October 13, 2011 - English Language Day

nSport’sn Edition!

n

nDidnyou know that English is the most widely spoken language in thenworld?

nThat’snbecause it is the third largest “first” language (in other words,nthe language learned by people as babies as their first, nativenlanguage), after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish – AND it is “thenlanguage of science” (in most fields, almost every scientific papernis published in English) – AND it is the leading language ofninternational political and trade negotiations. It is widely learnednas a second language, so when people from Israel, Germany, and Italynmeet in a little B&B in Austria, as I once experienced, they cannspeak to each other through the only language they all knew –nEnglish. Lucky for me, right?

nEnglishnis also a huge language. There are more than 250,000 words in annOxford Dictionary—and that doesn’t even count a lot of technical,nscientific, and slang words! English has a lot of words that arensynonyms—words that mean roughly the same thing; partly this isnbecause there are root words from Old English, Dutch, and othernGermanic languages; root words from French and Latin and othern“Romance” languages; root words from Greek; and words adoptednfrom elsewhere, such as native Caribbean and African cultures.nEnglish seems to eagerly adopt and adapt words and phrases from othernlanguages in a way that is very different from other languages, suchnas French.

nBynthe way, French has about 43,000 words – FAR fewer! (Again, wordncount is hard to do – because there are archaic words, scientificnterms, slang words. A more liberal way of counting French words mightncome up with around 500,000 words – but then, the same way ofncounting English words would put it at more than one million words!)

nHerenare some examples of English words from different roots:

n fromnGermanic language: from Latin or French:

n come arrive

n sight vision

n freedom liberty

n cow beefn(boeuf)

n pig porkn(porque)

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nEnglishnincludes acronyms such as snafu (Situation Normal—All FoulednUp); words from Africa such as jazz and yam;nwords from the Caribbean such as canoenand papaya; words fromnvarious groups of Native Americans such as igloo,ntobacco, tomato,nand moose; words fromnAboriginal Australians such as kangaroonand koala; and wordsnfrom Asian languages such as shampoo,njungle, and bamboo.

nThe English Project has declarednOctober 13 to be English Language Day – a day on which to honornEnglish – because on this day in 1362, the Chancellor of Englandnfor the first time opened Parliament with a speech in English. Atntimes in England’s past, the language of power was Latin or French,nso this is seen as a turning point.

Sign on bus, in Czech and English, in Czech Republic

nNow,nwhat’s this about sports?

nThisnyear’s English Language Day theme is sports. We are encouraged tonnotice all the sports phrases that are used outside of sports. Herenare some examples. Do you know what they mean?