EnglishTeacher365

Sex, Lies, and ... Dictionaries?!

2007-11-07T16:29:00.000+04:00

Yes, the title 's just a little bit misleading this month, I know, but you try making somebody sit up and read a text this length just about ... dictionaries! Yes, in fact even the very word ‘dictionary’ is misleading, as everybody knows that those damned books are no good for improving your diction at all. Have you ever tried finding out just how to pronounce even one difficult word with the

Say, just who is this Johnson guy, anyway?

2007-10-10T13:39:00.000+04:00

After last month's article that featured a rather flattering profile of Dr Samuel Johnson, a few people wrote and asked me just who the guy really was. This is rather a tall order, but perhaps a little information will help those who've never encountered Johnson or his works before. For the following information, I’m greatly indebted to Jack Lynch and his website, ‘Guide to Samuel Johnson’,

The English Patient: What the Doctor Ordered

2007-09-02T16:05:00.000+04:00

You probably don’t know this, but English, the language that you speak in all its garbled glory, was once a very poorly patient, the “Sick Man of Europe” in fact. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries it was subjected to the imperious scrutiny of some of the world’s greatest GPs of grammar, and the diagnosis was, truth to tell, not very encouraging.“I found our speech copious without order”, went

The English Language: from Codification to Standardisation

2007-07-30T15:14:00.000+04:00

In last month's article I drew your attention to how, in the course of the 16th and 17 the centuries, the English language became subject to serious academic and scholarly attention. This, I tried to argue, was notably due to Latin’s fall into virtual disuse, which was finished off by (a) Henry 8th’s emasculation of the Catholic church and their hold on education, and (b) the need for a unified

English, the Choice of Gentlemen the World Over

2007-06-18T12:42:00.000+04:00

There comes a moment in practically every young rascal’s life when he feels the urge to ‘get respectable’ and try and earn the approval of his peers. The earlier it happens, the more orthodox a person you turn out to be, at least that’s my view anyway. Well, the same thing happened for the English language too.Fortunately for the English language this urge to conform came at a late moment in its

Henry the 8th and the English Language: of Popes, Protestants and Puritans

2007-05-01T11:15:00.000+04:00

In my previous articles on the history of our diverse and distinguished tongue, I’ve spent a fair deal of time harking on about the virtues of such shining lights in the lexicon of the English language as Caxton, Shakespeare, and King Alfred. Well, the time has come to turn the spotlight away from the obvious stars, and focus on some of the lesser-known pioneers of our dialect. Except, perhaps by

Shakespeare’s Legacy: Queer Words and Timeless Expressions?

2007-04-04T15:00:00.000+04:00

In my last article on the development of English, I signed off with a piece about William Caxton, the man who brought the printing press to England and inadvertently set about standardising our language. As well as the obvious technical aspects of his achievements, however, there is also the cultural side to consider.In fact, what Caxton did was to actually establish his own local East Midlands

William Caxton - Master or Mangler of the English Language?

2007-03-14T14:43:00.000+04:00

In last month's article we saw how the English language was affected by such social and human phenomena as the Renaissance and the Reformation, and that these events helped in some ways to transform English from a ragbag of mutually unintelligible dialects into a standardised language. I also mentioned the name of a certain William Caxton, who has been attributed with almost single-handedly

English as a Tool of Power, and an Object of Change.

2007-02-19T21:35:00.000+04:00

In my previous article I said that we would go on to take a look at the social and economic circumstances which bore great influence on the progress of our tongue. Well, today we shall indeed look at the changes that took place, mainly in the 16th century, and which affected our dear old language greatly. However, many of these modifications were obviously linked to and caused changes in other

Consolidation and Expansion: the English Language, 1450 to 1750

2007-01-27T20:25:00.000+04:00

The period of growth in the English language which lasted from around 1450 to 1750 is commonly known as Early Modern English. In this period the language which we now speak and call ‘English’ became more recognisable in its modern form, it became standardised to a good degree, and it consolidated itself as the national tongue of Britain. Moreover, as Britain grew in commercial terms and

English through the Middle Ages

2006-12-10T13:49:00.000+04:00

Over the past few weeks it seems that I’ve been writing a lot about the English language of our ancestors, but not really looking at it. Now, this might be understandable, if we remember that our tongue, as it was back in the Middle Ages, was rarely used for the purposes of documentation. Latin and French were the preferred modes for making records, and in fact, administrative documents did not

The Return of English: from the Shadows to the Sunshine.

