Sunday, 30 April 2017
Saturday, 29 April 2017
English Vocabulary
ENGLISH VOCABULARY
-
consider
deem to be
infinitely or immeasurably small -
accord
concurrence of opinion -
evident
clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment -
practice
a customary way of operation or behavior -
intend
have in mind as a purpose -
concern
something that interests you because it is important -
commit
perform an act, usually with a negative connotation -
issue
some situation or event that is thought about -
approach
move towards -
establish
set up or found -
utter
without qualification -
conduct
direct the course of; manage or control -
engage
consume all of one's attention or time -
obtain
come into possession of -
scarce
deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand -
policy
a plan of action adopted by an individual or social group -
straight
successive, without a break -
stock
capital raised by a corporation through the issue of shares -
apparent
clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment -
property
a basic or essential attribute shared by members of a class -
fancy
imagine; conceive of; see in one's mind -
concept
an abstract or general idea inferred from specific instances -
court
an assembly to conduct judicial business -
appoint
assign a duty, responsibility or obligation to -
passage
a section of text, particularly a section of medium
SHAHEEN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACADEMY
Friday, 28 April 2017
Thursday, 27 April 2017
WHY ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS IMPORTANT
10 REASONS WHY ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS IMPORTANT
- English is the most commonly spoken language in the world. One out of five people can speak or at least understand English!
- English is the language of science, of aviation, computers,
diplomacy, and tourism. Knowing English increases your chances of
getting a good job in a multinational company within your home country
or of finding work abroad.
- English is the official language of 53 countries. That is a lot of people to meet and speak to.
- English is spoken as a first language by around 400 million people around the world.
- English is the language of the media industry. If you speak
English, you won’t need to rely on translations and subtitles anymore to
enjoy your favourite books, songs, films and TV shows.
- English is also the language of the Internet. Many websites are
written in English – you will be able to understand them and to take
part in forums and discussions.
- English is based on a simple alphabet and it is fairly quick and easy to learn compared to other languages.
- English is not only useful — it gives you a lot of satisfaction.
Making progress feels great. You will enjoy learning English, if you
remember that every hour you spend gets you closer to perfection.
- Since English is spoken in so many different countries there are
thousands of schools around the world that offer programmes in English.
If you speak English, there’re lots of opportunities for you to find an
appropriate school and course to suit your academic needs.
- Because it’s fun! By learning English, you will also learn about other cultures. Few experiences will make you grow as a person more than learning the values, habits and way of life in a culture that is different from yours.
Wednesday, 26 April 2017
Grateful to all E.Language learners
Dear all
Hope all English Language learner's ll be fine.
Let me announced this astonishing news to all of you that "Shaheen English Language academy" page has been viewed from Great countries Like US,UK, Brazil, UAE, Egypt, Sweden, Belgium, KSA, Pakistan,India etc.
People of all the above countries are indeed talented and quick learner. Hope you people ll get alot than this ahead.
Keep visiting my blog for more to come.
This blog has been viewed by more than 500 hundreds People across the world within week only.
Our facebook page crossed 4000 viewers.
Cheers
SELA
Hope all English Language learner's ll be fine.
Let me announced this astonishing news to all of you that "Shaheen English Language academy" page has been viewed from Great countries Like US,UK, Brazil, UAE, Egypt, Sweden, Belgium, KSA, Pakistan,India etc.
People of all the above countries are indeed talented and quick learner. Hope you people ll get alot than this ahead.
Keep visiting my blog for more to come.
This blog has been viewed by more than 500 hundreds People across the world within week only.
Our facebook page crossed 4000 viewers.
Cheers
SELA
ARTICLES IN ENGLISH ( PARTS OF SPEECH)
ARTICLE - (Defining word)
An article is used before a noun. These are divided into definite (the) and indefinite (a, an). Articles help define nouns.
Examples: a, an, the
Example sentences: I need a dictionary. The dictionary needs to be in English.
