Changes in English 1 In this presentation we are going to look at the way other languages have influenced English and at the similarities and differences between English and other languages.

The English language has been influenced by many other languages The English language has been influenced by many other languages. This has mainly been the result of invasions by the Romans, The Angles and Saxons and the French. There have also been influences from words which have been acquired through trade and the expansion of the British Empire.

Knowing this can sometimes help you to establish what a word means, even of you don’t know. First, let’s look at the influence of Latin and Greek on English.

England was conquered by the French in 1066 England was conquered by the French in 1066. For the next 200 years French was the language of the Court and all the people with power.

Answers as follows: Pork/Cider/Bank/Cream/Cucumber/Uncle/Perfume/Pork Café/Mirror/Beef/Palace/Carrot/Restaurant/Omelette

How many different languages can you think of How many different languages can you think of? Make a list of as many as you can in one minute. Click on the timer to time yourself!

How many did you find? Were these in your list? Chinese Irish Swedish Maori Navaho Hebrew Arabic Spanish Vietnamese A great website that could be used at this point is http://www.ipl.org/youth/hello/ It teaches you how to say hello in a huge number of languages, but also includes words that have been taken into English from each of the languages covered.

In fact, there over two thousand languages! We have already seen how some have influenced English and we can make a guess at what they mean. Others are very different to our own. Some have completely different alphabets (for example Arabic, Chinese, Polish, Greek, Russian and Hebrew). Some of them read from right to left instead of from left to right. !werbeH ni olleH

Languages are constructed differently, too Languages are constructed differently, too. That’s why we can’t translate from English into another language simply by using a dictionary to convert the words. Languages have different syntax and grammar. For example, in English we usually make the past tense by adding the letters ‘–ed’ to a word, no matter who or what we are talking about (E.g I walked, he walked, she walked, we walked etc.). In Spanish words take on a series of different endings depending on the subject of the verb. An interesting experiment to do at this point is to access an Internet site which translates text, type in an extract from a text being studied in class, translate it into another language and then back to English. Pupils could then try to find the original portion of text in their books.

In some languages, such as French and Spanish, there is the idea of gender for words. They can be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. This has implications for their use. For example how they affect adjectives. German has the idea of ‘neuter’ words as well as masculine and feminine.

In English we might say ‘I missed the bus In English we might say ‘I missed the bus.’ In Colombia, in South America, they speak Spanish and would say ‘The bus left me.’ Notice how there is a shift in emphasis from my responsibility to that of the bus!

Languages reflect the culture, too Languages reflect the culture, too. It is said that the Innuit people have dozens of different words for snow. This is because they live surrounded by it and can detect variations in the type of snow which are important to their life and work. We don’t need these distinctions.

Plenary Our language has been shaped by the many influences on our country during its history. Languages use different alphabets and have different grammatical constructions.