Task 3. Decide which events these dates refer to:

1 500’s; A.D. 43; early 400’s; mid-400’s; 500; 1100; 1485; late 800’s; 1066; 1300’s; 1600’s.

Task 4. Answer the questions:

1. What is PIE?

2. How many periods can the history of English be divided into?

3. What languages did ancient Greek, early Latin and the Germanic languages develop into?

4. What kind of language was Old English?

5. When did it become fashionable to use French words in England?

6. What language is known as Middle English?

7. What language is known as Modern English?

8. In what way was Modern English expanding its vocabulary from 1485 till 1600’s?

9. Why did English spread throughout the world?

10. What kind of language is the English language today?

Task 5. Fill in the gaps with the words from the box:

spoken languages, dead language, artificial language, finger language, the gift to languages, living language, mother tongue, tongue.

1. Latin is a ... … .

2. The doctor told the patient to show his … … .

3. The parents were told that their child had ... ... .

4. The deaf-and-dumb people use the … ... .

5. English is one of the wide-spread … … .

6. What is your … … ?

7. ... ... will never force out … …. .

Task 6. Translate the sentences:

1. Йому запропонували вивчити діалект цієї місцевості (to suggest).

2. Він добре розмовляє як англійською, так і французькою.

3. Англійська, німецька, французька, російська, українська та інші живі мови ніколи не будуть витиснуті штучною мовою.

4. В нього є великі природні здібності до мов.

5. Центральну Британію було заселено англами.

6. Англійська мова - найбільш розповсюджена мова дипломатії, бізнесу, науки та техніки.

7. Чим більше нових слів попадає у мову, тим багатше вона стає.

8. Кельтів було завойовано римлянами у 43 році нашої ери.

9. Англи, джути та сакси розмовляли різними германськими діалектами, але розуміли одне одного.

10. 60 % усіх телефонних розмов відбуваються англійською мовою, а 2 % німецькою.

Task 7. Ask questions starting with the words in brackets:

1. People have long been interested in having one language that could be spoken throughout the world. (What …?)

2. Such language would help to promote understanding among nations. (What …?)

3. A universal language would increase cultural and economic ties among various countries. (What …?)

4. Through the years, at least 600 universal languages have been proposed. (How many …?)

5. Esperanto is the most successful universal tongue. (Is …?)

6. More than 10 million people have learnt Esperanto since its creation in 1887. (How many …?)

7. There are about 2 million speakers of Esperanto. (How many …?)

8. Many people oppose artificial language. (Who …?)

9. They believe that an artificial tongue does not reflect culture as existing languages do. (What …?)

10. Some people oppose the use of any existing language as a world language. (Do …?)

Task 8. Decide (approximately) what percent of population uses English as:

1. mother tongue;

2. second language;

3. foreign language;

Task 9. a) Find the key sentence of each paragraph of text 1A;

b) Make up a plan to retell the text.

Text 1 B

1. Read the text and say whether the statements given after the text correspond to the content of the text or not . Use the expressions:

It is true ... It corresponds to the text.

It is false… According to the text…

ENGLISH OF TO-DAY

Today, when English is one of the major languages in the world, it is difficult to realize that this is a relatively recent thing – that in Shakespeare's time, for example, only a few million people spoke English, and the language was not thought to be very important by the other nations of Europe, and was unknown to the rest of the world.

English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in North America. Above all, the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has given the English language its present standing in the world.

People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have learned it as their native language; those who have learned it as a second language in a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose – administrative, professional or educational. One person in seven of the world's entire population belongs to one of these three groups. 75% of the world's mail and 60% of the world's telephone calls are in English.

Old English, like modern German, French, Russian and Greek, had many inflections to show singular and plural, tense, person, etc., but over the centuries words have been simplified. Verbs now have very few inflections, and adjectives do not change according to the noun.

As a result of the loss of inflections, English has become, over the past five centuries, a very flexible language. Without inflections, the same word can operate as many different parts of speech. Many nouns and verbs have the same form, for example swim, drink, walk, kiss, look, and smile. We can talk about water to drink and to water the flowers; time to go and to time a race; a paper to read and to paper a bedroom. Adjectives can be used as verbs. We warm our hands in front of a fire; if clothes are dirtied, they need to be cleaned and dried. Prepositions too are flexible. A sixty-year old man is nearing retirement; we can talk about a round of golf, cards, or drinks.

English has a large and extensive vocabulary, of which about 80 % is foreign. Therefore, it has cognates from almost every language in Europe and has borrowed and continues to borrow words from Spanish and French, Hebrew and Arabic, Hindi-Urdu and Bengali, Malay and Chinese, as well as languages from West Africa Polynesia. This language characteristic makes it unique in history.

Finally no English language central authority guards the purity of the language, therefore, many dialects have developed: American, British, Canadian, Indian, and Australian, to name a few. There is no standard pronunciation. But there is a unity of grammar and vocabulary. Thus, each country that speaks the language can inject aspects of its own culture into the usage and vocabulary.

However, the future is unpredictable, as there are no precedents to help us predict what happens to a language when it achieves genuine world status.