Download The Indo-European Story - Сумський державний університет

Міністерство освіти і науки України
Сумський державний університет
АНГЛІЙСЬКА МОВА СЕРЕД ІНШИХ МОВ
Методичні вказівки для поглибленого
вивчення англійської мови студентами усіх
спеціальностей денної форми навчання
Суми
Видавництво СумДУ
2006
АНГЛІЙСЬКА МОВА СЕРЕД ІНШИХ МОВ
Методичні вказівки для поглибленого вивчення
англійської мови студентами усіх спеціальностей денної
форми навчання / Укладач: А.М.Дядечко.- Суми:
Вид-во СумДУ, 2006.- 48с.
Кафедра іноземних мов
2
Передмова
Методичні вказівки складено для студентів денної
форми навчання, які
вивчають поглиблений
курс англійської мови ( предмет за вибором ).
Метою збірника є вдосконалення навичок та
умінь студентів у різних видах мовної практики.
Десять уроків, що складають перший розділ
збірника, призначені для аудиторної практичної
роботи.
Другий розділ містить завдання для самостійного
виконання студентами.
У двох додатках наведені приклади найбільш
поширених
англомовних
абревіатур
та
порівняльний лексичний словник американського
і британського варіантів сучасної англійської мови.
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To my teachers and students who have been giving
me inspiration, challenge and support in my
English language learning and teaching.
In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with
God; and the Word was God.
The Bible - John, 1: 1
The gift of language is the single human trait that marks
us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of
life. Language is the universal and biologically specific
activity of human beings. We engage in it communally,
compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human
without it; if we were to be separated from it out minds
would die.
Lewis Thomas
The word makes man free. Whoever cannot express
himself is a slave. Speaking is an act of freedom; the
word is freedom itself.
Ludwig Feuerbach
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Unit 1
1 How many languages can you speak/read/write?
How many foreign languages and what languages
exactly would you like to know?
Think of words and phrases from various foreign
languages that you happen to know. Make a list of
these words and the languages they come from. Are
they many in number?
2 Try to explain in English the words that you will read
in the text:
Ancestor, roughly, tribe.
3 Read the text silently paying special attention to the
dates and proper(mainly geographic) names.
The Indo-European Story
In the 1780s, a British judge called Sir William
Jones was living and working in India. During his time
there he studied an ancient language called Sanskrit. What
is interesting about that? Well – Sir William noticed
something unusual about several Sanskrit words … namely,
how similar they were in their equivalents in Latin. Take
mother and father for example. In Sanskrit they were matar
and pitar. In Latin they were mater and pater. Could there,
he wondered, be some connection between Sanskrit and
Latin?
Over 200 years later experts now believe the answer
is definitely ‘yes’. Their research shows that between 60004500 BC a tribe called the Indo-European settled in the
northern part of Central Europe. These people kept animals,
grew crops and worked with leather and wool. They also
had their own language. Until roughly 3000 BC this
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language only existed in Central Europe, but then two
things happened. a) The Indo-Europeans began to ride
horses. b) They discovered the wheel. As a result, they and
their language began to travel long distances for the first
time. Some went east ( to India ) and some went west ( to
Scandinavia, Britain and the Mediterranean ).
During the next 3000/40000 years, languages like
Sanskrit and Latin developed in these new areas - each
with its own local vocabulary, expressions and grammar.
Meanwhile, as they became stronger, Indo-European itself
became weaker, until in the end it disappeared completely.
It is a curious thought that modern-day Italian, Danish and
Greek all had a common ancestor and that in the past all
Europeans spoke the same language? Curious -- but true.
1 Give synonyms to the following words from the text:
connection n
curious adj
common adj
similar adj
research n
notice v
ancient adj
completely adv
2 Use a map to render the text read.
Unit 2
1 For further reading and discussion of the topic make
sure you can pronounce the words correctly:
hymn, to cease, scholar, treatise, Renaissance, plateau.
2 Read texts A and B :
Text A
More about Sanskrit
The Indo-Iranian group is one of the oldest for which we
have historical records. The Vedic hymns, which in an early
form of Sanskrit, date from about 1000 BC but reflect a
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poetic tradition stretching back to the second millennium
BC. Classical Sanskrit appears about 500 BC. It is much
more systemized than Vedic Sanskrit, for it had been seized
upon by early grammarians who formulated rules for its
proper use; even so, Classical Sanskrit was probably not
systemized until it was ceasing to be widely spoken. The
most remarkable of the Indian grammarians was Panini,
who wrote grammar of Sanskrit that to this day holds the
admiration of linguistic scholars.
The first known grammar is Panini’s Sutras, a fourthcentury BC treatise on the Sanskrit language, consisting of
some 4,000 very brief statements of linguistic phenomena.
Sanskrit is in no sense dead as a written language; its
status is roughly comparable to that of Latin in medieval
and Renaissance Europe.
Text B Why Indo-European?
Indo-European is the name given to the family of
languages to which English belongs. The name is based on
the fact that this family covers most of Europe and extends
eastward as far as northern India, with a total body of
speakers of more than one and a half billion.
No document of the original parent language of our
western tongues, Indo-European, has ever been found or is
likely to be found, since the language probably broke up
into separate Indo-European languages before the invention
of writing.
The oldest languages of our Indo-European family of
which we have records are Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, in
the order given. The approximate dates for each are 2000,
1400 and 500 BC. The original homeland of the IndoEuropean speakers is unknown, but the Iranian Plateau and
the shores of the Baltic are the places most favored.
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1 Say what are the key points of each text.
2 Think of some other facts you can share with the class
to enlarge on the topic.
3 Give derivatives of the words below :
proper, admiration, comparable, separate, invention,
unknown.
4 The following words are polysemantic ( have more
than one meaning ). How many of them do you know?
If necessary, consult a dictionary to check yourself:
body, speaker, record, order.
Unit 3
1 Do you think you can read and understand the works
by Shakespeare easily? Explain why.
2 What data, dates and names referring to the history of
Great Britain do you remember?
3 Can you name the closest relatives of the English
language?
4 Read the text:
The Origins of the English Language
A good approach to studying languages is the
historical one. To understand how things are, it is often
helpful and sometimes essential to know how they got to
be that way.
