- Sport's Edition!
Did
you know that English is the most widely spoken language in the
world?
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| Sign in English, in Namibia |
That's
because it is the third largest “first” language (in other words,
the language learned by people as babies as their first, native
language), after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish – AND it is “the
language of science” (in most fields, almost every scientific paper
is published in English) – AND it is the leading language of
international political and trade negotiations. It is widely learned
as a second language, so when people from Israel, Germany, and Italy
meet in a little B&B in Austria, as I once experienced, they can
speak to each other through the only language they all knew –
English. Lucky for me, right?
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| Sign in Hindi and English, in India |
English
is also a huge language. There are more than 250,000 words in an
Oxford Dictionary—and that doesn't even count a lot of technical,
scientific, and slang words! English has a lot of words that are
synonyms—words that mean roughly the same thing; partly this is
because there are root words from Old English, Dutch, and other
Germanic languages; root words from French and Latin and other
“Romance” languages; root words from Greek; and words adopted
from elsewhere, such as native Caribbean and African cultures.
English seems to eagerly adopt and adapt words and phrases from other
languages in a way that is very different from other languages, such
as French.
By
the way, French has about 43,000 words – FAR fewer! (Again, word
count is hard to do – because there are archaic words, scientific
terms, slang words. A more liberal way of counting French words might
come up with around 500,000 words – but then, the same way of
counting English words would put it at more than one million words!)
Here
are some examples of English words from different roots:
from
Germanic language: from Latin or French:
come arrive
sight vision
freedom liberty
cow beef
(boeuf)
pig pork
(porque)
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| Sign in French and English, in Israel |
English
includes acronyms such as snafu (Situation Normal—All Fouled
Up); words from Africa such as jazz and yam;
words from the Caribbean such as canoe
and papaya; words from
various groups of Native Americans such as igloo,
tobacco, tomato,
and moose; words from
Aboriginal Australians such as kangaroo
and koala; and words
from Asian languages such as shampoo,
jungle, and bamboo.
The English Project has declared
October 13 to be English Language Day – a day on which to honor
English – because on this day in 1362, the Chancellor of England
for the first time opened Parliament with a speech in English. At
times in England's past, the language of power was Latin or French,
so this is seen as a turning point.
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| Sign on bus, in Czech and English, in Czech Republic |
Now,
what's this about sports?
This
year's English Language Day theme is sports. We are encouraged to
notice all the sports phrases that are used outside of sports. Here
are some examples. Do you know what they mean?
- They went down to the wire to make a deal. (phrase from horse racing)
- Who in the world is calling the shots? (phrase from billiards)
- I hope you let her off the hook! (fishing)
- Kara was exhausted as she ran the last lap, but then she got a second wind. (sailing)
- Please don't throw in the towel on this project! (boxing)
- They started to argue but then called a time out so they'd calm down. (many sports)
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