With Britain becoming a colonial power, English has been more widely used.
After the Qing Dynasty, English entered China. After the Opium War, some businessmen and government officials who often dealt with foreigners began to learn English.
Since the mid-1960s, English has become the first foreign language in New China.
English is a language of Indo-European Germanic language family, which consists of 26 letters. English letters originated from Latin letters, which originated from Greek letters, which evolved from Phoenician letters. English is the official language designated internationally (as the mother tongue), the most widely used first language in the world, and the official language of the European Union, many international organizations and Commonwealth countries. The number of native speakers of English ranks third in the world, second only to Chinese and Spanish.
English evolved from the language spoken by the white people of Anglo-Saxon and jute tribes who immigrated to the British Isles from Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands and surrounding areas, and spread to all parts of the world through active British colonization. Due to contact with many national languages in history, vocabulary has changed from unitary to pluralistic, grammar has changed from "more inflections" to "less inflections", and pronunciation has changed regularly. 19 From the 20th century, the leading position of Britain and America in world culture, economy, military affairs, politics and science made English an international language. Nowadays, English is used as a medium of communication in many international situations.
English is also the language most closely related to computers. Most programming languages are related to English. With the use of the Internet, English is more widely used. English is one of the working languages of the United Nations. Scottish, low Saxon, Danish, German, Dutch, Afrikaans and English are also very close. Normans with French descent conquered the kingdom of England in the 1 1 century, bringing tens of thousands of French and Latin words, which greatly enriched English vocabulary and led to the invalidation of many original words.
During the Tang Dynasty, the resident population of Chang 'an accounted for 5% (according to reports). At that time, there was "Old English", but after the Qing Dynasty's "closed door", industrial revolution in europe and finally Eight-Nation Alliance attacked Beijing, Europe became the most powerful place in the world, and all the world leaders turned to Europe. Because of its strength, other borders naturally follow suit, learning European technology, learning European science and learning Europe. At that time, the United States was still a colony of Britain, and English naturally became the "first language in the world." The computer was invented in America, and the basic network programming codes are also numbers and English. At that time, people were in a mess. They knew the world and told us in English. At this time, a large number of international students came, and that's when the word "worshiping foreign things and flattering foreign countries" came into being. Therefore, English has been infiltrating into China (learning from each other in culture, without meaning to belittle), which is the fastest.
Modern English was formed after 1500 years. Before that, it was old English, which was not popular in Europe (English became popular after the formation of the British Empire), so those missionaries were unlikely to speak English. For example, Matteo Ricci, who is famous in China, can speak Latin and Greek, Portuguese and Spanish, but he can't speak English. In addition, some enlightened literati and officialdom in the late Ming Dynasty were mainly interested in western science and technology. At that time, all scientific works were written in Latin, so it was necessary to learn Latin, so it was after the Qing Dynasty that China people could speak English. The famous Magerni didn't find out whether China officials could speak English at that time, but perhaps they should learn a little out of necessity or curiosity. Anyway, they learned English on a large scale after the Opium War, and judging from the establishment of the Wentong Library in the Qing Dynasty 1862 to train foreign language talents, before that, few people knew foreign languages, and most of them studied voluntarily, so I think that if they can speak English, Chinese businessmen or local officials who often deal with foreigners may be a little forced, but the time will definitely not be earlier than the Qing Dynasty. As for specialized study and mastery, it should be after the Opium War.