Tuesday, 25 April 2017
The Arab world will continue to suffer educational and cultural crises until it properly digests the different methodologies of science and religion
PhD thesis: The earth is flat IN AGREEMENT
70%
By Nidhal Guessoum, Special to Gulf News
19:36 April 10, 2017
Solar System modeled in Cinema 4D. Composition includes the sun and each of the eight planets and a representation of their orbit. Stars, nebulas and a distant galaxy seen in the background.
Image Credit:Getty Images/iStockphoto
Last week, a huge scandal rocked the Tunisian and Arab scientific and educational world: a PhD student submitted a thesis declaring Earth to be flat, unmoving, young (only 13,500 years of age), and the centre of the universe.
Going even bolder and further, the student explicitly rejected the physics of Newton and Einstein, the astronomy of Copernicus and Kepler, the cosmology of the Big Bang, the main models of atmospheric and geological activity, and most of modern climatology.
The student submitted her thesis after five years of work; it was then sent to two assessors, thus passing the first stage of approvals. The reports were expected soon, for the thesis defence to be scheduled.
It was at this stage that fate luckily intervened: a copy of the thesis was “leaked” to the former president of the Tunisian Astronomical Association, who checked that it was not a hoax and then quickly rang the alarm by posting on Facebook the general conclusions of the thesis, verbatim.
Gulf News readers may recall that two years ago, I wrote a column lamenting the talk that a Saudi cleric had given in the UAE insisting that Earth does not rotate, neither around itself nor around the Sun; I described the moment as a “debacle” and tried to draw lessons from it.
This new scandal is much worse, because it does not come from a cleric (that was bad enough) but rather from a PhD student in science, her supervisor held the Professor rank (the highest in academia), and they were explicitly rejecting major parts of modern science.
They also went further than just submit a thesis, they published a paper (in an obscure and disreputable journal) presenting “physical and astronomical arguments” for geo-centrism (Earth being central and fixed in the universe).
The paper is available online, and anyone can quickly check that both the paper and the journal are worthless: countless grammatical errors, mediocre references, puny scientific arguments; the journal is classified as “fake and predatory”, one of those “pay and we’ll publish your article quickly, with no reviewing or editing”...
I don’t mean to belabour the point, but it is worth citing a few ideas from the general conclusion given at the end of the thesis, if at least to fully impress upon the reader the size of the calamity that has just occurred — before we analyse its causes.
The “results” of this doctoral thesis include: the Earth is flat and young, and it stands immobile at the centre of the universe, which is made of only one galaxy; the sun’s diameter is 1,135km (not 1.4 million km), the moon is 908 km wide, and they lie 687 and 23 times closer to Earth, respectively; there are 11 planets; stars are “limited” in number and have a diameter of 292 km (not millions of km).
How does one explain such stunning ignorance of basic astronomy, coupled with such brashness and insolence — rejecting Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Hubble, and everything in science?
In this particular case, I believe this was due to an adherence to religious, scriptural literalism, in other words taking the meanings of religious texts literally and blindly, at the cost of rejecting all knowledge that appears to contradict it, no matter how much evidence supports it.
Indeed, we find in the conclusions of the thesis clear indications of this stand and approach, expressions such as: “using physical and religious arguments”, “also proving the world scale of [Noah’s] flood”, “proposed a new kinematic approach that conforms to the verses of the Quran”, “the roles of the stars are: (1) to be ornaments of the sky; (2) to stone the devils; and (3) as signs to guide creatures in the darkness of earth”; and finally “the geo-centric model... accords with the verses of the Quran and the pronouncements of our Prophet.”
Comeback
Flat-Earthism has lately been making a comeback and spreading like bush fire through social media.
Search for “flat earth” on YouTube and you’ll find almost a million videos; “flat earth society” gets 400,000 pages on the web; “flat earth proof” gets you 200,000 pages; etc.
