ENGLISH TEXT
English has had a long tradition of borrowing words from other languages. This tradition began with the conquest of britain by the Norman-Franch in 1066. Be cause these conquerors establish themselves as rulers, their dialect of french became the language of aristocracy, of government , and of education. During this period, many French words came in the English langiuage. Another strong influx of vocabulary came from Latin, which was the language of the church. today, those words derived from french and latin, though still identifiable, as such, are an inseparable part of english vocabulary and are not thought of as foreign by English speakers. In fact, the first two sentences of this paragraph contain three words that come to us from this tradition: tradition, languages, and conquest.
The British colonial eraa, which began with outposts in North America in the early seventeenth century, brought english speakers into contact with many other languages. In North America, words from the Native America peoples quickly found their way into the language. Examples include moccasin (a kind of soft shoe), squash (a vegetable), and succotash ( a dish made with corn and squash).
The presence of spanich colonies in North America led to the adoption of numerous spanich words, such as siesta (a nap) and tortilla (a flat thin pancake made of wheat or corn flour). Asian languages also masde contributions. For example, the word pajamas comes from a Hindi word, khaki comes from Urdu, and ketchup was borrowed from chinese.
Words from Afrcan languages, too, made their way into English during the time that slavery was an institution in the United states. Okra (a vegetable) and goober (peanut) are examples.
The result of all this absorption of new words is a very rich vocabulary that allows user of English to express subtlety of meaning and also formality and informality through their choice of words.
QUESTIONS BASED ON THE TEXT
1. The following ideas concerning the English language are containde in the first paragraph: