About English
A global intercontinental community of 430 million people
An essentially Germanic language with a lot of weirdness
Conjecture: a simple language that is continually being simplified so it can be used as a second language by adults
What came before English?
Avon
Thames
Dover
London
Place names: Tor, Combe, Worthy
Descendent languages: Welsh, Cornish
The historical phases of English
Old English
Post-Roman, West Saxon (Wessex dialect), Beowulf
Middle English
Danelaw, Chaucer
Modern English
Tudors, Shakespeare, King James Bible
Old English
Alfred the Great
Hwæt, we gar-dena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon
Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped...
Kenning
classroom, fat-chewer, son of the soil, red shirt, code monkey, silver-tongued, pig's bladder
a blanket of white lay on the land
Not adjective-noun as with Greek
wound-hoe (sword) versus wine-dark sea
horsebreaker, blackest night
Modern English
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York
Vowel shift
Rees
Rhys
Riies
All English vowel spellings are consequently weird
English grammar
Written grammar is political and hence weird
Spoken grammar is straight-forward
Except for Received Pronunciation
Word order
Little black dress
The boy kicked the ball
Suffixes
-s
-ed
-ing
-hood
-ship
-dom
-ness
-less
Plurals
To create a plural in English add an 's'; because French
Stadium, Stadia, Stadiums
Bigfoot, Bigfeet, Bigfoots
Archaic plurals (-en suffix)
Utilities
by, then, until, so, this, to, with, and, of
The ball was kicked by the boy
I wrote you; I wrote to you
The boy kicked the ball with force
The boy by the wall kicked the ball;
the boy kicked, by the wall, the ball;
the boy kicked the ball by the wall
Stress, pitch and poetry
Rising pitch to indicate a question, see Australians
Pitch and intonation are not fixed
hamlet, nuclear
Native speakers like rhythm ,
hence iambic pentameter, cadence, repetition and couplets
English suits blank verse and songs
