English belongs to the West Germanic branch of Indo-European language family, which evolved from the languages spoken by Germanic people of Anglo-Saxon and Jute tribes who immigrated to the island of Great Britain in ancient times and spread to all parts of the world through active British colonization. Due to the contact with many national languages in history, its vocabulary has changed from monism to pluralism, its grammar has changed from "more inflections" to "less inflections", and its pronunciation has changed regularly.