《闲话英伦》特辑：English的前世今生－3.“外来分子”

·      English started to grow in the16thCentury

·      This was the era of the Renaissance – science, medicine andtechnology started to develop with the use of the printing press.

o   Latin came more into English(28% words)

§  Latin was the language of university – educated people throughoutEurope used it as a ‘lingua franca’

o   Greek (5%) – but these are veryimportant

§  History, Geography, Biology etc. come from Greek

·      England becomes a tradingnation in 16thCentury – English ships start to travel the world andtrade.

·      Arabic – Alcohol, Chemistry,Sugar and Zero

·      Nahuatl – Chilli, Chocolate andTomato

·      Malay – Amok, Bamboo, Paddy(field)

·      Even Chinese

o   Cheongsam 長衫

o   Kowtow 叩头

o   Ketchup茄汁

o   Mahjong 麻将

o   Tai-chi 太极

o   Tofu 豆腐

o   Typhoon 台风

·      English has always borrowedwords from other languages – sometimes we change the pronunciation andsometimes not

·     How does this affect English vocabulary? This is one of the reasons why English has such a large vocabulary– it is somewhere between 250,000 and 750,00

·      Don’t worry – you don’t have toknow them all!

o  So how many words does a native speaker know? The average English speaker knows 12,000 to 25,000 words

o   People only need to know 5,000for daily life