The Evolutionary History of English Vocabulary

Almost all Germanic etymological words (including all basic words, such as pronouns and conjunctions) are relatively short and informal.

Words derived from Latin usually represent more elegance or education.

But excessive use of Latin source words will be considered pretentious or deliberately confusing.

George Orwell's article Politics and English describes this in detail.

When English users choose words, they can usually choose synonyms from Germanic and Latin sources, such as sight and vision, freedom and liberty.

There are subtle differences between these synonyms, and users can freely choose combinations to express different opinions.

In daily life, most of the words used are Germanic etymology.

Most words from Latin are usually used in more formal speeches and articles, such as court speeches or encyclopedias.

Because English vocabulary is mainly composed of roots, the combination of different roots can easily form new words, so English vocabulary is very large, but if you want to estimate the specific numbers, you must first judge which words can be counted as English words.

However, unlike other languages, there is no authoritative academic institution to define what is a formal English vocabulary.

New words in the fields of medicine, science and technology are constantly emerging, some of which have entered the daily language of the public, and some are only used in a small range of people.

Foreign language words brought by immigrant groups tend to blend into the English-speaking society.

It is impossible to judge whether some ancient words and dialect words can be counted as English.

The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition) contains more than 500,000 entries, and the standard is relatively loose: "It includes standard words in literary works and daily conversations, whether contemporary, outdated or archaic, as well as major scientific and technological words and a large number of dialects and slang.

"(Addendum to the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933)

Edit the characteristics of this paragraph of English

Characteristics of English spelling and pronunciation.

English is the most irregular language in spelling and pronunciation in the world. To some extent, English does not belong to the category of Pinyin. Multiple letters or letter combinations pronounce the same sound, and conversely, multiple letters or letter combinations can also pronounce the same sound.

For example, the letter A can pronounce 8 sounds at most, and the th combination can pronounce 3 sounds, such as Thai, Thyme, Times and other words with irregular /t/ sounds, and the letter combination * * * has 9 pronunciations. The representative words of these nine pronunciations are: ①through (though) ② through (thoughts, ideas, thoughts, thoughts) ③ through, rough (. Uneven) ④ Thorough (thorough, complete, complete) ⑤ Cough (cough) ⑤ Go through (through, from beginning to end) ⑤ Hillbilly Cough (burp) ⑧ Plow the land (farm, frown) 9 Lake (lake) If there is a saying: If I plow through a severe cough and burp, I should cross the lake. In this sentence, the same letter combination Lough will have eight different pronunciations. These eight sounds are ① [O] ② [[λ f] ③ [] f] ④ [λ p].

There are many silent letters, such as debt, b, grouse, viscount, island, hour, lawsuit and so on.

There are still many words whose spelling is completely chaotic and irregular, such as Czech, cello, cafe, One, mnemonic, Mao Mu, Vaughan, wooden house, debut, etc. I don't know how to pronounce them without phonetic symbols.

There is no fixed rule on which syllable English stress is. The vowels in unstressed syllables are often weakened, and the already confusing spelling becomes more confusing. What is even more frightening is that if the stress of a word or phrase is mispronounced or mispronounced, it means the change of part of speech and meaning, which leads to misunderstanding in meaning.

In addition to irregular spelling and stress, English words are also divided into strong reading and weak reading. On the other hand, we can't master the correct pronunciation from English spelling, which is why there are a lot of deaf-mute English in China, such as weak reading examples, can: /k? N/, can I go to weak reading/? Answer? k？ ɡo？ /and:/? Nd/, weak reading you and me/? ju n？ Rice? /,he:/Hi? /,weak reading will he go? /? W? l？ Going? /and so on.

abstract

Because English stress and English spelling pronunciation have no rules to follow, and English is divided into strong reading and weak reading, it is impossible to master the correct pronunciation of English from written spelling. For the above reasons, English may lose its dominant position as a universal language in the future.

2) Characteristics of English sentence structure

English sentence structure is relatively simple and natural, which conforms to the natural order of logical thinking, that is to say, English word order is relatively natural.

Different from German or Russian, the sentence structure of English is not too complicated, and the word order is not too reversed.

The grammaticality and naturalness of English are consistent, unlike Russian and Latin, which divide all nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter according to grammaticality.

In this way, modern English avoids the complicated case changes of nouns and adjectives, while German and Russian still retain these changes in large quantities.

Therefore, the first feature of English is that its structure is relatively simple, so it is easier to understand and learn.

The second feature of English is its rich vocabulary, so its expressive ability is particularly strong.

It is estimated that English vocabulary includes more than one million words, ranking first among all languages in the world.

There are many ways of word formation in English, so English constantly produces new words.

Another phenomenon is that the meaning of English is constantly changing, and the original words can get new meanings, and this change of meaning is natural and effortless.

For example, the original meaning of sophistication is "very experienced, sophisticated and sophisticated", and the basic meaning is "lost simplicity".

The process from this basic meaning to "complexity and exquisiteness" is also natural and effortless.

In this way, it can be used to modify weapons and get the new concept of "cutting-edge weapons".

In this way, the original word "sophisticated" has become two words, because it has acquired a completely different new meaning.

In addition, there are a large number of phrasal verbs in English, which are composed of verbs and adverbs.