But this social media trend I attribute to people’s inclination toward conspiracy theories: “Nasa has faked the moon-landing”; “Nasa photoshops space images”; “Give us real proofs that these interplanetary spacecraft are factual”; etc.
In 2001, when the internet was still young, and the “moon-landing hoax” was just emerging as a trending meme (without social media to support its spread), I gave several talks titled “Did Nasa fake the moon landing... or are we miserably failing to educate the public?”
But the latest shocking event (the PhD thesis) implies that we are not only failing to educate the public (that is manifest in the trendy “flat earth” and “Nasa lies” memes on social media) but also our brightest students.
It has been reported that the PhD student had previously graduated at the top of her class.
What we are failing to clarify and communicate is how to distinguish between scientific knowledge (facts, models, theories, etc.) and religious knowledge (what verses mean and what they intend to teach us).
I believe the Arab-Muslim world will continue to suffer educational and cultural crises, not to mention a total lack of understanding of science, until it properly digests the different methodologies of science and religion, without diminishing the value of each.
70%
By Nidhal Guessoum, Special to Gulf News
19:36 April 10, 2017
Solar System modeled in Cinema 4D. Composition includes the sun and each of the eight planets and a representation of their orbit. Stars, nebulas and a distant galaxy seen in the background.
Image Credit:Getty Images/iStockphoto
Last week, a huge scandal rocked the Tunisian and Arab scientific and educational world: a PhD student submitted a thesis declaring Earth to be flat, unmoving, young (only 13,500 years of age), and the centre of the universe.
Going even bolder and further, the student explicitly rejected the physics of Newton and Einstein, the astronomy of Copernicus and Kepler, the cosmology of the Big Bang, the main models of atmospheric and geological activity, and most of modern climatology.
The student submitted her thesis after five years of work; it was then sent to two assessors, thus passing the first stage of approvals. The reports were expected soon, for the thesis defence to be scheduled.
It was at this stage that fate luckily intervened: a copy of the thesis was “leaked” to the former president of the Tunisian Astronomical Association, who checked that it was not a hoax and then quickly rang the alarm by posting on Facebook the general conclusions of the thesis, verbatim.
Gulf News readers may recall that two years ago, I wrote a column lamenting the talk that a Saudi cleric had given in the UAE insisting that Earth does not rotate, neither around itself nor around the Sun; I described the moment as a “debacle” and tried to draw lessons from it.
This new scandal is much worse, because it does not come from a cleric (that was bad enough) but rather from a PhD student in science, her supervisor held the Professor rank (the highest in academia), and they were explicitly rejecting major parts of modern science.
They also went further than just submit a thesis, they published a paper (in an obscure and disreputable journal) presenting “physical and astronomical arguments” for geo-centrism (Earth being central and fixed in the universe).
The paper is available online, and anyone can quickly check that both the paper and the journal are worthless: countless grammatical errors, mediocre references, puny scientific arguments; the journal is classified as “fake and predatory”, one of those “pay and we’ll publish your article quickly, with no reviewing or editing”...
I don’t mean to belabour the point, but it is worth citing a few ideas from the general conclusion given at the end of the thesis, if at least to fully impress upon the reader the size of the calamity that has just occurred — before we analyse its causes.
The “results” of this doctoral thesis include: the Earth is flat and young, and it stands immobile at the centre of the universe, which is made of only one galaxy; the sun’s diameter is 1,135km (not 1.4 million km), the moon is 908 km wide, and they lie 687 and 23 times closer to Earth, respectively; there are 11 planets; stars are “limited” in number and have a diameter of 292 km (not millions of km).
How does one explain such stunning ignorance of basic astronomy, coupled with such brashness and insolence — rejecting Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Hubble, and everything in science?
In this particular case, I believe this was due to an adherence to religious, scriptural literalism, in other words taking the meanings of religious texts literally and blindly, at the cost of rejecting all knowledge that appears to contradict it, no matter how much evidence supports it.
