2000 years ago English was confined to a handful of savage tribes on the shores of north western Europe Today it is spoken by about a billion people of whom 350 million - nearly one tenth of the world's population - use it as their mother tongue Why do people in Newfoundland speak it with an Irish brogue? How was rhyming slang borrowed by the hippy movement? Nine journeys across time and space show how the language was carried from the villages all round the world