Nobody knows what the first language was. But scientists feel sure that nobody speaks it today because all languages change and keep on changing as long as people use them. One language may change in different ways in different places and grow into several languages.
If we could meet the people who spoke English five hundred years ago, we probably couldn′t understand much what they said.
English itself is a mixture of several languages. Scientists believe that these languages and many others all grew out of the same language which they call Indo-European. Nobody speaks it now. But some of its descendants are Latin, German, English, French, Greek, Russian and many of the different languages spoken in India.
Britain and America were once described as nations divided by a common language. Just what is difference between the English spoken in Britain and America?
The first English settlers to reach America arrived in Virginia in 1607 and in Massachusetts in 1620. They all spoke English of the early seventeenth century – the language of Shakespeare and Milton. Most of them came originally from the south and south-east of England. Although some of them had spent some years of exile in Holland they spoke with the accents of the southern part of their home country. To a large extent they kept that form of speech, but they soon learned to give old words new uses. They also took words from the local Indian languages for plants and animals that were new to them.
Until the Declaration of Independence in 1776 over two-thirds of the settlers in what later became the U.S. came from England. After that date many other people came to make a new life for themselves in the New World. These included Irish, French, Germans, Dutch, Italians, Slavs, and Scandinavians. All these people gave new words to the language of North America. The Negroes who had been taken from Africa as slaves to work on the rice and cotton plantations added words and structures from their own native languages. Some people today think that the very American expression O.K. comes from a similar expression which was brought to America by the Negroes.
All these people contributed in various ways to the language which was to become American English. Most civilizations and cultures – in their writings, traditions, folk stories – have traces of the old language.
1. Answer the questions in full sentences:
1. What do they call the language of the 17th centure?
2. How can we describe English language?
3. Can you say that English and Russian are somehow similar? Why?
4. How did modern English appear?
5. So what is the difference in British and American English?
2. Find out how these words are related to the text and write it down:
1. Slaves –
2. Milton -
3. Descendants –
4. Settlers -
5. New World -
Объяснение:
В субботу зимой мои лучшие друзья Эми Мария, Грег,Энди и я решили провести выходные в большом старомзагородном доме моего дяди. На улице был шторм,поэтому мы решилипровести великолепный вечер, поговорив вместе в гостиной внизу.Страшно, был сильный порыв ветра. Загорелся свет, и Нэнпогас, и я сказал: «Не волнуйся, Джон, это просто отключениеэлектричества», - заверил меня Грег. Мы смеялись и рассказывалистрашные истории в темноте. молнии, которая загорелась. Ком-раздался громкий вздох. Энди пропал! - воскликнула Эми.Мы все смотрели на друг друга в замешательстве и испуге, потому что никто не видел,как Энди вышел из комнаты. Мы обошли дом, позвав Энди, но ответа не было. Мы вернулисьв комнату и попытались подумать, что делать дальше. В этот момент из угла комнаты раздалсягромкий храп. В этот момент снова включился свет. Энди крепко спал на большом, бархатномЭнди сонно сел, потирая глаза: «О, хорошо, свет снова включен!» он сказал. Я был сонным исонным, я не хотел, чтобы кто-нибудь споткнулся обо мне, поэтому я пополз сюда. Мы все оченьобрадовались
Иоанна 13
The main reason for the fading interest of young people in theater today is considered to be a new, modern way of life, equipped with high-tech information technologies. Indeed, many electronic devices that are present in our everyday life - televisions, computers and not only - quickly present information in such a simple and fascinating form that theatrical performances are not always able to effectively compete with them. Constantly in the media and in real life, we talk about how the world of technology has filled everything around us, making people forget about other ways of communicating with the surrounding reality and learning about it. But the world of theater, in contrast to the technological one, not only surrounds a person, but also exists inside him.
The fact is that people have always had the goal of learning to embody the emotional world into the material one without any distortions, to cognize it together with others and to excite the feelings of their “spiritual clients”. And the world of theater is a wonderful interweaving of arts, in which people creatively combine all the ways of self-expression!