Native speakers of English are people whose first language is English. They learned English when they were children. They think in English. They use it naturally. Usually native speakers of English are people from English-speaking countries like the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Ireland, etc.

Standard English is a general term for a form of written and spoken English that is considered the model for educated people. There are no set rules or vocabulary for “standard English” because, unlike languages such as French or Dutch, English does not have a governing body to establish usage. As a result, the concept of “standard English” tends to be fluid. Various regional and national “standards” exist.

The two most common internationally recognized varieties of standard English are American English and British English (also known as Commonwealth English).

The English language is a West Germanic language that originated from languages brought by Germanic settlers from various parts of north-west Germany, including what later became known as Friesland, during the first half of the first millenium. The language was subsequently influenced by two successive waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of languages in the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who colonised the island in the eighth and ninth centuries. The second wave was by the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke a variety of French. These two invasions caused English to become highly ‘creolised’; creolisation arises from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication. Cohabition with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo–Friesian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of European languages; this new layer entered English through use in the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a ‘borrowing’ language of considerable suppleness and huge vocabulary.