The rise of the English language is a remarkable success story. When Julius Caesar landed in Britain over two thousand years ago, English did not exist. Five hundred years later, Englisc, incomprehensible to modern ears, was probably spoken by about as few people as currently speak Cherokee. Nearly a thousand years later, when William Shakespeare was in his prime, English was the native language of between five and seven million Englishmen, but it still had a severely limited influence on the world.