Words, words, words...

Hello again,

You  must have your favourite words/ expressions in English?
Something that sounds interesting or weird enough....

Here are some of mine:
"handbagging" (entered the language thanks to Margaret Thatcher and her habit of intimidating others with her handbag  (Macmillan Open Dictionary)

Macmillan dictionary

flip flopping
serendipity 
or 
creepy crawlies
and
pukka
 

I am writing about words as I thought we often ask students to remember lists of mundane vocabulary, too often related to completely artificial sounding "professional" English.

..... and we hardly ever talk about the words themselves, or the beauty of the language or simply its weirdness.

Here are some ideas for using the language itself as the main topic of a lesson.

Why don't we start with Victor Hertz and his music posters? A guessing game and music  - sounds like quite a good combination.



 


 for more visit:

Victor Hertz

It can also be a language quiz. Here are some excerpts from Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue"

. In English RIDE has just 5 forms; the same verb in German has sixteen. In Russian, nouns can have up to twelve inflections and adjectives as many as sixteen.

. We seldom stop to think how complicated and illogical English is. Take the simple word WHAT. Imagine trying to explain to a foreigner what  WHAT means. It takes the Oxford English Dictionary five pages and almost 15,000 words to manage the task.

 

. People can feel extremely strong about the matters related to a language. The Basque separatist organisation ETA has committed around 700 murders in the name of linguistic and cultural independence.

. There are 250 irregular verbs in English (this number is always fluid)

. Mario Pei (an Italian-American linguist) puts the number of British dialects at forty two.

.We have some forty sounds in English, but more than 200 ways of spelling them (e.g. the ‘sh’ sound can be written in up to 14 different ways – shoe, sugar, passion, ocean …..)

. English grammar is so complex and confusing because it is based on the rules of Latin,

with which English has little in common. It’s like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

. Swearing seems to have some universal qualities. It often involves one of the following; filth, the forbidden and the sacred, and usually all three. Most of our swear words have considerable antiquity. F* first appears in print in 1503 in a poem by the Scottish poet, William Dunbar. However, it fell out of general use. Before 1503, the vulgar words for sex was swive. F* must be one of  the most versatile of all the English words. It can express making a mess out of something (f*  up), inviting somebody to go away (f* off), being surprised (I’m f* if I know), being


What you can do is remove the figures and try to make students guess which number fits a given gap best. 


It is also a good opportunity to mention the good old Cockney with their bacon and legs, apples and pears and bees and honey.... 
You can even turn it into a good rhyming game (once students get the hang of it, they become pretty good). Below two (our of many) websites for some inspiration....

Cockney rhyming slang
Cockney slang

There is a very good video made by the Open University about the English language:

I have tested it few times and it does keep students interested. 
You don't have to use the whole video (as it is 10 minutes long). On the Open University youtube channel you should be able to find shorter fragments as well.

Personally, I take the risk of playing the video from the beginning till the end...
I have pasted the exercise my students have to do (poor creatures) while watching. If it is too much of a challenging to do it individually, they can work in groups, say one group concentrated on the first 2 parts, the other on the next 2, etc.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH IN 10 MINUTES

Chapter 1

Germanic tribes Anglo – Saxons  450 AD gave the English names for simple

everyday words. Four days of the week were also named after Anglo-Saxon 1………………………..

Christian missionaries appeared in 597AD bringing with them Latin words like: martyr, bishop, font (fonts baptismaux)

Then came the Vikings (c.800) bringing with them around 2……………………. words. Among them; drag, ransack, thrust and die.

Chapter 2

The Norman Conquest 3…………………………………….

William the Conqueror invaded England bringing with him a bunch of French words;

Council (1125), Clerk (1129), Parliament (1290), Sovereign, (1290), Judge (1290), jury (1400), evidence (1300) and justice (1154).

“Cow, sheep and swine” were given their French equivalents “beef, 4………………………. and pork”.

