(Ненасытный заимствователь)

English is mixing with and marrying other languages around the world. It is probably the most insatiable borrower. Words newly coined (созданные) or in vogue (в море) in one language are very often added to English as well. There are words from 120 languages in its vocabulary, including Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.

French influence

Have you ever wondered why the English language has different words for animals and meats?

When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, French became the official language of the court. The English would look after the animals and cook the meat, still calling the animals pig, sheep and cow. The Normans, when they saw the cooked meat arrive at their table, would use French words – pork, mutton and beef.

An amazing 10,000 loan words entered English during this period, including such words as table, chair, carpet, country, state, nation, law, army, battle, peace, design, beauty, romance – and, of course, many words for food.

How many is enough?

Scientists say that the average vocabulary of a native speaker is 5,000 words. William Shakespeare, however, used 30,000 words!

Some Facts about English

• There were only 30,000 words in Old English. Modern English has the largest vocabulary in the world – more than 600,000 words.

• There are about 60,000 words in common use.

• About 450-500 words are added to the English vocabulary every year.

• 70 per cent of the English vocabulary are loan words and only 30 per cent of the words are native.

• The most frequently used words in written English are: the, of, and, to, a, in, that, is, I, it, for and as.

• The most frequently used word in conversation is I.

• The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis (a lung disease), with 45 letters.

• The longest words in common use are disproportionableness and incomprehensibilities (21 letters).

• The commonest letter is “e”. More words begin with the letter “s” than any other.

• The most overworked word in English is the word set. It has 126 verbal uses and 58 noun uses.

• The newest letters added to the English alphabet are “j” and “v”, which are of post-Shakespearean use.

• The largest English language dictionary is the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, with 21, 728 pages.

• The commonest English name is Smith. There are about 800,000 people called Smith in England and Wales, and about 1,700,000 in the USA.

Прочитайте текст и отметьте данные ниже предложения как истинные (T) и ложные (F):

1. English has borrowed words from Russian, Greek, Arabic and other languages. ¨

2. The vocabulary of Modern English is the largest in the world. ¨

3. There are more native words in the English vocabulary than loan words. ¨

4. The most frequently used letter is “a”. ¨

5. The word “set” has the largest number of meanings. ¨

6. Letters “j” and “v” were widely used by W. Shakespeare. ¨

7. In XIth century English was the official language in court. ¨

8. Pig and pork, sheep and mutton, cow and beef are English words. ¨

9. Ten thousand French words entered English in the XI th century. ¨

10. W. Shakespeare used five hundred words. ¨

Text 5. 20^th CENTURY ENGLISH

1. During the 19^th and early 20^th centuries many dictionaries and books about language were published including, in Britain, the Oxford English Dictionary, which was begun in 1858. In 1926 Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage presented a traditional view of grammar but rejected the more extreme rules, and was held in great respect for a long time. The development of radio promoted standard English and Received Pronunciation (RP), which became known as BBC English. Many older British people still consider this to be “correct” English, and complain about falling standards in school and the media.

2. In the US, General American English spoken with a Midwestern accent is the standard. In the past English helped to unite immigrants from many countries, but now some people are worried that recent Hispanic immigrants are continuing to use Spanish, There have been attempts to prevent this by making English the only official language. In the 1980s the political correctness movement had a lasting influence on American English by trying to get rid of words with negative associations, e.g. those describing disabled people, and to replace them with positive-sounding expressions.

3. English is now an international language and is used as a means of communication between people from many countries. As a result the influences on the English language are wider than ever and it is possible that World English will move away from using a British or American standard and establish its own international identity.

Прочитайте текст и подберите к пронумерованным абзацам заголовки из данного ниже списка. Поставьте рядом с выбранным заголовком номер абзаца:

• No Grammar at School ¨

• Language Problems in the USA ¨

• Standards of the Good English ¨

• Foreign words in English ¨

• The Future of World English ¨

Text 6. SPOKEN ENGLISH AND BROKEN ENGLISH

G.B. Show

…If you are learning English because you intend to travel in England and wish to be understood there, do not try to speak English perfectly because if you do, no one will understand you.

…Though there is no such thing as perfectly correct English, there is presentable English which we call “Good English”, but in London nine hundred and ninety nine out of every thousand people not only speak bad English but speak even that very badly. You may say that even if they do not speak English well themselves they at least understand it when the speaker is a foreigner, the better he speaks the harder it is to understand him. Therefore the first thing you have to do is to speak with a strong foreign accent, and speak broken English: that is English without any grammar. Then every English person will at once know that you are a foreigner, and try to understand and be ready to help you.

He will not expect you to be polite and to use elaborate grammatical phrases. He will be interested in you because you are a foreigner. If you say: “Will you have the goodness, sir, to direct me to the railway terminus at “Charring Cross”, pronouncing all the vowels and consonants beautifully, he will suspect you of being a beggar. But if you shout, “Please! Charring Cross! Which way?” you will have no difficulty. Half a dozen people will give you directions at once.

Прочитайте текст и ответьте на вопросы:

1. Why must you not speak perfect English?

2. How do 999 Londoners out of 1000 speak English?

3. When is it harder to understand a foreigner?

4. What is broken English?

5. Who will you be suspected to be if you pronounce every sound beautifully?

6. How should you ask the way?