688: 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,

1056-679: 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

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1152-407: 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

1248-744: 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

1344-429: A time-series plan of the excavation trenches to document activities on the wreck. 3D models of selected artifacts can be re-inserted into the photogrammetric plan of the shipwreck, ultimately delivering an interpretive tool to visualize the spatial relationships among the objects contained in the wreck. In August 2015, the shipwreck attracted international media attention when a well-preserved wooden figurehead depicting

1440-447: 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

1536-552: 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

1632-400: 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 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

1728-459: 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

1824-603: 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

1920-520: Is an archipelago in the Baltic Sea , located in Blekinge in the south of Sweden . Blekinge archipelago stretches among almost the entire coastline of Blekinge, from west to east. It covers some 210,000 hectares (520,000 acres) including water; the landmass amounts to about 54,000 hectares (130,000 acres). The archipelago is dominated by a few large islands, Tjärö , Aspö , Hasslö , Tärnö and Sturkö , with smaller islands and skerries interspersed. In

2016-407: 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

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2112-528: 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

2208-527: 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

2304-424: 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

2400-517: 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

2496-777: 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

2592-479: 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

2688-537: 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

2784-532: 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

2880-525: 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 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

2976-731: 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 the Anglic languages in the British Isles , and into the Frisian languages and Low German /Low Saxon on

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3072-641: 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

3168-544: The late medieval period . This is in part because the wreckage has been left undamaged by shipworm due to the Baltic Sea's brackish waters, measured at 7.7 practical salinity units at the Gribshunden site. In the 1970s, the local diving club discovered the wreck at a depth of 10 m (33 ft), in the Baltic Sea north of Stora Ekön, an island in the Blekinge archipelago off the coast of Ronneby , Sweden . In 2000

3264-511: 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

3360-558: 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

3456-596: 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

3552-595: 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

3648-512: 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

3744-636: The Danish and Norwegian Councils, consisting of the high nobility and senior clergymen, and their retinues. This diplomatic effort was necessary because the Swedish leader, Sten Sture the Elder , resisted Hans' efforts to bring Sweden back into the Kalmar Union . As the premier ship of the Danish fleet, Gribshunden and the people and material it carried were symbols of military, economic, cultural, and social power. The vessel

3840-537: 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

3936-628: 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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4032-543: 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

4128-550: 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

4224-490: 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

4320-507: 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 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

4416-450: The archipelago and the area is known for a traditional type of small boat, called blekingeeka and used for tasks like fishing and transporting stone locally. In the 1970s, the local diving club discovered a shipwreck in the Blekinge archipelago that was eventually identified by archaeologists as Gribshunden , a 15th-century Danish warship . The shipwreck is significant as one of

4512-407: 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,

4608-449: 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

4704-400: 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

4800-638: 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

4896-682: 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

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4992-426: The decades that followed, larger and more powerful guns came into use on warships such as Mary Rose , the flagship of Henry VIII. Unlike Mary Rose, Gribshunden never engaged in combat actions during its long career, but its crew did fire the artillery. In 2021 archaeologists discovered the oldest known linstock in the excavation trench, which held the burning fuse used to ignite the artillery's powder charge. Charring on

5088-476: 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

5184-467: 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

5280-401: 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

5376-539: 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

5472-684: 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

5568-408: 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

5664-710: 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

5760-479: 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,

5856-407: 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

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5952-403: 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

6048-524: 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

6144-467: 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

6240-483: 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 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

6336-449: The king. The 2021 excavation revealed remains of eight crossbows , dozens of crossbow bolts, and one handgonne (early handheld firearm). These finds join the crossbow and handgonne stock recovered in 2019, and several crossbow bolts recovered in 2006 and 2019. High status artifacts include a purse of silver coins, two extraordinary identical pressure-printed works of art on birch bark, a tankard milled from alder wood and emblazoned with

6432-431: 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

6528-408: The linstock indicates it had been in use by a gunner. Excavations conducted in 2006 and from 2019 to 2021 have delivered a wide variety of both mundane and high-status objects. These include casks coopered on a Danish volumetric standard containing common foodstuffs such as beef, fish, and beer, but also one cask containing a locally-caught 2-meter long butchered sturgeon, which was a fish reserved for

6624-426: 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

6720-467: The regional authority in Blekinge county learned that the wreck could be a medieval warship, and mandated archaeological investigations. From 2001 until 2012 archaeologist Lars Einarsson of the Kalmar County Museum conducted a series of activities at the site. In 2002, Swedish naval historian Ingvar Sjöblom tentatively identified the ship as Gribshunden. Subsequent dendrochronological analysis of

6816-657: 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

6912-440: The sea floor with a starboard list of about 27 degrees. Despite disruption from Hans' salvors immediately after it sank and slow natural decay over five centuries, the starboard side of the ship is in good condition from the keel to the first deck, with the starboard superstructure collapsed outboard from that level and preserved in the sediments. While not as intact as Vasa , Gribshunden is the best-preserved ship yet discovered from

