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T he Origins o f t he
En glish lan gu a ge
FAQs:
Where does English come from?!3
http://englishlanguage.eslreading.org/ http://esolebooks.com/
2
Where does English come from?
Very little.
Perhaps surprisingly the Roman occupation of Britain did
not have a major impact on the development of the English
language. Only place names like London, Bath & Chester
indicate the official language of the occupiers.
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roots. Sometimes the new anglo-norman words existed
alongside existing anglo-saxon ones: beef and cow for example.
See 1,700 words that are identical in the French & English here.
5
How did French influence English pronunciation?
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About 5% of commonly English words have a direct Greek
origin but around 25% come via Latin.
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Spanish and other European languages. Modern English has
evolved from centuries of common use rather than a formal set
of rules.
The nearest English has to an academy is the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED). In the word game Scrabble, for
example, you can only use words from a dictionary.
How does a word get into the OED?
A team at the OED is always looking for new words. When a
word appears repeatedly in a variety of publications they
consider it for inclusion.
Every year new words enter the Oxford English
Dictionary. The ‘how-much-is-it-used?’ criteria leads to
surprising inclusions. The word rightish, for example, is a slang
term with an imprecise meaning, but it was included in the
OED June 2010.
© 2010 Kieran McGovern
Learning activities:
Blog: http://thisinterestedme.blogspot.com/
The English Language: http://englishlanguage.eslreading.org/
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Email: kieran@eslreading.org