2006-11-20T09:33:00.000+04:00

In my previous two articles I’ve spent a good deal of time harking on about the vices and the virtues of King William , Duke of Normandy, the man with a thousand archers. We’ve seen that he was responsible for the English language becoming virtually an exile in its own country, as Norman French became the language of authority and the landed classes.Moreover, he caused thousands of flowery French

King William: from Tyrant to Saviour?

2006-10-29T21:32:00.000+04:00

I was reading over the article that I wrote the other week (these long Abu Dhabi weekends can be so tranquil), and it occurred to me that perhaps I did poor old Duke William of Normandy an injustice by misinterpreting his contribution to the English language. So this week I hope to rectify that and award him his place in linguistic history, alongside King Alfred. For starters, I mentioned that

Norman Conquests, but English Survives.

2006-10-02T20:58:00.000+04:00

In my previous article on the idiosyncrasies of the English language, we left things in the middle of the 11th century, noting that way back then the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons shared a predominantly oral culture. One other thing that they had in common was the fact that the two tongues were ‘cousins’, meaning they were relatives from the same tree of languages, the Germanic one. However, in

The Impact of King Alfred and Later Old English (AD 850 to 1100)

2006-09-08T12:30:00.000+04:00

Last week’s article mentioned King Alfred a great deal, and just before we move on to see how English developed under the Vikings and the Norsemen, let’s stay with the wily Anglo-Saxon leader a while. Please forgive me this indulgence, but as an English teacher I have a good reason for wanting to keep him on the page. In fact, he has been considered by some people to have been the very first

Of Anglo-Saxons and Venerable Bede

2006-08-28T02:07:00.000+04:00

In my previous article we finished with the Anglo-Saxons, and noted that their arrival and settlement in the British Isles mysteriously coincided with one of the darkest periods in the history of our language. Apparently they had little time for writing things down, so busy were they fighting each other and the native Celts. Therefore it wasn’t until a period of relative stability had descended

Five Events that Shaped the History of English

2006-07-08T22:15:00.000+04:00

As I am currently on holiday, I'd like to leave you in the very capable hands of a true expert on the history and development of the English languuage, Mr Philip Durkin, Oxford scholar and all-round boff. I'll be back at the end of August to continue the saga.History of English Five Events that Shaped the History of English Philip Durkin, Principal etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary,

The Birth of English

2006-06-18T19:33:00.000+04:00

My previous articles on English have looked at the language in present times, with the focus on the diversity and the differences which exist within the language. But all of this seems to beg the questions “Why is there so much diversity?” and “Where has it all come from?” Exactly. And to answer these profound questions we have to take a long look back at the very roots of the language. Only then

World English or Worse English?

2006-06-06T13:02:00.000+04:00

A recent estimate put the number of speakers of English at more than one billion worldwide. However, less than half of these people actually speak English as their first or ‘native’ language. Let’s try putting this another way: more foreigners speak English than ‘native’ speakers do.Surprised? You shouldn’t be. As one notable expert (David Graddol) said, English at the beginning of the 21st

Whose English Is It, Anyway?

2006-05-16T21:08:00.000+04:00

So, you think you speak English, do you? But which English do you speak? American English? Scottish English? Abu Dhabi English? The fact is that there are more varieties of English in existence than there are brands of honey available at your local supermarket. So which one is the real thing, the one you can trust?<?xml:namespace prefix = o />Some people see this great diversity as a problem and