Historically, English belongs to the West Germanic
branch of Indo-European, having developed from the
Anglo-Saxon of the German tribes from the continental
North Sea coast who wrested control of Britain from its
Romanized Celtic inhabitants in the 5th and the 6th centuries.
When they came to Britain, they found the Celts who had
enjoyed the benefits of the Roman government, shared in
the civilization of the Roman Empire and spoke to some
extent the Latin language. If this Teutonic invasion had
never happened, the inhabitants of England would be now
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speaking a language descended from Latin, like French or
Spanish or Italian. In whatever parts of Britain the Teutonic
tribes settled, the Roman civilization and the Roman
language perished.
The highest degree of civilization of that time was in the
North, where the local Northumbrian dialect seemed likely
to become the standard speech of England. It was from the
Angles settled here and their Anglican dialect, that the
language acquired the name of English, which it has ever
since retained. But this Northumrian civilization was almost
destroyed in the 8th and 9th centuries by a new invasion of
pagan tribes. The Danes were near relatives of the
inhabitants they conquered and came from a district not far
from the original home of the earlier invaders. Their
language was so alike Anglo-Saxon that it could be
understood without great difficulty; so when the two races
were settled side by side, it was natural that mixed dialects
should arise, mainly English in character, but with many
Danish words, and with many grammatical forms confused
and blurred. It is in the districts where the Danes were
settled that the English language became first simplified, so
that in the process of development their speech was at least
two centuries ahead of that of the south of England.
When the Northumbrian culture was destroyed, the
kingdom of Wessex became the center of English
civilization. West-Saxon became the literary and classical
form of English, and almost all the specimens of early
English that have been preserved are written in this dialect.
Classical Anglo-Saxon, therefore, was not affected by the
Danish invasion.
But for the third time a foreign race invaded England,
and the language of Wessex, like that of Northumria, was in
its turn almost destroyed. The Normans dominated by
interrupting the tradition of the language, by destroying its
literature and culture, by reducing it to the speech of
uneducated peasants. English, being no longer spoken by
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the cultivated classes or taught in the schools, developed as
a popular spoken language with great rapidity.
Although the development of English was gradual, and there
is at no period a definite break in its continuity, it may be
said to present three main periods of development - the
Old English (lasted down to AD 1200), the Middle English
(from 1200 to 1500) and that of Modern English (from
1500 to the present time).
1 Give synonyms to the following words:
essential, to descend from, to perish, rapidity, to reduce to,
blurred
2 Answer the questions:
1 Do you see any reason in studying English historically?
Do students of English really need it?
2 How was Old English speech brought to England?
3 Who inhabited the island when the Anglo-Saxon tribes
invaded Britain?
4 What were the nearest relations of Old English speech?
5 How do you account for the comparatively high standard
of Celtic civilization at the time of the Anglo-Saxon
invasion?
6 Was district of England was the first to attain a
comparatively high degree of civilization?
7 Why did the language acquire the name of English?
8 In what respect did the Danish invasion differ from that
of the Angles and Saxons?
9 What brought about the rise of mixed dialects?
10 What was the role of the kingdom of Wessex in the
development of the English language?
11 How did the Roman Conquest affect the language?
12 What are the three main periods in the development of
the English language?
2 Write ten sentences to make a brief account of the
English language history.
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Unit 4
1 Think of the English words which actually do not look
or sound English. Give your examples of such evident
borrowings.
2 Remember the words you will see in the text:
cognates - words having the same source or origin.
influx - constant inflow of large numbers or quantities.
3 Be careful when pronouncing the following proper
names:
Hebrew
Polynesia
Hindi-Urdu
Hindi
Bengali
Turkish
Malay
Gaelic
Jutes
Japanese
Norse
Portuguese
Chinese
Czech
4 Read the text. Pay special attention to the words in
bold type:
The Vocabulary of English through its history
English has displayed remarkable powers of adaptation
and assimilation, absorbing so many and such varied
elements of vocabulary and syntax from diverse sources
that today it would be a definite misstatement to pronounce
it a Germanic language pure and simple. While accepting
these large foreign contributions, English has revealed, in
the course of its history, astounding capacities for growth
from within, ability to coin, combine, create, and simplify
to the point where vocabulary has become the richest on
earth and one of the most precise and expressive. About
80% of its vocabulary is foreign. Therefore, English has
cognates from virtually every language in Europe and has
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borrowed and continues to borrow words from Spanish and
French, Hebrew and Arabic, Hindi-Urdu and Bengali,
Malay and Chinese, as well as languages from West Africa
and Polynesia. This language characteristic makes it unique
in history.
In modern English we can often express the same idea in
different words. This is because English has over the
centuries absorbed words from many different languages.
For example, fear, terror, alarm and freight all have
similar meanings but each came into English from a
different language.
ANGLO-SAXON
Anglo-Saxon English developed from Anglo-Saxon (also
known as Old English), the language brought to Britain by
Germanic tribes ( the Angles, Saxons and Jutes ) in the 5th
century AD. These invaders gave England its name, “the
land of Angles”, and provided the language with many
common basic terms.
man
woman
breed
work
eat
house
shire
LATIN
At the end of the sixth century, a group of monks came as
missionaries from Rome to strengthen Christianity in
Britain. The words which came into English from Latin at
this time are mainly connected with religion and learning.
school
minister
pope
verse
candle
mass
OLD NORSE
In the ninth and tenth centuries invaders came from
Scandinavia and occupied a large part of eastern England.
Many everyday words in modern English come from their
language, Old Norse, which is related to Anglo-Saxon.
sky
leg
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call
dirt
take
FRENCH
When Britain was conquered by the Normans in 1066,
French became the language of the ruling classes. Many
words in modern English which describe government and
the legal system, as well as terms connected with cooking,
came from French at this time.
sovereign
court
govern
advise
braise
veal
mutton
LATIN AND GREEK
Many words of Latin origin came into English through
French, but the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries
brought a new interest in classical learning and an influx of
words from Latin and Greek.
physics
radius
history
educate
architecture
compute
Modern English includes some other loan words:
Arabic
admiral, algebra, mattress, coffee
Spanish
mosquito, cigar, canyon, macho
Italian
piano, violin, spaghetti, pizza
Dutch
yacht, boss, deck
Hindi
pajamas, shampoo, bungalow
Persian
bazaar, caravan
Turkish
yoghurt, kiosk, tulip
Japanese
tycoon, karate, kimono
Malay
bamboo, compound
Hungarian
coach, paprika, goulash
Classic Greek
theatre, astronomy, logic
Gaelic
whiskey
Russian
vodka, sputnik, samovar
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Finnish
sauna
Chinese
tea, silk
Portuguese
marmalade, flamingo,madeira
Czech
robot
Farsi(Iranian)
lilac
Basque
bizarre
Carib
canoe
Australian Aborigine
kangaroo, boomerang
Modern French rendezvous, café
Modern German kindergarten
1 Make up a list of languages that have contributed to
the vocabulary of the English language.