Indeed, we find in the conclusions of the thesis clear indications of this stand and approach, expressions such as: “using physical and religious arguments”, “also proving the world scale of [Noah’s] flood”, “proposed a new kinematic approach that conforms to the verses of the Quran”, “the roles of the stars are: (1) to be ornaments of the sky; (2) to stone the devils; and (3) as signs to guide creatures in the darkness of earth”; and finally “the geo-centric model... accords with the verses of the Quran and the pronouncements of our Prophet.”
Comeback
Flat-Earthism has lately been making a comeback and spreading like bush fire through social media.
Search for “flat earth” on YouTube and you’ll find almost a million videos; “flat earth society” gets 400,000 pages on the web; “flat earth proof” gets you 200,000 pages; etc.
But this social media trend I attribute to people’s inclination toward conspiracy theories: “Nasa has faked the moon-landing”; “Nasa photoshops space images”; “Give us real proofs that these interplanetary spacecraft are factual”; etc.
In 2001, when the internet was still young, and the “moon-landing hoax” was just emerging as a trending meme (without social media to support its spread), I gave several talks titled “Did Nasa fake the moon landing... or are we miserably failing to educate the public?”
But the latest shocking event (the PhD thesis) implies that we are not only failing to educate the public (that is manifest in the trendy “flat earth” and “Nasa lies” memes on social media) but also our brightest students.
It has been reported that the PhD student had previously graduated at the top of her class.
What we are failing to clarify and communicate is how to distinguish between scientific knowledge (facts, models, theories, etc.) and religious knowledge (what verses mean and what they intend to teach us).
I believe the Arab-Muslim world will continue to suffer educational and cultural crises, not to mention a total lack of understanding of science, until it properly digests the different methodologies of science and religion, without diminishing the value of each.
English Quotes from great people
❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞
Nelson Mandela
❝One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.❞
Nelson Mandela
❝One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.❞
Frank Smith
❝The limits of my language are the limits of my world.❞
‒Ludwig Wittgenstein
‒Ludwig Wittgenstein
❝Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can; there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.❞
‒Sarah Caldwell
‒Sarah Caldwell
❝Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.❞
‒Chinese Proverb
‒Chinese Proverb
❝You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.❞
‒Geoffrey Willans
‒Geoffrey Willans
❝To have another language is to possess a second soul.❞
‒Charlemagne
‒Charlemagne
❝Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.❞
‒Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
‒Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞
‒Rita Mae Brown
‒Rita Mae Brown
❝Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.❞
‒Oliver Wendell Holmes
‒Oliver Wendell Holmes
Monday, 24 April 2017
Saturday, 22 April 2017
Friday, 21 April 2017
Thursday, 20 April 2017
Life
The most difficult phase of life is not when no one understands you, it is when you don't understand yourself.
Shaheen English Language Academy
Shaheen English Language Academy
Wednesday, 19 April 2017
History of ENGLISH
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian
dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Germanic invaders and settlers
from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands.
The Old English
of the Anglo-Saxon era developed into Middle English,
the language as spoken between the Norman Conquest
and the late 15th century. A significant influence on the shaping of Middle
English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavians who conquered and
colonised parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries; this contact led
to much lexical borrowing and grammatical
simplification. Another important influence came from the conquering Normans,
who spoke a form of French called Old Norman,
which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords
entered the language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the
church, the court system and the government. The system of orthography
that became established during the Middle English period is by and large still
in use today – later changes in pronunciation, however, combined with the
adoption of various foreign spellings, mean that the spelling of modern English words appears highly
irregular.
Early Modern English – the language used by Shakespeare
– is dated from around 1500. It incorporated many Renaissance-era
loans from Latin
and Ancient Greek,
as well as borrowings from other European languages, including French, German
and Dutch. Significant pronunciation changes in this
period included the ongoing Great Vowel
Shift, which affected the qualities of most long vowels.
