UNIDAD 1.

LA LENGUA INGLESA
TEMA 8: RECONOCIMIENTO DE COGNADOS

Objetivos: Al término de este tema serás capaz de identificar los cognados en un texto y las palabras
similares en escritura y en algunas ocasiones la pronunciación tanto en inglés como en español.

Cuando leemos textos en inglés y no hemos aprendido mucho vocabulario podemos valernos de los
cognados para comprender el contenido.

Los cognados son palabras similares tanto en la lengua inglesa como en español. Los cognados
no están escritos exactamente igual, pero podemos reconocerlos por su parecido con palabras
similares que conocemos en nuestro idioma. Hay algunas sugerencias de cómo analizar las palabras
para poder comprenderla en nuestro idioma, por ejemplo:

Todas las palabras terminadas en –tion en inglés se leen –ción en español (communication
=comunicación). Por cierto, no te preocupes cuando la misma consonante se duplica en una palabra
( A u d i o 8 . 1 ) (communication, office, letter, necessary, Mississippi) pues no afecta el significado
ni la pronunciación de la palabra y generalmente en español no ocurre esta duplicidad de consonantes
o vocales.

Veamos el siguiente párrafo tomado del texto History of the English Language:
(Audio 8.2)

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian

dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what
is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a
diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon
Kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually
came to dominate.

Todas las palabras subrayadas son cognados; no se escriben exactamente igual en español, pero
podemos reconocer la palabra por su cercanía con nuestro idioma.
El inglés tiende a terminar las palabras en consonante o utilizando la letra “e”; fijate en las palabras
English, Germanic, dialect, various, part / language, originated, diverse, dominate.
Lee el siguiente texto y responde los ejercicios que le siguen. (Audio 8.3)

Ejercicio 1. Identifica los cognados que aparecen en el texto, márcalos con color azul. (Este es
para entregar en Classroom)

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

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I. English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian
dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what are now
northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of
dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England. One of
these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate.

II. The original Old English language was then influenced by two further waves
of invasion: the first by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic language
family, who conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the
second by the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately
developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These two invasions caused
English to become “mixed” to some degree.

III. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical

simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the
later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more
elaborate layer of words from the Romance languages (Latin-based languages). This
Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus,
English developed into a “borrowing” language of great flexibility, resulting in an
enormous and varied vocabulary.

IV. Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place
mainly during the 15th century. English was further transformed by the spread of a
standardized London-based dialect in government and administration and by the
standardizing effect of printing. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid-late 16th
century), the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. In 1604, the
first English dictionary was published, the Table Alphabetical.

V. English has continuously adopted foreign words, especially from Latin and
Greek, since the Renaissance. (In the 17th century, Latin words were often used with the
original inflections, but these eventually disappeared). As there are many words from
different languages and English spelling is variable, the risk of mispronunciation is
high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects, most notably in the
West Country.

Modern English

VI. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first significant English dictionary, his
Dictionary of the English Language.

VII. The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern

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 English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two
principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for
new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the Earth’s
surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.

Taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language

Ejercicio 2. Decide si los siguientes enunciados son verdaderos (V) o falsos (F).

V F 1. Los invasores germánicos hablaban una variante del inglés.

V F 2. El inglés ha sufrido diversos cambios debido a las múltiples

invasiones.
V F 3. Inglaterra se vió afectada únicamente por dos invasores:
germanos y normandos.
V F 4. El aporte de los anglofrisianos fue la simplificación en la
gramática.
V F 5. La publicación del primer diccionario dio como resultado el
incremento en el léxico.

Ejercicio 3. Elabora una lista de los cognados. Escribe la palabra en inglés como aparece en el
texto y después su equivalente en español. Hay un ejemplo. (Este es para entregar en Classroom)

Ejemplo:
00. Germanic language: lengua germana.