7008-464: 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

7104-438: The ship is one of the best-preserved wrecks yet discovered from the late medieval period . The first mention of this ship by name comes from a letter dated 16 May 1486, in which Hans, King of Denmark and Norway , noted his location as "in navi nostra Griffone ", Latin for "in our ship Griffon ". Gribshunden and its variant names were then subsequently recorded in the Danish fleet's ship lists from 1487 to 1495. The ship

7200-563: The ship's timbers showed that they came from oak trees felled in the Ardennes forest along the River Meuse watershed in the winter of 1482–1483, confirming a late medieval date for the wreck. Archaeological and historical research indicates Gribshunden was purpose-built as a warship, an example of the first generation of vessels designed to carry gunpowder weapons. The combination of artillery and ships specifically intended to carry these weapons

7296-584: The ship. Hans and the fleet continued to Kalmar after the loss of the flagship, but Sten Sture delayed his arrival in Kalmar throughout the summer, finally appearing in August only after Hans and the Danish-Norwegian delegation had departed. The Kalmar Union was re-established more than two years later, after Hans' army defeated Sten Sture's forces at the 1497 Battle of Rotebro . The wreck of Gribshunden came to rest on

7392-502: The ships commanded by Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and others. Building on earlier investigations on the site, from 2019 new studies of the wreck commenced with collection of photogrammetric data to create a three-dimensional site plan. More than 5000 high-resolution digital images were processed to generate the initial 3D model, from which accurate measurements of the site and its features can be derived. In successive field seasons, this 3D plan has been successively updated to create

7488-478: 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 the Germanic branch. It exists on a dialect continuum with Scots and is then most closely related to

7584-474: 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

7680-455: 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

7776-508: The transition to the adoption of much larger ships after the late medieval period. Surveys of the wreck indicate the ship had a keel length of 25.5 m (93.5 ft) and an estimated overall length of 32 m (105 ft), with a maximum beam of approximately 8 m (26 ft). Gribshunden perhaps was designed similarly to the vessels used on voyages of exploration in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and therefore archaeological investigation of this site may provide insights into

7872-444: The vocabularies of other languages. This influence of English has led to concerns about language death , and to claims of linguistic imperialism , and has provoked resistance to the spread of English; however the number of speakers continues to increase because many people around the world think that English provides them with opportunities for better employment and improved lives. Blekinge archipelago Blekinge archipelago

7968-448: The whole archipelago area, some 85,000 people live, of whom 4,000 are islanders. The island of Utlängan is the farthest out to sea of the archipelago's islands; only the lighthouse rock Utklippan is farther out. The landscape is a diverse cultural landscape , characterised by mainly a mix between oak pastures and deciduous forest . For its size, the archipelago exhibits an unusually high biodiversity . Endangered species who find

8064-473: 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

8160-785: 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

8256-539: 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,

8352-438: 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

8448-574: The wreck and two more oak beds have been recovered. As of 2024, the wreck has revealed remains of 14 artillery pieces, including three still in situ. Two of those recently discovered guns have their iron gun tubes and breech chambers intact. Identified in 2021, the wooden bed of one of these in situ guns is 4.1 m (13.5 ft) long; this is nearly 50% longer than any of the other gun beds recovered from this wreck. Gribshunden's artillery marks an early phase of guns at sea, consisting entirely of light anti-personnel guns not intended for sinking ships. In

8544-405: 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

8640-471: Was an essential enabling technology for European domination of the globe after 1492. Gribshunden represents a fusion of Northern European clinker or lapstrake shipbuilding practices with Mediterranean and southern European flush-planked traditions; atop the carvel-built hull is a lightly constructed superstructure of lapstrake planks on frames. Gribshunden is the oldest carvel hull found in Nordic waters, and marks

8736-620: Was an important aspect of Hans' strategy to convince the Swedes to re-unify with Denmark and Norway. According to historical accounts, Gribshunden suffered an explosion, burned, and sank at anchor in the natural harbor near the town of Ronneby , Sweden in June 1495 while en route to Kalmar. These accounts include the nearly contemporaneous Swedish Sturekrönikan ( The Sture Chronicle ) and two later German sources: Reimar Koch's Lübeck Chronicle and Caspar Weinreich's Danzig Chronicle . Hans himself

8832-455: Was ashore at the time of the loss and escaped physical injury. However, teenage expedition member Tyge Krabbe remembered twenty years after the event that some of the supposed 150 people on board died in the calamity. Krabbe's account, like the others, must be read critically and not accepted as objective truth. For instance, Krabbe's memory placed the shipwreck in 1494, not 1495; and archaeological investigations have revealed no evidence of fire on

8928-511: 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

9024-500: 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

9120-533: 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

9216-470: Was used frequently by Hans during its ten-year lifespan. Archival documents show the king sailed on the ship to Norway in 1486 and 1490, and to Gotland in 1487. He sent the vessel to England with a delegation to negotiate with Henry VII. In summer 1495, on the ship's final voyage, Hans set sail from Copenhagen for Kalmar , Sweden, for a summit with the Swedish Council. Accompanying Hans was a fleet carrying

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