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Global Mother Tongue

by Howard Richler

Cover of Global Mother Tongue
Popularity 2

For centuries, the English language has been raiding other languages for words. It has accumulated the largest vocabulary in the world, with only 30% of its words deriving from the original Anglo-Saxon stock. English, in all of its unique forms and permutations, is spoken by 1.6 billion people in the world - almost a third of the planet's population.

HistoryForeign elementsEnglish languageLehnwortVariationFremdwortDialectsEtymologyEnglish language, dialectsEnglish language, variation