2 Think and say other loan words that are not
mentioned in the text. Ask the class about the
languages they come(originate) from.
3 Give examples of loan words in Ukrainian or Russian.
Unit 5
1 Make sure that you can pronounce the following
words correctly:
unprecedented, retrieval, genre, alert, executive,
entrepreneur, negotiate, commerce, incorporate.
2 What do we typically mean when we say:
electronic retrieval system ground controller
native speaker
scientific community
scientific developments
industrial age
entertainment genres
information-based goods
and services
3 Read the text.
English in the 21st Century
Spread of English
Four centuries ago English was outstripped by French,
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German, Spanish, and Italian. Today it has almost as many
speakers as the four put together.
The global spread of English over the last 40 years is
remarkable. It is unprecedented in several ways: by the
increasing number of users of the language; by its depth of
penetration into societies; by its range of functions.
Worldwide over 1.4 billion people live in the countries
where English has official status. One out of five of the
world’s population speaks English with some degree of
competence. And one in five – over one billion people is
learning English. English is at present the most widely
studied language in countries where it is not native. Over
70% of the world’s scientists read English. 90% of all
information in the world’s electronic retrieval systems is
stored in English. By 2010, the number of people who
speak English as a second or foreign language will exceed
the number of native speakers. This trend will certainly
affect the language.
English is used for more purposes than ever before.
Vocabularies, grammatical forms, and ways of speaking
and writing have emerged influenced by technological and
scientific developments, economics and management,
literature and entertainment genres. What began some 1.500
years ago as a rude language, originally spoken by obscure
Germanic tribes who invaded England, now encompasses
the globe.
When Mexican pilots land their airplanes in France,
they and the ground controllers use English. When German
physicists want to alert the international scientific
community to new discoveries, they fist publish their
findings in English. When Japanese executives conduct
business with Scandinavian entrepreneurs, they negotiate in
English. When pop singers write their songs, they often use
lyrics or phrases in English. When demonstrators want to
alert the world to their problems, they display signs in
English.
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Three factors continue to contribute to the spread of
English: English usage in science, technology and
commerce; the ability to incorporate vocabulary from other
languages; and the acceptability of various English dialects.
In science English replaced German after World War
II. With this technical and scientific dominance came the
beginning of overall linguistic dominance, first in Europe
and then globally.
Today the information age has replaced the
industrial age and has compressed time and distance. This is
transforming world economics from industrial production to
information-based goods and services. Ignoring geography
and borders, information processing has given way to
computers and the Internet. Computer-mediated
communication is closing the gap between spoken and
written English. It encourages more informal conversational
language, and has resulted in Internet English replacing the
authority of language institutes and practices.
1 Find in the text the words defined below:
a) verses of a song;
b) exchange and distribution of goods;
c) never done or known before;
d) total number of words which make up a language.
2 Build up derivatives of the words from the text:
compress
redefining
distance
spoken
globally
conduct
executives
conversational
3 Give antonyms to the words below:
foreign
informal
official
limited
rude
to include
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obscure
to land
internal
to compress
4 Choose the correct answers to the questions on the
basis of what is stated in the text:
The number of people all over the world who practice
English makes about
a) 40%;
b) 20%;
c) 25%.
What kind of dominance resulting after the replacement
of German by English is not mentioned in the text?
a) scientific;
b) linguistic;
c) political.
The number of students taking EFL or ESL programs
today
a) equals the number of native speakers;
b) exceeds the number of native speakers;
c) is less than the number of native speakers.
Computer-mediated communication leads to the
situation when
a) written English dominates over spoken English;
b) a new form of a written English emerges;
c) many norms of standard English are being
changed.
Unit 6
1 Make a list of countries where English is spoken.
Check it with your classmates.
2 Read the text.
The English Speaking World
English is the second most widely spoken popular language.
Approximately 350 million people speak English as their
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first language. About the same number use it as a second
language. It is the official language of the United
Kingdom, Ireland, the United States of America,
Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, Australia, and New
Zealand and is widely spoken in India.
As so many people speak English in so many different
countries, there are many different “Englishes”.
The best known form of English is called Standard English
and it is the language of educated English speakers. It is
used by the government, the BBC, the Universities and it is
often called “Queen’s English”.
American English is the variety of English spoken in the
United States of America. It is different from English in
pronunciation, intonation, spelling, vocabulary and
sometimes even grammar.
Australian and New Zealand English, also called
Australian English, are very similar. Especially in
pronunciation they are also similar to British English, but
there are differences in vocabulary and slang. Many terms
come from the aboriginal language and many others from
the Cockney dialect spoken by the first settlers, the
Londoners.
Canadian English is different both from American English
and from British English. It is said to sound like American
to Britons and like British to Americans. In pioneer days
Canadians borrowed many words from Canadian French.
Many words came from the native Indian languages.
1 Answer the questions:
Who speaks Standard English?
What are the key points of the text?
2 Outline the history of each English speaking country.
Try to remember the books you read and the films
you saw that may refer to the point in some way.
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Unit 7
1 Can you explain why American English is taking a
leading position in the English speaking world ?
2 When reading the text, use the map of the US to
indicate the areas where different varieties of
American English are spoken.
American English
There are about twice as many speakers of American
English as of other varieties of English, and four times as
many as speakers of British English. The leading position of
the US in world affairs is partly responsible for this.
Americanisms have also been spread through advertising,
tourism, telecommunications and the cinema.