All in all, the English absorbed around 10,000 words from the Normans.

The Norman rule ended when the 100 years war finished. (1453)

Chapter 3

William Shakespeare invented about 2,000 new words: “eyeball, puppy dog, anchovy,dauntless (intrépide), besmirch (= ternir, entracher) and lacklustre (=terne, peu brilliant), alligator, the hob-nob” ( to … with = frayer avec) and phrases such us:” eat our flesh and blood out of 5…………………………………………………. (= ruiner qn), good riddance (= bon débarras!), break the ice, as dead as a door nail, to get your money’s worth, to be given a short shrift (= envoyer promener qn), to lay it on with a trial, to be 6………………………… with one’s own petard(= être pris à son propre piège).

Chapter 4

The King James’s Bible  (1611)

It introduced the following expressions:

“leopard can’t change its 7…………………….” (= on ne peu pas changer sa nature)

“a bird in a hand is worth two in a 8………………………” (= un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras”

“a wolf in sheep’s clothing”

“a fly in ointment”

Chapter 5

The English of science

British physicists of the 17^th century: Robert Hook, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton.

The Royal Society was formed in 9……………………………….

Science gave us words like “acid (1626), gravity (1641), electricity (1646), pendulum (1660)

Words related to human body: cardiac (1601), 10……………………….. (1601), ovary (1658) and sternum (1667), penis (1693) and vagina (1682).

Chapter 6

English and Empire:

The Caribbean – barbecue (11…………………………), canoe (1550), cannibal (1550)

India – yoga (1820), cummerbund (= ceinture) (1610), bungalow (1670)

Africa – voodoo  (1850) , zombie (1871),

Australia – nugget (1852), boomerang (1827), walkabout (1828)  (=voyage d’un aborigine)

Between Napoleon and the WW1 the British Empire gobbled up around 10 m square miles, 400 million people and nearly a 12………………………………………. gin and tonics.

Chapter 7

The Age of the dictionary

Lexicographers wanted to standardise English. One of them was dr Johnson who created the first English dictionary in 1733. (It took him 13……………………………. years to write it).

The dictionary contained 42,773 entries. Among the new words were – pickleherring (= buffoon), jobbernowl, fopdoodle ( a stupid person, a fool)

In 1857 a second dictionary started being written, it took 70 years to finish and it was to finally published in 1928 under the title: the 14……………………………………….. Dictionary. It has continued to be revised ever since.

Chapter 8

American English

The first Brits to land in America borrowed words for plants and animals from the native Americans – racoon (= raton laveur), squash, moose.
Waves of immigrants contributed to the development of the American English: the Dutch brought coleslaw and 15…………………………., the Germans – pretzels, delicatessens (= épicerie fine), the Italians – pizza, pasta and … mafia.

A new language of capitalism appeared with words like – break even, bottomline, blue chip, white-collar worker, freeways, subways, parking lots, merger, 16……………………………………...

Cool American movies and their 17…………………………. jazz (1937) (= sensass, vachement bien) moved across the ocean to Europe.

Americans continued using words that the British replaced long time ago:

Am E                                          Br E

Fall                                                 Autumn

Faucet                                            18………………………………….

Diapers                                          Nappies

Candy                                            Sweets (or NHS dental care)

Chapter 9

Internet English

19……………………………………. the first e-mails was sent, and with it came the Internet brining words such us “download”, (1980), “toolbar” (199)1, “firewall”l (1990).

It also started the abbreviation trend IMHO ‘= 20………………………………………………………………………………………………………………, BTW, FAIL, FYR, LOL, UG2BK….

Chapter 10

Global English

English has borrowed words from over 21………………………… languages.

22…………………………………….. bn people speak English. Out of them a quarter are native speakers, a quarter speak it as a second language and a half are able to ask for directions to a swimming pool….

There is Hinglish, Chinglis, Singlish….

Expect to find some really interesting books on language in the second part....
so stay tuned.