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Language Change
The study of historic change in language
Question | Answer |
---|---|
What was the very first language spoken in the British Isles? | Celtic |
List two parts of the British Isles that the Romans captured | England and Wales |
What language did the British Isles use when the Romans took over? | Latin |
List two Brythonic languages which the modern English language has in it | Celtic and Pictish |
What caused the Germanic people to come to the UK? | Large cultural vacuum left in the UK because of the Romans leaving |
Name the three tribes of Germanic people | Angles, Saxons and Jutes |
When was Old English spoken? | Around the 5th and 6th century |
State one difference between Old English and Modern English | Phonology |
Which two letters from Old English were lost in the development of Modern English? | Þ ('th' for definate article 'the') and ð ('eth' for common noun 'path') |
List three examples of languages that Old English stole from | Old French, Norse and Danish |
Who invented Middle English and where was it first used? | Geoffrey Chaucer in his work "The Canterbury Tales" |
Name a language that began to creep from religious sources and remained a language of power in the Catholic Church | Latin |
When was the invasion of the French and what two things were happening to Latin at that time? | 1066. The development of the ecclesiastical class pushing Latin into the language and Renaissance learning brought more Latin as well as Ancient Greek into English |
Explain whether English or French survived as a language | English triumphed as the language of England but the French lexis changed English |
What's interesting about the names of animals in Anglo Saxon times and why was this the case? | The names of the animals were Anglo Saxon, yet the meat produced from them were French. This is because the Anglo Saxons grew the animals and the French ate them |
Define "Early Modern English" | A well documented language of Shakespeare marked by some standardising spellings but some clear phonetic variation from modern English |
When was the Renaissance period, what was so significant about it and why did it happen? | Late 13th/ early 14th century, a period where forgotten texts covering all subjects were found. The Turks attempted to battle the Roman Empire, and they also sent across a lot of books |
Besides the British Isles, name a continent that adopted English as their dialect | East coast of North America |
What officially established the standardising of spelling and why was this historically significant? | The introduction of the printing press, which brought the publishing of books and letters went down massively from its original expensive price |
List six external forces that continued to mould Modern English, where it was marked by standardisation from 1750 | Development of international trade, development of the British Empire, British supremacy in the industry, World Wars in 20th century, burgeoning technology and influence of American English |
What three things are involved in lexical change? | Creation of new words, obsolescence of old words and changing morphology |
Define "Coinages & Neologisms" | Words created from scratch, often to do with technology |
What are nonce words (not referring to paedophilia)? | Similar to coinages, but don't linger and are only used once |
Define "Borrowing/Loan Words" | Direct stealing of words from other languages. English didn't borrow it though- they stole it! |
What are eponyms? | Words we get from a person or place, usually a thing's inventor or a place of invention |
Define "Proprietary Names" | Neologisms that start life as business or company name before transcending into everyday usage |
What are acronyms? | Words formed from the initials of other words, which is very popular in the armed forces |
Define "Initialisms" | String of initial letters which are pronounced individually, but still manages to get its meaning across |
What is clipping? | A longer word is shorn of extraneous morphemes and left shorter and more efficient |
Define "Affixiation" | Creating new words by adding affixes, usually bound morphemes to existing words |
What is conversion? | Words used in a different word class from its original |