98 БАЛЛОВ!ПЕРЕВОД НУЖЕН!
A. The Celts, who lived on the current territory of Britain in 500BC — 43BC, are believed to be the first inhabitants of the British Isles. The Celtic vocabulary was almost wiped out but a few words, mainly the names of places, survived. The two most well-known British place names — London and the Thames — are of Celtic origin. The Romans, who invaded the Isles in 43BC, contributed to the language too. We still use some of their words, such as candle and wine.



B. However, most scholars believe that the history of the English language starts from the 5th or 6th century AD, when Germanic tribes — Angles, Saxons and Jutes started to arrive in the Isles. The settlers spoke a' Germanic language which is now called Old English. A considerable part of their vocabulary has survived up to now. We still use words like house, food, dog, night, think and sleep and lots of other basic words.



C. Though almost all of the words from the list of 100 most commonly used English words originate from Old English, the latter and Modern English differ from each other like two separate languages. Even for well-educated people, including most scholars and linguists, reading Old English texts in the original is a problem — the language has changed out of recognition over fifteen centuries.



D. It keeps changing nowadays too and the process is getting more and more rapid due to globalization and technological progress. The vocabulary is constantly acquiring new words like website and computer geek. The words transfer easily from one language to another. There's no need to translate Italian words like pizzeria and cappuccino or the Japanese sudoku and karaoke, is there? They are used just like the original word and don't sound at all foreign to the new generation.



E. It's difficult to believe that only about two million people used English a thousand years ago. However, the English actively and sometimes aggressively explored the world spreading their empire and their language around the globe. Due to colonization and overseas trade English became widely spoken in all continents and only Mandarin Chinese speakers outnumber English speakers.



F. English is most often taught as a foreign language and the reason is obvious: it's become the main language of international and cross-cultural communication — it is the language of science, business and politics. The vast majority of scientific articles, business reports and political documents are written in English though their authors do not necessarily live in English-speaking countries.



G. Spoken in different parts of the globe, English is certainly not the same everywhere. It may sound and be spelt differently; it may differ in vocabulary and grammar. The variants of English are called dialects and accents. There is British, American, Canadian and Australian English, Cockney and Geordie as well as many kinds of pidgin English. So called Standard English is far from Shakespeare's language too. It has been seriously standardised and simplified for international use.