The development of American English
British people who came to the US in the 17th century spoke
a variety of dialects. After they reached the US, their
language developed independently of British English. When
this new nation took its first census in 1790 there were four
million Americans, 90% of them descendants of English
colonies. Thus there was no question that English was the
mother tongue and native language of the United States. By
1720, however, some English colonists in America had
already begun to notice that their language differed
seriously from that spoken back home in England. Almost
without being aware of it, they had:
1 coined some new words for themselves;
2 borrowed other words from the Indians, Dutch, French
and Spanish;
3 been using English dialect words in their general speech;
4 continued to use some English words that had now
become obsolete in England;
5 evolved some peculiar uses, pronunciations, grammar and
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syntax.
Doing these things was natural. Many of the coinages and
borrowings were for plants, animals, landscapes, living
conditions, institutions and attitudes which were seldom if
ever encountered in England, so the English had no words
for them. The widespread use of English dialect words was
also natural because the colonists came from different parts
of England and brought local dialects with them. The
colonists were isolated from the niceties of current English
speech and education. Thus, naturally, a hundred years after
the Pilgrims landed, English as spoken in America differed
from that spoken in England. By 1735 the English began to
call that new variant of their language “barbarous”. When
the anti-American Dr. Johnson used the term American
dialect he meant it as an insult( in 1756 he published his
Dictionary of the English Language). In 1780, soon after
the American revolution began, the word American was
firstly referred to the language; in 1802 the term the
American Language was first recorded in the US Congress;
and in 1806 Noah Webster coined the more precise term
American English.
Numerous attempts were made both in the state legislatures
and in Congress, to declare officially that the name of the
language spoken in the United States was the “American
language”, and there were even unproven stories to the
effect that after the Revolution certain members of Congress
advocated that English be altogether discarded and replaced
by Hebrew or Greek as the official language of the United
States. As late as 1920, an attempt was made to coin the
term ‘Unitedstatish’ to describe the language of the
American Union.
American English Dialects
General American English (GAE) is the dialect that is
closest to being a standard. It is especially common in the
Midwest but is used in many parts of the US.The associated
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Midwestern accent is spoken across most of the northern
states, and by many people elsewhere.
The main dialect groups are the Northern, the Coastal
Southern, the Midland, from which GAE is derived, and
the Western.
Northern dialect spread west from New York and Boston.
New England has its own accent, though many people there
have a Midwest accent. The old, rich families of Boston
speak with a distinctive Bostonian accent.
Midland dialects developed after settlers moved west from
Philadelphia. Both Midland and Western dialects contain
features from the Northern and Southern groups.
The Southern dialects are most distinctive. They contain
old words no longer used in other American dialects.
French, Spanish and Native American languages also
contributed to Southern dialects. Since black slaves were
taken mainly to the South and most African Americans still
live there, Black English and Southern dialects have much
in common. More careful investigation reveals the presence
of many well-defined regional dialects, most of which are
located east of the Mississippi.
In addition to regional dialects, the speech of the United
States is characterized by special localisms typical of a
single city or even borough, and by immigrant dialects.
Language and immigration
For a long time English helped to unite immigrants who had
come to the United States from many countries. Today
Hispanic immigrants, especially in south-eastern states,
want to continue to use their own language, and many
Americans are afraid that this will divide the country. The
Hispanic population is growing and will reach 80 million by
2050. This situation lead to the founding of the English
Only Movement, which wants to make English the official
language of the US. Supporters believe that this will help
keep states and people together, and that money spent on
printing forms in both English and Spanish would be better
21
spent on teaching the immigrants English. Others think that
an official language is unnecessary. They argue that
children of immigrants, and their children, will want to
speak English anyway, and that a common language does
not always lead to social harmony.
1 Make a list of factors that had lead to the appearance
of American English.
2 What socio-linguistic and political problems of the
Americans are touched on in the text?
3 Do you know anything about Noah Webster?
4 Are social tensions and conflicts caused by language
differences unavoidable? What governmental
language policy should be established to avoid
them?
Unit 8
1 Do you happen to know what “Cockney” is?
2 Can you speak “Pidgin English”?
3 Read the text.
Some other “Englishes”
The dialects of Britain are far more numerous and divergent
than anything we have in America. There are nine principal
dialects in Scotland, three in Ireland, thirty in England and
Wales.
Cockney, the lower-class dialect of London, seems to be
linked with Cockaigne, an imaginary country where the
rivers flowed with wine and streets were paved with pastry
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and roast geese.
More than any other world language, English has given rise
to pidginized versions. The basis of a pidgin language is
what the scientists call “hypocorism” and the layman “baby
talk”. It stems from the erroneous belief that it is easier for a
baby or an untutored native to learn to speak if the
language is “simplified”. The simplification often takes
form of grammatical incorrectness. Modern psychology
shows us that hypocorism is not only unnecessary but
definitely harmful, and that a young child may be taught to
speak a language as correctly as a university professor. The
word “pidgin” itself is the Cantonese corruption of English
“business”.
The total number of people using some form or other of
pidgin English is estimated at about thirty million. Most of
them are located on the China coast, the South Sea islands,
Australia, Malaya, and the west coast of Africa.
1 Are Cockney and pidgin English related somehow to
cocks and pigeons?
2 Can English of today escape simplification?
Unit 9
1 Make sure that you can understand and pronounce
correctly the words from the text :
to exert, geolinguistic, oligopoly, allegiance, shift
2 Try to explain the meaning of the following word
combinations:
patterns of contact, single world standard English,
supranational variety, global uniformity cultural
identities, area of influence
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3 Read the text and be ready to discuss the future of the
English language:
Will English remain English?
The world is in transition, and the English language
will take new forms. The language and how it is used will
change, reflecting patterns of contact with other languages
and the changing communication needs of people.
One question that arises about the future role of the
English language is whether a single world standard English
will develop. This could result in a supranational
variety that all people would have to learn.
The widespread use of English as a language of wider
communication will continue to exert pressure toward
global uniformity. This could result in declining standards,
language changes, and the loss of geolinquistic diversity.
On the other hand, because English is the vehicle for
international communication and because it forms the basis
for constructing cultural identities, many local varieties
could instead develop. This trend may lead to fragmentation
of the language and threaten the role of English as a lingua
franca*.However, there have always been major differences
between varieties of English.
There is no reason to believe that any one other
language will appear within the next 50 years to replace
English. However, it is possible that English will not keep
its monopoly in the 21st century.
Rather, a small number of languages may form an
oligopoly* - each with a special area of influence. For
example, Spanish is rising because of expanding trade and
the increase of the Latino population in the United States.