Modern English
proper, similar in most respects to that spoken today, was in place by the late
17th century. The English language came to be exported to other parts of the
world through British colonisation, and is now the dominant
language in Britain and Ireland, the United States
and Canada,
Australia,
New Zealand
and many smaller former colonies, as well as being widely spoken in India, parts of Africa,
and elsewhere. Partially due to United States influence, English gradually took
on the status of a global lingua franca in the second half of 20th
century. This is especially true in Europe, where English has largely taken
over the former roles of French and (much earlier) Latin as a common language
used to conduct business and diplomacy, share scientific and technological
information, and otherwise communicate across national boundaries.
Old English
consisted of a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different
parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became
dominant; however, a greater input to Middle English came from the Anglian
dialects. Global geographic variation between different English
dialects and accents remains significant today. Scots,
a form of English traditionally spoken in parts of Scotland and the north of
Ireland, is often regarded as a separate language.
Proto-English
English has its
roots in the languages of the Germanic
peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire,
most of the Germanic-inhabited area (Germania)
remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within
the empire. Some Germanics served in the Roman military,
and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri,
Batavi, Menapii
and Frisii
served in Britain (Britannia) under Roman command. Germanic settlement and power
expanded during the Migration Period, which saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Germanic settlement of Britain
took place from the 5th to the 7th century, following the end of Roman rule on the island. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that around
the year 449 Vortigern,
King of the Britons,
invited the "Angle kin" (Angles allegedly led by the Germanic
brothers Hengist and Horsa) to help repel invading Picts, in return for
lands in the southeast of Britain. This led to waves of settlers who eventually
established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy.
(The Chronicle was not a contemporaneous work, however, and cannot be
regarded as an accurate record of such early events.)[1]
Bede, who wrote
his Ecclesiastical History
in AD 731, writes of invasion by Angles, Saxons and Jutes, although the precise nature of the invasion and
settlement and the contributions made by these particular groups are the
subject of much dispute among historians.[2]
The languages
spoken by the Germanic peoples who initially settled in Britain were part of
the West Germanic
branch of the Germanic language family. They consisted of
dialects from the Ingvaeonic grouping, spoken mainly around the North Sea
coast, in regions that lie within modern Denmark,
north-west Germany
and the Netherlands.
Due to specific similarities between early English and Old Frisian,
an Anglo-Frisian
grouping is also identified.
These dialects had
most of the typical West Germanic features, including a significant amount of
grammatical inflection. Vocabulary came largely from the core Germanic
stock, although due to the Germanic peoples' extensive contacts with the Roman
world, the settlers' languages already included a number of loanwords
from Latin.[3]
For instance, the predecessor of Modern English wine had been borrowed
into early Germanic from the Latin vinum.
Old English
The dialects spoken
by the Germanic settlers developed into a language that would come to be called
Anglo-Saxon, or now more commonly Old English.[4]
It displaced the indigenous Brittonic
Celtic (and the Latin
of the former Roman rulers) in most of the
areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England, while Celtic languages
remained in most of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, and many compound Celtic-Germanic placenames survive,
hinting at early language mixing.[5]
Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which
continue to be found in dialects of Modern English.[4]
The four main dialects were Mercian,
Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon; the last of these formed the basis
for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the
dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian.
Old English was
first written using a runic
script called the futhorc, but this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced
by Irish missionaries in the 9th century. Most literary output was in either
the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great's time, or the Late West Saxon
(regarded as the "classical" form of Old English) of the Winchester
school inspired by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and followed by such
writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham ("the Grammarian").
The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic
poem Beowulf,
composed by an unknown poet.
The introduction of
Christianity
from around the year 600 encouraged the addition of over 400 Latin loan words into Old English, such
as the predecessors of the modern priest, paper, and school,
and a smaller number of Greek loan words.[6]
The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was also subject to strong Old Norse
influence due to Scandinavian
rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century (see below).
