Short answers, pulled from the story.
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European family that emerged in early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Britain after the end of Roman rule, and it grew from a group of West Germanic dialects spoken by the Anglo-Saxons.
Ethnologue estimated over 1.4 billion English speakers worldwide. English is the most spoken language in the world and the most widely learned second language, with more second-language speakers than native speakers, though it ranks only third among native languages after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.
English is the official language, or one of the official languages, in 57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories. This makes it the most geographically widespread language in the world, and it is also a co-official language of the United Nations and the European Union.
Middle English borrowed vocabulary extensively from French dialects, the source of about 28 per cent of Modern English words, and from Latin, the source of an additional 28 per cent. The French influence followed the Norman Conquest of 1066, when the Norman ruling class introduced loanwords related to politics, law, and prestige, while English grammar and phonology remained Germanic.
The Great Vowel Shift, dated from 1350 to 1700, was a chain shift that changed the pronunciation of the stressed long vowels of Middle English. For example, the word bite was originally pronounced as beet is today. The shift explains many spelling irregularities, since English kept Middle English spellings that no longer match the sounds.
Braj Kachru categorised countries into three circles. Inner-circle countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand have large native-speaking communities. Outer-circle countries such as the Philippines, India, and Nigeria use English widely as a second language, while expanding-circle countries teach it as a foreign language.