This could create a bilingual English-Spanish region.
A language shift, in which individuals change their
linguistic allegiances, is another possibility. These shifts are
slow and difficult to predict. But within the next 50 years,
24
substantial language shifts could occur as economic
development affects more countries.
Because of these shifts in allegiance, more languages
may disappear. Those remaining will rapidly gain more
speakers. This includes English.
Internal migration and urbanization may restructure
areas, thereby creating communities where English
becomes the language of interethnic communication – a
neutral language.
Notes:
Lingua franca any language that is widely used as a means of
communication among speakers of other languages, a language adopted
for local communication over an area in which several languages are
spoken.
Oligopoly a market situation in which prices and other factors are
controlled by a few sellers.
1 Look at the word building elements given below.
What meaning do they give to the words? Find in the
text the words with these elements:
a) suffix -tion
b) prefix rec) prefix inter2 Find in the text synonyms to the words:
norm
n
emerge v
wants
n
influence v
3 Find in the text antonyms to the words:
uniformity –
appear
rapid
4 Match the verbs below with the nouns they go
together with in the text. Mind the passive forms. See
hints if you cannot remember them all:
to arise …
to change…
to construct…
to predict…
to decline…
to create…
25
to keep …
to occur…
to expand…
to form…
Hints: communities, identities, standard, region, monopoly,
question, basis, trade, shift, allegiances.
5 Say what might result from:
fragmentation, migration , urbanization
6 Complete the statements with the reasons indicated in
the text:
a) A supranational variety can appear as … ;
b) Many local varieties might develop if … ;
c) Spanish is rising because … ;
d) Substantial linguistic shifts could occur due to …
7 Make a list of predictions suggested in the text. Speak
on each point considering the text read as well as
your personal knowledge and experience gained .
8 Give in writing your own predictions as for the future
development of the Ukrainian and Russian languages
in Ukraine.
Unit 10
1 What aspect of the English language (sounds,
vocabulary, grammar, spelling , etc. ) is the most
difficult for you? Explain why. What do you do to
solve the problem?
2 Dictate any passage of the text below to your
classmates, check it and correct their spelling
mistakes.
3 Read the text and be ready to discuss it from your
personal point of view.
26
Letters and Sounds
English spelling is a monument to traditionalism so weird
as to be practically incredible.
It is conceivable that a foreigner, with the aid of a good
grammatical introduction to pronunciation and a few lessons
from a teacher, could learn to speak acceptable Spanish,
Italian, Russian, German, Portuguese, even French. This is
not true of English, where every word is a law to itself.
In this respect English is a tongue of infinite difficulty, far
harder than any of its kindred Indo-European languages.
Indeed, the only comparison possible is with languages like
Chinese and Japanese, where the ideogram for each word
must be individually learned. Every English word is at least
in part an ideogram, with the pronunciation offering some
clue, but never a complete key to the spelling.
When the Normans conquered England in 1066, they
introduced a number of Norman-French customs, including
their own style of writing. The alphabet itself has remained
fairy stable.
The Roman alphabet has always been inadequate for the
phonetic representation of the English language, most
strikingly so for Modern English. We have, for example,
only five vowel symbols, a, e, i, o and u ; that this number
is wholly inadequate is indicated by the fact that the first of
these alone may have as many as six different sound
vowels, as in cat, came, calm, any, call and was. Today
many experts insist on the easiest and most practical way of
treatment of English sounds: to use a way of writing in
which the same symbols consistently represent the same
sounds, rather than using the awkward expedient of riming
words or of referring to the initial consonant.
Contemporary spelling is the heir of thirteen centuries of
English writing in the Latin alphabet. It is hardly surprising,
27
therefore, that modern orthography has its traces of its
earlier history. Whenever we set pen to paper, we
participate in a tradition that started with Anglo-Saxon
monks, who had learned it from Irish scribes. The tradition
progressed through such influences as the Norman
Conquest, the introduction of printing, the urge to reform
spelling in various forms, and the recent view that speech
should conform to spelling. Nowadays, in fact, we are likely
to forget that writing in the history of humanity or even of a
single language like English, is relatively recent. Before
writing there were no historical records of language, but
languages existed.
1 Give your personal view on the problem.
2 Is it practically necessary to follow traditions in the
language use?
3 Offer some improvements as for English spelling.
4 Would you like to introduce some spelling reforms
into your native language system? Give examples of
some new possible spelling rules.
28
TASKS FOR HOME ASSIGNMENT
Unit 1
1 Read the text. Consult a dictionary as for correct
pronunciation of proper names:
The relatives of English
The national language that is the closest relative of
English is Dutch, with its Belgian variant, Flemish, and its
South African variant, Afrikaans. Next comes standard
German, while the Scandinavian languages are slightly
more remote. Frisian, a variant of Dutch spoken along the
Dutch and German North Sea coast, is the foreign speech
that comes closest to modern English. Icelandic, a
Scandinavian tongue with less than two hundred thousand
speakers which has undergone very little change since its
inception as a branch of Old Norse, carried by Viking
explorers to the land of the geysers, is the modern tongue
that most resembles ancestral Anglo-Saxon as spoken in the
days of King Alfred.
1 Answer the questions:
1 Where are Flemish and Frisian spoken?
2 What country do we call “the land of the geysers”?
3 Are there many speakers of Icelandic?
4 Why does Icelandic resemble Anglo-Saxon English?
5 When did King Alfred reign?
2 Give synonyms to the words below:
slightly, remote, tongue, inception, to undergo,
to resemble
29
3 Build up derivatives of the words:
relative, variant, speaker, explorer, resemble.
Unit 2
1 Have you ever thought that some particular sounds
themselves can be meaningful? Is there any
interconnection between sounds and sense?
2 Let’s start with a little experiment. Find someone
who does not speak English very well and ask them to
guess which of these two words means a heavy knock
and which a gentle knock: tap and thud. They will
almost invariably guess right. Why? The sound of the
word thud must somehow be closer to the noise made
by a heavy knock. How about two words with just one
vowel different? If you drop a key and a heavy
hammer onto a stone floor, which one falls with a clink
and which a clunk? It’s easy, isn’t it?
