English language

=== Overview of history ===
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]] [[Viking Age#England|invaders and settlers]], starting in 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.<ref name="Ian Short 2007">Ian Short, ''A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World'', "Language and Literature", Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2007. (p. 193) {{doi|10.1017/9781846150463.011|nolink=y}}</ref>{{sfn|Crystal|2003b|p=30}}

[[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 language|Greek]] words and roots, concurrent with the introduction of the [[printing press]] to [[London]]. This era notably culminated in the [[King James Bible]] and [[Shakespeare's plays|the works of William Shakespeare]].{{sfn|How English evolved into a global language|2010}}<ref>Crystal, David; Potter, Simeon (editors). "[https://www.britannica.com/topic/English-language/Historical-background English language: Historical background]". ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Jan. 2024.</ref> The printing press greatly standardised English spelling,{{citation needed|date=April 2023}} 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 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.{{sfn|The Routes of English}} Its [[English grammar|modern grammar]] is the result of a gradual change from a typical [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] [[dependent-marking language|dependent-marking]] pattern with a rich [[inflection]]al [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] and relatively [[free word order]] to a mostly [[analytic language|analytic]] pattern with little inflection and a fairly fixed [[subject–verb–object word order]].{{sfn|König|1994|page=539}} Modern English relies more on [[auxiliary verb]]s and [[word order]] for the expression of complex [[grammatical tense|tenses]], [[grammatical aspect|aspects]] and [[grammatical mood|moods]], as well as [[passive voice|passive constructions]], [[interrogative]]s, and some [[negation (linguistics)|negation]].
Description	What you type	What you get
Italic	''Italic text''	Italic text
Bold	'''Bold text'''	Bold text
Bold & italic	'''''Bold & italic text'''''	*Bold & italic text*
Description	What you type	What you get
Reference	Page text.<ref>[https://www.example.org/ Link text], additional text.</ref>	Page text.^[1]
Named reference	Page text.<ref name="test">[https://www.example.org/ Link text]</ref>	Page text.^[2]
Additional use of the same reference	Page text.<ref name="test" />	Page text.^[2]
Display references	<references />	↑ Link text, additional text. ↑ Link text