How much input do I need to not meet any new words any more?
That's the spirit !- Make a collection : Keep a notebook (yes, pen and paper) of the unaccustomed words and phrases that you encounter in English. Keep at them, circumnavigating the little bastards till you've planted the flag, claimed them for King and Country and made them your own.
Most of those words that you said gave you trouble (coterie, detritus, lucre, mêlée) are borrowings from Latin and French, so some having knowledge of those languages (or taking a one-year course in each) will help considerably.
Pick up a copy of MODERN ENGLISH USAGE by H. W. Fowler in the second edition edited by Gowers (not the third edition by someone else, which is too terribly modern). Fowler will prove an invaluable helpmate in your quest.
Actually I recently started learning French for this very reason. It seems English has as many occasional borrowings from French as Lithuanian (and other ex-Soviet Union languages) has from Russian, i.e. practically any word or expression can be borrowed at any time if a speaker feels like it...
True, but I was referring not merely to the "occasional borrowings" from Modern French, but more particularly to all the profound changes in English that came with the Norman conquest in 1066.
For those readers who are still learning about this, I should add that the Conquest of England in the year 1066 by William the Bastard and his Normans brought widespread influence of French to bear upon the English language.
Yes, but I guess those were occasional borrowings once (long time ago) and later they were more or less accepted as part of the mainstream English vocabulary. Some became part of mainstream and some are only used by elitist publications or on very rare occasions and not commonly understood or used by most people. I am not even talking about the whole French frases like "raison'd'etre" or "laissez faire" where not only French spelling is retained, but also in some cases even French diacriotical marks.
Vytenis, I'm just not sure you're getting it : I'm talking about words like "just" and "sure" -- not "pirouette" and "coup d’état".
Beginning a thousand years ago, hundreds of very basic words from Old French, which are now considered English words, were imposed upon England as a matter of martial and civil law by the Norman conquerors. A few other examples :
age
air
beak
case
court
cry
delay
disease
easy
fool
form
grant
mail
pace
range
soil
space
surrender
tend
travel
try
view
The effect on the very form of the language was profound (not simply on the vocabulary). But as a consequence there is in English a division --a mirror world-- for even now the native English speaker will feel some subconscious inherited resistance to the old French borrowings. Often an immediate Saxon meaning that is common, rude, freewheeling and physical will be given by a word like "deep" ; the Norman, noble, more buttoned up, legal or conceptual sense being served by "profound". "Give" versus "render". "Ask" versus "demand". "Pig" versus "pork". "Dirt" versus "soil". "Folk" versus "people". Often it can be the difference between which plain word a farmer uses and the preferred polite term of a city dweller.
There are hundreds of other examples of this psychological divide in the English language---or tongue, to use the plainer word. ;)
And this mirror world in English words reflects the tension of Saxon and Norman, of churl and overlord, a divide which began with William the Bastard crossing the Channel to press the Norman Conquest in 1066.
Every time we open our mouths or put pen to paper, we recapitulate that great invasion.
Break, break. Excuse me.
How long have you been on this forum, Quintus?
There isn't hundreds of very basic words from old French in use in English. You struggle to make a list over ten words. For every word you wrote, I could give at least five English ones.
age - old
air - sky
beak - bill
case - sheath
court - yard
cry - weep
delay - hold up
disease - sickness
easy - soft
fool - twit
form - shape
grant - allow
mail - ship
pace - stride
range - gamekeep
soil - earth
space - room
surrender - yield
tend - heed
travel - holiday
try - bidden
view - sight
You have defined "basic" in a different way, Greentooth, and so you have misapprehended what I was conveying to Vytenis. (This is not a contest, by the way.)
Just survey any decent large dictionary and acquaint yourself with the etymological entries found there : you'll soon agree that there are hundreds of common everyday English words (not only terms of art, mind you) which are derived from the older French forms brought over with the Norman Conquest. Words like :
define
different
misapprehend
convey
contest
just
survey
decent
large
acquaint
entry
agree
common
term
art
derive
French
form
conquest
Words...forget about words this weekend...who needs them....well, not until Monday morning......
....I am going to see this ballet...the Matthew Bourne production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake"....with an all male dance team.....at the Millennium Centre here in Cardiff this evening......it's nice to be in Wales again, but as this is South Wales, and Cardiff in particular....the Welsh Language is hardly ever heard being spoken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZO-UYsehs&feature=related
Nice balley, Damian. Would love to see it. Maybe I will someday visit Cardiff and be able to enjoy it.
I am aware of the Saxon and Romance (French and Latin) layers in the English vocabulary. That's what makes it so vast and seemingly formidable for foreign English learners (and even most English teachers). I also know that many old French borrowings into the English language are among the most common words (like the ones you mentioned). But I guess that there are probably tens of thousands of other French, Latin, Greek or whatever words ("occasional borrowings" as far as I'm concerned) which only crop up in some elitist text extremely rarely and a poor diligent non-native English learner (who has been studying English for devades) may meet such words and wonder what on earth are they supposed to mean (some of them do not even look English). If I meet one of such words every few years or so, that wouldn't be a problem, but for example in publications like "the Economist" every article is full of such lexical junk which after meeting it in this article I am sure not to encounter it anywhere for the next ten years :) (unless maybe I read 50 issues of "Economist" a day every day :)))).
PS
Maybe my irritation with "the Economist" comes from the fact that I am supposed to to give its articles to read to my Economics and Politics students (who are really no beginners in English), but most of them have so much of hard time caused by the abrakadabras in every other sentence...
After all, is there no such thing in Britain as the "Society for Plain English"??? AND I believe it was not created for the benefit of English learners :)
<<Firstly, I am an English teacher and would like at least know all the words which are in current use>>
Isn't this an impossible goal? If you were a teacher of astronomy, would you have to know everything worthwhile that has been discovered about the universe, so far?
Vytenis: This was the first time for me to see Matthew Bourne's Sadlers Wells Theatre* production of "Swan Lake"......it was magnificent beyond words so no words can adequately express my appreciation of this show...and set in a fantastic theatre at Cardiff's Millennium Centre and if you are familiar with Tchaikovski's music you can imagine how well it was adapted to Bourne's all male ballet team to represent all the swans.....sheer grace and delicate movement combined with physically appealing strength and virility as some kind of counteracting agent.
After a full week in Cardiff the show moves north to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for another full week there, and the last venue for this UK tour will be at Bradford, West Yorkshire and then the company is off to Athens, then on to Seoul and Tokyo....those guys certainly get about! So if you can make any of those venues get to see this uniquely beautiful ballet production of Swan Lake.
http://www.swanlaketour.com/
There is indeed a form of "Plain English Society" here in the UK, and it was founded mainly by people who got fed up to the back teeth with all the Double Dutch Gobbledegook form of Officialese English which constantly appeared in official documents and even your ordinary basic instruction leaflets or guides for just about anything aimed at the general public.
It's objectives seem to have produced results as many official documents do appear to be written in a form of English, free of obfuscation and legalese $hitechatter, which can be more easily understood by the British public at large who are not too familar with many words and phrases more commonly used by the powers that be in the realms of Officialdom.