3 Read the text paying special attention to the words in
bold type:
Symbolic Sounds
English is not a particularly onomatopoetic language, by
which we mean that the sounds make up a word seldom
reflect or symbolize the properties of the objects which the
word refers to. But it does happen. We talk of the pitterpatter of raindrops against a window and in that word we
almost hear the sound that rain makes. Similarly, we talk of
the boom of cannon fire or distant thunder but of a thunder
clap when it is overhead. A clock ticks, a switch clicks
when it is turned on or off, and the wood crackles and spits
as it burns.
But sometimes similar seems to happen when there is no
sound at all in the meaning of the word, which is perhaps
30
more surprising. Let’s go back to our experiment. Tell
someone you are going to give them two English words
which differ only in their vowel sound: one is associated
with bright light, the other with darkness, the lack of light.
The two words are gloom and gleam. Which is which?
Again most people will guess right.
Try the same experiment with these two groups of words:
lean, thin, slim, skinny, slender, slight on the one hand,
and plump, tubby, chubby, buxom, large, stout, rotund,
gross on the other. Tell that one group of words is
associated with people who do not weigh very much and the
other with people who weigh a lot. We find that some
vowels are associated with lightness and thinness, whilst
others with bigness and heaviness.
1 Think of Ukrainian or Russian equivalents of the
words in bold type. Do the sounds in them add much
to their meaning?
2 Share your ideas as for the phenomenon discussed.
Unit 3
1 Think of some things unpleasant ( filthy, dirty, ugly,
etc). Now think of unpleasant words we say to name
these things. What makes them sound so unpleasant?
2 Read the text with the main focus on the words in bold
type. As they are not commonly used in everyday
English, look them up in a dictionary for translation.
Associations
For some reason English words beginning with “sl-“ are
for the most part rather unpleasant. When snow begins to
thaw it produces a muddy mixture of ice and water called
31
slush or slosh. Snow that thaws as it falls is called sleet.
Those first two letters seem to be associated with
particular physical condition. Nobody likes that slimy
creature we find in the garden, the slug; it lives in sludge
and of course it doesn’t walk, it doesn’t even creep, it
slithers along on its own slime.
When “sl-“ words apply to people, they are almost
invariably negative characteristics – sly, slick, slovenly,
sluggish, sloppy, slipshod. The verbs slobber, slaver,
slurp and slouch conjure up quite a revolting image of
someone who spits as he speaks and can’t drink without
making a revolting noise. Even if he has plenty of money,
with behaviour like that his home no doubt looks like a
slum. And if he ever goes out, he probably spends his time
in sleazy nightclubs.
A similar , though smaller group of words could be
produced beginning with “sn-“. A sneer is a very
unpleasant kind of smile and a snigger is not as nice as a
giggle or titter. When a child sneaks on his classmates they
call him a snitch; if that makes him cry, he snivels. There
are lots more like snob, snotty and snide, but we are
running out of space.
1 Take a dictionary and write down some of “sl-“ and
“sn-“ words which may contribute to the list of
unpleasant words. Is it easy?
2 Memorize the unpleasant words you came across
when both reading the text and working with the
dictionary.
Unit 4
Part 1
Sound Alikes
1 All the words in the list below have a combining
form homo- which means “same, identical”. Think
32
which of the words may be of linguistic interest:
homograph, homogeneous, homosexual, homonym,
homologous, homophone.
2 Read the questions with homophones or sound-alikes
(words that sound alike but are spelled differently
with different meanings) and tick the correct answer:
Example: Is the top of the mountain a peek or a peak?
The correct is peak.
1 Does a dog have a tail or a tale?
2 Which are surrounded by water, aisles or isles?
3 If you were sad, would you shed tears or tiers?
4 Would a telephone wring or ring?
5 I one or won a CD player in the contest.
6 That’s the best movie Cathy had ever scene or seen.
7 The meeting was so long, I was board or bored.
8 What’s your favorite breakfast serial or cereal?
9 The king’s rain or reign lasted 30 years.
10 I couldn’t bare or bear to sit through that play again.
11 Despite all of your yelling, he couldn’t hear or here us.
12 The rose or rows is the only flower Paula likes.
13 Do windows have pains or panes?
14 We missed or mist our train by 30 minutes.
Part 2
Look Alikes
1 In contrast to homophones homographs are spelled
alike, but differ in meaning and sometimes
pronunciation. Fill in the homograph that completes
each riddle below:
Example:
Why is an English teacher like a judge?
Both give people sentences.
33
1 Why is the Moon worth only a dollar?
Because it has four ____________.
2 Why do gardeners make good writers?
They are always digging up ________.
3 Why was the baker a cheap date?
He was always running out of _______.
4 What did one battery tell the other battery?
I get a __________ out of you.
5 How is a coward like a leaky faucet?
They both ___________.
6 What did the mother chimney say to the baby chimney?
You are too young to ___________.
7 What house can you lift off the ground?
A _______________.
8 Why are oysters lazy?
They are always found in __________.
9 How do you know when you missed the train?
You can see its ___________.
10 How could you tell a dogwood tree?
By its bark ___________.
(Answers: lighthouse, plots, quarters, tracks, bark, dough,
smoke, charge, run, beds)
2 In the following sentences there is a word with at least
two meanings. Find the words:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
My brother’s on leave at the moment.
She gave me some sound advice.
My uncle left me a thousand pounds in his will.
Who won the match? – It was a draw.
Damn! I’ve got a parking fine.
I’m going away on business to a trade fair soon.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer.
34
Part 3
Alikes in practice
1 Think of another word with the same pronunciation
but a different spelling:
Flower
stair
our
Male
saw
peace
Waste
die
wear
Hole
pair
right
2 A lot of jokes are made with homonyms and
homophones, because there is a play on words:
Mechanic: Your battery is flat.
Driver: Oh dear. What shape should it be?
Customer: Waiter! What sort of soup is this?
Waiter: It’s bean soup, sir.
Customer: I don’t care what it was. I want to know what it
is now.
What colour would you paint the sun and the wind?
The sun rose and the wind blue.
Why was the doctor angry?
Because he had no patients.
Why did the teacher have to wear sunglasses?
Because his students were so bright.
Unit 5
1 What would you type in your application if asked
about your knowledge of English or other languages?
2 Explain in English the meanings of the words:
poll, rating, extraordinary, misleading, fluently,
modest, resident, to claim.
