6 Language 41 English through the years Evolution of the English language : English is a rich language, with more words in its vocabulary than any other language. Since Celtic times, in fact, people living in Britain picked up pieces of the language spoken by the new settlers, like the Romans, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans. Later on, the gradual building of the British Empire led to the expansion of English in other territories across the world, whose languages mingled and added further words to the British vocabulary. The development of English went through three phases. Old English : It is the name given to the language spoken by the tribes of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, from their settlement in the 5th century to the end of 1100. It was an inflected language: words changed their form according to their grammatical function. Middle English : It is the language spoken from the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) until about 1500. The Normans used French as the language of aristocracy, whereas Old English was left to the peasants . The influence of French can be seen in words such as: veal (from veau), beef (from bSuf), and pork (from porc). Modern (or New) English : It covers the period between 1500 and the present. During this time, the development of English was fostered by two factors: Shakespeare9s influence, who enriched the English vocabulary by adding about 1,700 words, and British imperialistic policy, which contributed to making English a global language and gave birth to other varieties, such as American or Australian English. glossary to foster: favorire to mingle: mescolarsi peasant: contadino veal: carne di vitello Loanwords There are many words from other languages adopted by English people: these words are called <loanwords=. They are commonly used in everyday English without going through any transformation, like ballet (from French), kindergarten (from German), drama (from Greek), and espresso (from Italian). The spread of English : Today, 20% of the world9s population speaks English, although only 400 million are native speakers. The political and economic power of the USA in the post-war years helped make English become the international language of business, media, and technology. 1 SPEAKING PAIR WORK Ask and answer questions about the text. 2 VOCABULARY Match these English words with the language they come from. There are two languages you don9t need to use. Can you add any more examples? Entrepeneur " Bungalow " Tsunami " Ketchup " Mosquito " Phenomenon " Rucksack " Apartheid Japanese " French " Chinese " Greek " German " Spanish " Hindi " Dutch " Italian " Malay 3 42 LISTENING Listen to an interview with a linguist and complete this summary. Today, there are 1. more / less non-native speakers of English than native speakers. When people from a different language use English, they try to 2. adapt / adopt it to their own needs, so they give it a different 3. shape / sound. To give an example, when the first British 4. settlers / inhabitants arrived in America, they needed to talk about new 5. plants / plans, animals, or people. So, they introduced new words into the English 6. vocabulary / dictionary. Today, there are about 7. 100 / 1 000 Englishes around the world, such as Spanglish, spoken by Hispanic American communities; Singlish, spoken in Singapore; and Hinglish, spoken by 8. SouthAsian / South-African people. Unit 6 " Language 49