The Development of English Unit 1: Germanic and Latinate Words

Germanic words in English Grammatical function words: articles, pronouns, determiners, auxiliary verbs, numbers, prepositions The more common, everyday, concrete words (e.g. colors, animals, basic verbs) Used the letters: g, w, y, the combinations ng, wh, th, gh, ght Common prefixes and suffixes: be- -y -ful -less -ish -ly -ng, ing

Latinate words in English Full lexical items (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) Usually long (five or more letters) Academic words, words for abstract concepts Common suffixes: Common prefixes: -tion, -sion -ence, -ance -ment -ity, -ify, -ate, -ite -ive ad-, ab-, a- in-, im-, un- con-, com- de-, dis- sub-, super- inter-, trans-,

Combinations But note that today there are many words which combine components of both: for example, the word beautiful comes from beauty (Latin/French) and the Germanic suffix –ful; clearly from clear (Latin/French) and the Germanic suffix –ly.

Comparison of texts Informal English language (taken from an message): "…Every/thing[1] is so huge and even though I am used to the language every/thing is new and unfamiliar, except for my family here…“[1] 18 Germanic out of a total of 24 words: 75% Formal English language (Academic text): "This article presents the results of an empirical survey aimed at obtaining classroom data on motivational/motivational[2] strategies.“[2] 9 Germanic out of a total of 18 words: 50% [1][1] The word everything doesn’t appear in the etymology dictionary a single word, but as two separated words. [2][2] “from motive (q.v.), perhaps modeled on Fr. motiver or Ger. motivieren”.