35
3 Read the text:
Command of Languages
When asked which languages they could understand,
almost one third of the German speakers taking part in a
poll answered “English”. 13.2% said they could understand
or speak French. Last on the list of 12 languages on choice
was Norwegian with a rating of only 0.8%.
But the seemingly extraordinary results of this poll are
misleading. What does “understand” mean when we are
talking about such a complex thing as language? Does it
mean you understand 90% of what the hotel receptionist
say? Three quarters of a pop song? A few words in an
English newspaper? Or what?
When someone claims that he can “speak” English, one
may ask just how far his language skills can get him in a
number of different situations. In the same poll 25.4% of
the people asked, the biggest group to give this answer,
claimed they could “get by quite well” when speaking
English, but could understand and read it quite fluently.
This group was a little more modest than the group which
gave the second most frequent answer. Here, 13.9% said
they could speak English fluently. This would mean in
theory that 39.3% or almost two fifth of the population of
Germany have a good command of English. A very
optimistic situation indeed, if it were only true. The real
truth, unfortunately, lies somewhere else. Ask any poor
English-speaking tourist who has tried to find his way
around Germany using only English. The lesson to be
learned from this is, if someone says his or her English is
“almost perfect”, don’t trust them. They don’t know what
they are saying. Remember, not even people born and
brought up in England and resident there for all their lives
speak “perfect English”.
36
1 Answer the questions:
a) How many languages were on choice of a poll?
b) How many German speakers asked in the poll could
understand or speak English?
c) How many of them chose French?
d) What language was last on the list?
e) Why are the results of the poll misleading?
f) What may you ask when someone claims that he can
“speak’ English?
g) What answer did the biggest group asked in the poll
give on their mastering English?
h) What did another group answer?
i) What was the result of the poll according to the
answers?
j) What is the lesson to be learned from the poll?
k) What should you remember?
2 Think about the way you consider to be the best in
evaluation of someone’s command of English. Give
your reasons and practical examples.
3 Fill in prepositions:
Last … the list … 12 languages … choice was
Norwegian … a rating … only 0.8%.
Not even people born and brought … … England and
resident there … all their lives speak perfect English.
4 Use the following phrases from the text in the
situations of your own. Present them to the class:
… if it were only true …
…The real truth, unfortunately, lies somewhere else. …
…The lesson to be learned from this is …
5 Do you see any sense in polls? Do you believe in the
results of the polls we are presented every day on TV
37
and in the papers? What is the main reason they are
conducted for?
Unit 6
1 Can you remember grammatical differences between
British and American English? Which of these two
norms do you follow in speaking and writing?
2 Read the text below and circle the points you were
not aware before reading it.
Differences in Grammar
The grammatical differences between British and
American English are not so numerous. The main
differences are as follows:
A Americans often use the Past Simple in cases where
British people use the Present Perfect. Americans often
use the Past Simple with just, already and yet.
AmE
BrE
Did you hear the news?
Have you heard the news?
My sister had a baby.
My sister has had a baby.
He just went out.
He has just gone out.
I already had breakfast.
I have already had breakfast.
Did you write the letter yet? Have you written the letter
yet?
B Americans often use have with do and does in negatives
and questions in cases where British people use have got.
AmE
BrE
I have a brother.
I have got a brother.
He doesn’t have a job.
He hasn’t got a job.
Do you have a pen?
Have you got a pen?
38
C American English has two Past Participle forms of get:
gotten and got; British English has only got.
AmE
BrE
I have gotten/got a ticket.
I have got a ticket.
D Americans often use the infinitive without to after verbs
like suggest, insist, recommend etc.
I suggested ( that ) he see the doctor.
They insisted ( that ) she take the money.
E Some prepositions are also used differently.
AmE
BrE
on the weekend
at the weekend
Monday through/to Friday
Monday to Friday
different from/than
different from
stay home/at home
stay at home
write somebody/to somebody write to somebody
F In American English –l is not normally doubled at the
word end if the syllable is not stressed.
AmE
BrE
traveled
travelled
G The verbs burn, dream, lean, leap, learn, smell, spell,
spill and spoil are normally regular in American English.
burned, dreamed, leaned, leaped, learned, etc.
1 Can you remember all seven basic differences given
above? Enlist them without seeing the text.
2 What variant of the English language dominates in
the texts you commonly read for learning or some
other practical purposes?
3 Do Ukrainian students of English face the problem of
choice between AmE and BrE? What are possible
ways to solve this problem?
39
Unit 7
1 Think about words which differ in spelling in British
and American English. Can you remember many of
them?
2 Read the text below to review some basic spelling
differences.
Spelling Differences
Among the various words which tend to be spelled
differently in Britain (and many other English-speaking
countries) than they are in the United States, there are many
which can be placed within a few general categories on the
basis of certain letter combinations. There are also words
which do not fit into any particular category. It should be
noted that the preferred spellings in BrE and AmE do not
reflect the fact that some of them may sometimes be seen in
both varieties. Some of the main pattern groups that can be
distinguished are the following:
Model
Examples
BrE
AmE
-ise
-ize
modernise
modernize
-our
-or
colour
color
-re
-er
metre
meter
-nce
-nseDe defence
-ogue -og
BrE
catalogue
Exceptions
AmE
advise,
compromise
actor, detector,
inferior
writer, worker,
seller
defense
catalog
40
1 Match the words below with their American or British
spelling equivalents:
British English
American English
______________
analog
armour
______________
________________
centralize
characterize
______________
________________
favor
dialogue
______________
________________
odor
licence
______________
_________________
hypnotize
theatre
______________
_________________
vapor
spectre
______________
2 Write down the American variants of the following
British English words:
programme, pyjamas, tyre, storey
3 Write down the British equivalents of the following
American English words :
omelet, gray, ax, aluminum, check
Unit 8
1 Fill in articles where necessary:
1 ____most people in _____ Sweden can speak ____
English, so you don’t have to worry about ____ language
barrier.
2 ____ English has always been ____ hybrid language,
what Daniel Defo called “your Roman-Saxon-DanishNorman English”.
3 ____ modern world is _____ very small place. More and
more people need ____ second language. For ____
millions that language is _____ English.
41
4 Today ____ English language is ____ industry. ____
name of _____ industry is ELT ( English Language
Teaching).
5 ___ Queen’s English is ____ official English accent.
