"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things."

Flora Lewis

The Adventure of English. Part 1. Birth of Language

The Adventure of English. Part 1. Birth of Language

English has become the primary language of the world. It is the language used for business, for air traffic control and of course the Internet. Quite an accomplishment for what began as a minor Germanic dialect in about the year 500.

This film is a history of the language itself. How did the language become so important? The Church fought the publishing of the Bible in English because this would allow anyone to read it rather than just the official priests.

Part of the reason for the spread of English has been the wealth of literature written in English. From Beowulf to Chaucer and of course the vulgar playwright William Shakespeare (who contributed 2,000 new words to the language).

The growth of English continues in spite of things like France making it illegal to use English words where good French words could be used. And English continues to change, the English of India for instance allows computer support desks to be located in Mumbai, but communication is not all that easy…

 

BEFORE WATCHING

TASK 1. Discussion

1. Have you ever asked yourself why in the English language one may come across such a diverse amount of words, grammatical phenomena, and phonetic peculiarities?
2. When did the English language start its existence?
3. Do you consider the English word stock to consist of purely English words? What’s its percentage?
4. Does English sound in the same way it used to hundreds of years ago?
5. Can you name the major periods in the history of the English language/people who have made a great impact to its development?


TASK 2. Vocabulary

Guess the meanings of the words and word combinations listed below:

Tenacity, flexibility, near extinction, power to absorb, to evolve, an invasion, to fight back, to unify, to expelled from mother country, to travel through time, an ancestor, to crumble, a 7class citizen, to adopt language/culture, to be pushed to the margins

TASK 3. Questions to the documentary

Answer the following questions:

1. How many years ago was the language  incomprehensible?
2. What dialect did English come from?
3. For how many years was English forced underground?
4. Where can we find the remnants of the true English language?
5. Which tribes give rise to the English language?
6. What tribe was the first to inhabit the British Isles? Do their descendants exist today?
7. Identify the meanings of affixes in place words:
Torpenhow – tor ___________ Carlisle – caer_____________ Reading – ing ___________
Bridlington – ton ___________ Birmingham – ham _________
8. What were the kingdoms the British Isles were divided into by the end of 6th century?
9. What was another name to Old English? How old is it? How many words were there? Name some OE words.
10. What happened in 597? Why this date is of greater importance in the English history?
11. What kind of scrip was common for the Germanic tribes? What language gave the script to English?
12. What is BEOWULF?

WATCHING THE DOCUMENTARY

Watch the documentary ans find the answers to the questions given above.

 

 

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