This book tells the story of how the English language has developed over the last 15 centuries. Illustrating the compelling history of how the relatively obscure dialects spoken by tribes from what are now Denmark, the Low Countries, and northern Germany became the most widely spoken language in the world, this history also explores how that language evolved during the last two millennia. Chronologically ordered and divided into six main sections covering pre-Roman and Latin influences, the ascent of Old English, and the succession of Middle English, Early Modern, and then Late Modern English to today's global language, this book also explores such factors as the history of the printing press, the works of Chaucer, the evolution of the American Dictionary of the English Language, commonly known as Webster's, and the Oxford English Dictionary, to the use of slang in today's speech and the coming of electronic messaging: language for a postmodern world.