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Assets and liabilities
l 1. Cosmopolitan vocabulary – borrowing from numerous languages
English as a world language / borrowings
| l Native American languages Moose Raccoon Chipmunk skunk | l Dutch Brandy Landscape Measles uproar | l Italian Balcony Duet Granite Opera Piano Umbrella volcano |
| Spanish Alligator Cargo Contraband Cork Hammock Mosquito Sherry Tornado vanilla | Greek Acme Acrobat Anthology Barometer Catastrophe Chronology Elastic Magic tactics | Persian Caravan jasmine turban Divan paradise spinach Khaki check Mogul chess Shawl lemon Sherbet lilac |
| Russian troika Samovar Glasnost perestroika | Brasilian Portuguese lambada Basque bizarre Ukrainain yarmulke Catalan aubergine, paella, barracks | Philippine yo-yo Czech pistol, polka, robot Egyptian basalt, ebony, gum, ibis, ivory, pharaoh |
| Hawaiian muu-muu (long loose dress ) AmE Irish Gaelic whisky Finnish sauna | Also borrowings from: Hebrew Hungarian Hindi-Urdu Bengali Malay Chinese etc. |
l 2. Inflectional simplicity
l In its process of simplification English went further than any other European language. Inflections of nouns and verbs were reduced to indication of plural forms, within adjectives to indication of comparative and superlative degrees
l Complicated agreements that make German difficult for non-native speakers are absent from English
l 3. Natural Gender
Unlike many other languages including European ones English adopted natural (rather than grammatical) gender. In German, Spanish or French etc. Learners have to keep in mind gender of nouns (which does not coincide in languages) and coordinate it with forms of adjectives and verbs
l In English all gender differences were stripped away in Middle English period.
l Gender is limited to lexical meaning: all nouns denoting living creatures are either masculine or feminine according to the sex of individual, all other nouns are neuter.
ENGLISH AS A WORLD LANGUAGE: liabilities
l Idioms (ethnically & culturally-specific)
l Chaotic spelling, lack of correlation between spelling (which often indicates the word’s etymology) and pronunciation (lieutenant, colonel)
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