A、Celts had lived in Britain long before the invaders came. B、Old English is the result of the mixture of Celts and invaders. C、

More people are trying to learn English than any other language in the world. Where did the English language come from? Why has it become so popular? To answer these questions we must travel back in time about 5,000 years to an area north of the Black Sea in southeastern Europe.
    Experts say the people in that area spoke a language called Proto-Indo-European. That language is no longer spoken. Researchers do not really know what it sounded like.
    (26) Yet,Proto-Indo-European is believed to be the ancestor of most European languages. These include the languages that became ancient Greek,ancient German and the ancient Latin.
    Latin disappeared as a spoken language. Yet it left behind three great languages that became modern Spanish, French and Italian. (27) Ancient German became Dutch, Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish and one of the languages that developed into English.
    The English language is a result of the invasions of the island of Britain over many hundreds of years. The first invasions were by a people called Angles about 1,500 years ago. The Angles were a German tribe who crossed the English Channel. Later two more groups crossed to Britain. They were the Saxons and the Jutes.
    (28) These groups found a people called the Celts, who had lived in Britain for many thousands of years. The Celts and the invaders fought.
    After a while, most of the Celts were killed, or made slaves. Some escaped to live in the area that became Wales. Through the years,the Saxons,Angles and Jutes mixed their different languages. The result is what is called Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
26. What do we learn about Proto-Indo-European from the passage?
27. From which language does English develop?
28. What do we learn from the passage?