The Greek & Latin Roots of English (6 page)

14. Name one work written in Old English. _________

15. Anglo-Saxon is a synonym for which language? _________

16. What event introduced a Latin-based vocabulary into English? _________ When did it occur? _________ Through which language did most of these words first pass? _________

17. Who wrote
Canterbury Tales?
_________ To which period of English does it belong? _________

18. Who is generally credited with the introduction of the printing press into England? _________ When? _________

19. What effect did the introduction of the printing press have on the development of the English language? ___________________________

20. Who compiled
A Dictionary of the English Language?
_________ When? _________

21. Eighteenth-century grammarians tended to look at which language when establishing the rules of English usage? _________.

22. Give one cause of the introduction of many non-Indo-European words into English.

___________________________

23. Who was the first editor of the
Oxford English Dictionary?
_________ How long did it take to complete? _________

24. What was the first permanent English-speaking settlement in America? _________ When was it founded? _________

25. From which region of Europe did the earliest immigrants to the United States come?

___________________________

26. During the period 1880–1920, from which area did most of the immigrants come? _________ During the period since 1945? _________

27. What were Noah Webster's contributions to American English? __________________

_____________________________________________

28. What is etymology? ____________________________________

29. What is linguistics? ____________________________________

30. What is orthography? ________________________

31. If someone says, “It's only a matter of semantics,” what does she mean?

___________________________

32. What is the largest language family? __________________ How many people worldwide speak a language that belongs to that family? _________

33. Which language has the largest number of speakers? _________ Why? _________

34. How many people worldwide speak English as their first language? _________

35. What does the term
vernacular
mean? __________________

36. What has been the effect of television and the movies on American English?

____________________________________

37. What is lexicography? ___________________________

38. Why is French called a Romance language? ___________________________

39. What is an “orphan” language? _________ Give one example. _________

40. What is a lingua franca? _________ Give an example. _________

41. Sanskrit is no longer spoken, but how is it preserved? _________

42. From which language does the word
tycoon
come? _________ What is its literal meaning in that language? _________ What is its English usage? _________

43. From which language does the word
fiasco
come? _________ What is its literal meaning in that language? _________ What is its English usage? _________

44. From what language does the phrase
carte blanche
come? _________ What is its meaning in that language? _________ What is its English usage? _________

What are the Germanic-based synonyms for the following Latin-based words? Use your dictionary if you are not sure of the meaning of the Latin-based word.

50. What is the biggest source of new vocabulary today? ___________________________

The following words have entered English unchanged (but sometimes with slight changes in spelling) from other languages. Use your dictionary to find the language of origin and meaning:

Footnotes

1
. Estimates of the number of languages vary because of the question of what constitutes a distinct language (as opposed to dialect) and because many languages exist only in spoken form. According to the
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Languages
, over 22,000 names of languages, living and dead, have been recorded. According to the
Cambridge Encyclopedia
, there are, however, only 10 languages that have over 100 million speakers: Chinese (over one billion); English (750 million, including those countries that count English as an official language); Hindi (490 million); Spanish (420 million); Russian (255 million); Arabic (230 million); Bengali (215 million); Portuguese (213 million); German (129 million); and Japanese (127 million). These figures do not include non-native speakers of these languages and are all, of course, approximate.

2
. The difficulty in calculating the number of languages spoken in Africa is due to the fact that many either are isolated geographically or have no writing systems to record them.

3
. A
lingua franca
is any language that is used as a means of communication among speakers of different languages that are mutually incomprehensible.

4
. An asterisk indicates that the language is no longer spoken although it may survive in written form. The sacred writings of many religions around the world sometimes preserve languages that are no longer spoken. For example, the
Vedas
, sacred texts of the Hindu religion, are preserved in Sanskrit.

5
. “Behold! We of the spear Danes from old times
Of the people kings' glory have heard
How the princes deeds of valor performed.”

6
. Who were the Normans? Actually, in their origins they were also Germanic, having come from Scandinavia (which is why they were called Northmen, or Normans) in the ninth century to settle in France. But they had so thoroughly adapted to the language and customs of the people that within a very short period of time they had abandoned their original language for French and given their name to that region of northwest France.

7
. “When April with its sweet showers
The drought of March has pierced to the root,
and bathed every vein in such moisture
by whose quickening force is engendered the flower.”

8
. The attempt to standardize English spelling had unintended consequences, for although the spelling of a word might become fixed, its pronunciation changed over time. As a result, many words now contain letters that are no longer pronounced, e.g.,
thought or weigh
. On the other hand, the letter
b
was added to the spelling of the word
debt
because it was derived from the Latin verb
debeo
(owe).

9
.
Vernacular
is the language that is native to a country, but it is also a term to describe ordinary, or everyday, language as opposed to literary language and expression.

10
. The members of the Philological Society of Great Britain, to whom the idea of the OED must be credited, argued that existing dictionaries were “incomplete and deficient.”

HOW LATIN WORKS

Roman Forum

Latin is a dead language,
As you can plainly see.
It killed off all the Romans,
And now it's killing me
.

Popular rhyme among students of Latin

INFLECTED LANGUAGES

Before we can begin to study the Greek and Latin roots of English vocabulary, we must first understand something of the way in which these languages “work.” In modern English, the function of any word in a sentence or a phrase is determined by its position. For example:

The dog bites the man
.

has a very different meaning from

The man bites the dog
.

whereas

The the man dog bites
and

Bites man the dog the

have no meaning at all.

Both Latin and Greek, however, are inflected languages. That means that the functions of words within a particular sentence are determined not by word order, as in English, but by various endings that are placed on each word.