Origin, development, and global spread of English

Position of English in the world
most widely spoken language in the world
global lingua franca
first language in Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, many Carribean Countries
third most common native language
(after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish)
official language of 60 states, EU, world organizations
most popular second language

The Anglosphere: countries where English is spoken natively by the majority of the population

Historical development - linguistic changes
phonetic, phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic
spelling
enrichment of vocabulary (French, Latin, Scandinavian)
typological change (synthetic > analytical)
Earliest history
Indo-European family of languages
Hypothetical common ancestor: Proto-Indo-European