Most native English
speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though about half of the
most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots.[7]
The grammar of Old English was much more inflected
than modern English, combined with freer word order,
and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern German.
The Old English period is considered to have transitioned into the Middle English
period some time after the Norman conquest
of 1066, when the language came to be influenced significantly by the new
ruling class's French dialect, called Old Norman.[8][9]
Scandinavian influence
Vikings
from modern-day Norway
and Denmark
began to raid parts of Britain from the late 8th
century onward. In 865, however, a major invasion was launched by what the
Anglo-Saxons called the Great Heathen Army, which eventually brought
large parts of northern and eastern England (the Danelaw)
under Scandinavian control. Most of these areas were retaken by the English
under Edward the Elder in the early 10th century,
although York and Northumbria
were not permanently regained until the death of Eric Bloodaxe
in 954. Scandinavian raids resumed in the late 10th century during the reign of
Æthelred the Unready, and Sweyn Forkbeard
eventually succeeded in briefly being declared king of England in 1013,
followed by the longer reign of his son Cnut
from 1016 to 1035, and Cnut's sons Harold Harefoot
and Harthacnut
until 1042.
The Scandinavians,
or Norsemen,
spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse.
The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from
different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots
were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more
divergent. Probably significant numbers of Norse speakers settled in the
Danelaw during the period of Scandinavian control. Many place-names
in those areas are of Scandinavian provenance (those ending in -by, for
example); it is believed that the settlers often established new communities in
places that had not previously been developed by the Anglo-Saxons. The
extensive contact between Old English and Old Norse
speakers, including the possibility of intermarriage that resulted from the acceptance of
Christianity by the Danes in 878,[10]
undoubtedly influenced the varieties of those languages spoken in the areas of
contact. Some scholars even believe that Old
English and Old Norse underwent a kind of fusion, and that the resulting
English language might be described as a mixed language
or creole. During the rule of Cnut and other Danish
kings in the first half of the 11th century a kind of diglossia
may have come about, with the West Saxon literary language existing alongside
the Norse-influenced Midland dialect of English, which could have served as a koine
or spoken lingua franca. When Danish rule ended, and particularly after the Norman Conquest,
the status of the minority Norse language presumably declined relative to that
of English, and its remaining speakers assimilated to English in a process
involving language shift and language death.
The widespread bilingualism that must have existed during this
process possibly contributed to the rate of borrowings from Norse into English.[11]
Only about 100 or
150 Norse words, mainly connected with government and administration, are found
in Old English writing. The borrowing of words of this type was stimulated by
Scandinavian rule in the Danelaw and during the later reign of Cnut. However,
most surviving Old English texts are based on the West Saxon standard that developed outside the
Danelaw; it is not clear to what extent Norse influenced the forms of the
language spoken in eastern and northern England at that time. Later texts from
the Middle English era, now based on an eastern Midland rather than a Wessex
standard, reflect the significant impact that Norse had on the language. In
all, English borrowed about two thousand words from Old Norse,
of which several hundred survive in Modern English.[11]
Norse borrowings
include many very common words, such as anger, bag, both, hit,
law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, window,
and even the pronoun they. Norse influence is also believed to have reinforced
the adoption of the plural copular verb form are
rather than alternative Old English forms like sind. It is also
considered to have stimulated and accelerated the morphological simplification found in
Middle English, such as the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case (except in pronouns).[12]
This is possibly confirmed by observations that simplification of the case
endings occurred earliest in the north and latest in the south-west, the area
farthest away from Viking influence. The spread of phrasal verbs
in English is another grammatical development to which Norse may have
contributed (although here a possible Celtic
influence is also noted).[11]
Middle English
Middle English
is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest
in 1066 until the end of the 15th century.
For centuries after
the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some
extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman, a variety of Old Norman,
originating from a northern langue d'oïl
dialect. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman
and English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people.
Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman, and later Anglo-French (see
characteristics of the Anglo-Norman language).
Until the 14th
century, Anglo-Norman and then French were the language of the courts and
government. Even after the decline of Norman French, standard French retained
the status of a formal or prestige language, and about 10,000
French (and Norman) loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms
associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food[13]
(see English language word origins and List of English words of French
origin). The strong influence of Old Norse
on English (described in the previous section) also becomes apparent during
this period. The impact of the native British Celtic languages that English
continued to displace is generally held to be much smaller, although some
attribute such analytic verb forms as the continuous
aspect ("to be doing" or "to have been doing")
to Celtic influence.[14][15]
Some scholars have also put forward hypotheses that Middle English was a kind of creole
language resulting from contact between Old English and either Old Norse or
Anglo-Norman.
English literature
began to reappear after 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline
in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, was the
first English government document to be published in the English language after
the Norman Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address
Parliament in English. The Pleading in English Act 1362 made
English the only language in which court proceedings could be held, though the
official record remained in Latin.[16]
By the end of the century, even the royal court had switched to English.
Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had
ceased to be a living language. Official documents began to be produced
regularly in English during the 15th century. Geoffrey
Chaucer, who lived in the late 14th century, is the most famous
writer from the Middle English period, and The Canterbury Tales is his best-known work.
The English
language changed enormously during the Middle English period, both in
vocabulary and pronunciation, and in grammar. While Old English is a heavily
inflected language (synthetic), the use of grammatical
endings diminished in Middle English (analytic).
Grammar distinctions were lost as many noun and adjective endings were levelled to -e. The older plural noun
marker -en (retained in a few cases such as children and oxen)
largely gave way to -s, and grammatical gender was discarded.
English spelling was also influenced by Norman
in this period, with the /θ/
and /ð/ sounds being spelled th
rather than with the Old English letters þ (thorn)
and ð (eth),
which did not exist in Norman. These letters remain in the modern Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, having been borrowed from Old
English via Old West Norse.
Early Modern English
English underwent
extensive sound changes during the 15th century, while its spelling conventions
remained largely constant. Modern English
is often dated from the Great Vowel
Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. The language
was further transformed by the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in
government and administration and by the standardising effect of printing. As a
result, the language acquired self-conscious terms such as "accent"
and "dialect".[17]
By the time of William Shakespeare (mid 16th - early 17th
century),[18]
the language had become clearly recognisable as Modern English. In 1604, the
first English dictionary was published, the Table Alphabeticall.
Increased literacy
and travel facilitated the adoption of many foreign words, especially
borrowings from Latin
and Greek from the time of the Renaissance.
In the 17th century, Latin words were often used with their original
inflections, but these eventually disappeared. As there are many words from
different languages and English spelling is variable, the risk of mispronunciation
is high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects,
most notably in the West Country. During the period, loan words were
borrowed from Italian, German, and Yiddish. British acceptance of and
resistance to Americanisms began during this period.[19]
Modern English
The first
authoritative and full featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English Language,
was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the
dictionary standardised both English spelling and word usage. Meanwhile,
grammar texts by Lowth, Murray,
Priestly,
and others attempted to prescribe standard usage even further.
Early Modern
English and Late Modern English differ essentially in vocabulary. Late Modern
English has many more words, arising from the Industrial Revolution and technology that
created a need for new words, as well as international development of the
language. The British Empire at its height covered one quarter
of the Earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from
many countries. British English and North American English, the two major
varieties of the language, are together spoken by 400 million people. Received Pronunciation of British English is
considered the traditional standard. The total number of English speakers
worldwide may exceed one billion.[20]
The English language will almost certainly continue
to evolve over time. With the development of computer use (chat rooms, domains,
and apps etc. etc.), and the adoption of English as a worldwide lingua franca
across cultures, customs, and traditions, we should not be surprised to see
some further shortening of words, phrases, and/or sentences.
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