This is ____ accent of _____ Royal Family and the BBC
news-readers.
6 _____people from ____ east of London (Eastenders) are
called Cockneys. ____ cockney accent is one of ____
most famous in ____ UK.
7 _____ English has been called “ ____ world language”
for more than ____ century and _____ half.
8 English was requited as ____ medium. It was spoken
round ___ clock and round ____ globe.
9 _____ education, _____ religion, ____ law and other
colonial imports were offered in English.
10 ____ Germany offers ____ very serviceable form of
____ English that does not have _____ native-speaker
tag on it.
2 Fill in blanks with the words given in the brackets
below):
1 English is doing _______among the world’s languages;
from a European ____________, it is the most successful
language since Latin. The advantage to this country is
____________, both _________, in the English language
industry, and _____________, in the lack of __________
barriers to British people traveling overseas or ________
with foreign businesses.
( directly, enormous, trading, indirectly, well,
perspective, communication)
2 There is a Babel of varieties of English _________. If
economic and political ________ was the only _______
in ______________ language use, then the world would
be speaking American English. British English would be
42
a relic of the ______. But the British _________ has
shown a _____________ tenacity (persistence).
( force, remarkable, determining, power, past, variety,
worldwide)
3 Scholars might just have a small ______ in what
happens next. British English is ________ for its
monuments, like the big __________ and grammars that
help to __________ standards. Nowadays it is huge
computer-held ______________ of language texts that
form the reference points. In this _________ Britain is
leading the way.
( establish, area, say, dictionaries, collections, famous)
4 Dialects, like the poor, are always with us. Attempts to
eradicate them and ________________ the language often
meet with signal success, but new ____________ then
arise out of the unified, standardized language. Like
other ________ differences of food, dress and customs,
dialects are often a nuisance. Yet they lend ____________
variety to language, and variety is the __________ of life.
( spice, standardize, picturesque, local, dialects)
Unit 9
1 Read the statements about language. Comment on
them:
“ The man who knows no foreign language knows
nothing of his mother tongue”.
Goethe
“Language is a steed that carries one into a far country”.
Arab proverb
“That language is the best which, at every single point, is
easiest to the greatest possible number of human beings”.
Otto Jespersen
43
“ In richness, good sense, and terse convenience, no other
of the living languages may be put beside English”.
Jacob Grimm
“England and America are two countries separated by the
same language”.
G.B.Shaw
2 Choose one statement you like best and enlarge on
it in writing.
44
APPENDIXES
APPENDIX 1
ABC :
AC/DC:
AD:
a.m.:
BA:
BC:
BS:
CBS:
CD:
CNN:
3-D:
DC:
FBI:
FM:
GMT:
GNP:
ID:
i.e.:
IQ:
Ltd:
MA:
MP:
MS:
NATO:
NHL:
NBA:
OPEC:
PhD:
p.m.:
POW:
PS:
Commonly Used Initials
American Broadcasting Corporation
alternating current-direct current
Anno Domini (in the year of the Lord)
ante meridiem (morning)
Bachelor of Arts degree
before Christ
Bachelor of Science degree
Columbia Broadcasting System
compact disc
Cable News Network
three-dimensional
District of Columbia
Federal Bureau of Investigation
frequency modulation
Greenwich Mean Time
Gross National Product
identification
id est (that is)
intelligence quotient
limited
Master of Arts degree
member of parliament
Master of Science degree
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
National Hockey League
National Basketball Association
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries
Doctor of Philosophy
post meridiem(evening)
prisoner of war
postscript
45
UFO:
unidentified flying object
UNESCO:United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation
VIP:
very important person
VP:
vice president
WWI:
World War I
WWII: World War II
APPENDIX II Contrastive BrE/AmE Vocabulary
British English
accumulator
assurance
autumn
banknote
barman
barrister
bill(restaurant)
cab rank
chat show
chemist’s
cinema
coach
American English
battery
insurance
fall
bill
bartender
attorney
check
cabstand
talk show
drugstore
movie theater
bus
cock
rooster
cooker(kitchen) stove
course
class
first floor
second floor
(building)
flat(n)
apartment
football
soccer
full stop
period
(punctuation)
goods
freight
Ukrainian
акумулятор
страхування
осінь
банкнота
бармен
адвокат
рахунок
стоянка таксі
ток-шоу
аптека
кінотеатр
туристський
міжміський автобус
півень
плита
курс
другий поверх
квартира
футбол
крапка
вантаж
46
hire(v)
lay(the table)
lesson
lift(building)
lorry
main road
maize
motorway
packet
parcel
pavement
post(n,v)
rent
set(the table)
class
elevator
truck
high way
corn
highway
pack
package
sidewalk
mail
postcode
postman
primary
queue(n)
railway
revise(v)
zip code
mailman
elementary
line
railroad
review
rub out
rubbish
shareholder
shop
surname
sweet(n)
timetable
waistcoat
wardrobe
erase
garbage, trash
stockholder
store
last name
candy
schedule
vest
closet
zebra crossing
crosswalk
орендувати
накривати на стіл
урок
ліфт
вантажівка
автомагістраль
кукурудза
автострада
пачка
пакунок
тротуар
пошта;
надсилати
поштовий індекс
листоноша
початковий
черга
залізниця
повторювати
( вивчене)
стирати
сміття
акціонер
магазин
прізвище
цукерка
розклад
жилет
шафа на одяг,
гардероб
пішохідний
перехід
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Навчальне видання
АНГЛІЙСЬКА МОВА СЕРЕД ІНШИХ МОВ
Методичні вказівки для поглибленого вивчення
англійської мови студентами усіх спеціальностей
денної форми навчання
Укладач А.М.Дядечко
Редактор Н.В.Лисогуб
Відповідальний за випуск Г.І.Литвиненко
Підп. до друку______ .
Формат 60х84/16. Папір офс. Друк.офс.
Ум. друк. арк.
Обл.-вид.арк.
Тираж 150 пр.
Собівартість вид.
Зам.№
Видавництво СумДУ при Сумському державному університеті
40007,Суми, вул.Римського-Корсакова, 2
Свідоцтво про внесення суб’єкта видавничої справи до Державного реєстру
ДК №2365 від 08.12.2005.
Надруковано у друкарні СумДУ
40007,Суми, вул.Римського-Корсакова, 2.
48
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