STUDYING FOREIGN LANGUAGES

-The importance of English

-Brief look at the history & development of the language

-pros and cons of one world language

-BE x AE

-our mother language

-strategies for studying foreign languages

 

Foreign languages are very important for everybody at present. Nowadays in times of globalization knowledge of foreign language is necessary in my opinion. We have many reasons for studying them. Knowledge of foreign language is a big advantage when we travel abroad, looking for a job or meeting new people.

English is definitely the world language. English is an official language of 44 countries. Approximately 400 million people speak English as their first language. About the same number use it as an official language. All in all one billion people across the world use English. It´s mother tongue in the English speaking countries as the UK, the USA, Canada or New Zealand. It´s the second language in former British colonies as India, Pakistan…

 

English belongs to a family of Indo-European languages. English is one of Germanic languages.

It is derivated form three languages – from Old German, Old Norse and French.

We can divide development of English into three periods. The first one is Old English. It was language of Vikings and Saxons, so it was mixture of German and Scandinavian languages. In this period Beowulf was written. Beowulf is heroic poem written by unknown writer in the 8^th century.

The second period is Middle English. In this period lived Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote The Canterbury Tales which are great example of Middle English. There were new continuous tenses and English had 9 cases.

New English is modern European language. It has about 990 000 words at present. Usual people in England know about 13 000 words and they are able to use them (for example William Shakespeare knew about 30 000 words).

 

There are many types of English which differ in pronunciation, spelling, vocabularies and grammar.

I would like to compare British and American English.

These two versions of English are the results of the different historical development of England and America. British English is sometimes called King´s English, because it´s classy.

1) Vocabulary: there are the great differences in vocabulary. These differences are important, because our ignoring them may lead to unpleasant misunderstanding. There are many differences in the names of foodstuffs, shop and clothing.

 

American English x British English

A pie is called a cake

An automobile is called a car

Candies are called sweets

The first floor is called ground floor

check is called bill

cookies are called biscuits

bill is called banknote

gas is called petrol

pants is called trousers

store is called shop

general store is called department store

 

2) Spelling: American words are usually shorter. The ending “our” is written “or” in American English.

For example colour is written as color in American English.

The ending  “re” is written “er” in American English. For example centre is written as center in

American English.

The “l” isn’t doubled in such word as traveller, travelling, jewellery in American English.

3) Grammar: the differences in grammar are also few. For example most American says: “Do you

have? He just left. We saw the film. I don´t have.” Where an English man would say: “Have you

got? He has just left. We have seen the film. I haven´t got.”

4) Pronunciation: In pronunciation the British don´t use “r”. American English is more

understandable for us, because the accent is not so strong.

 

One world language has many pros and cons. In my opinion, one world language isn´t good thing. I think that every language is beautiful and it shouldn´t become extinct. World language has to be simple, so for example English is getting simpler so it loses its flexibility. I think that only solution is to create an artificial language like Esperanto which would be a language of international communication.

 

Our mother tongue is Czech. Czech belongs to Slovenian languages. Our home language is beautiful, but for foreigners is very difficult to understand and also to study. It has a difficult grammar and very difficult pronunciation). Foreigners have to live here for really long time and learn Czech, but we usually recognize that the person isn’t native Czech.

 

We have many ways, how we can learn foreign languages. We can go to language schools, which have various language courses for their students, but these courses are mostly private, so we have to pay for them. On the other hand, we can find courses in TV or in textbooks or magazines. Another possibility is learning English from radios because a lot of songs are in English language and I like translate my favourite songs. But in my opinion the best are exchange programmes between Czech and English students. In this situation you want (and in a fact) you must speak in English, because you need information for your understand and you try to understand without translating every word and I mean it is right.

 

It is very important to study foreign languages, because people all around the world can understand one another. In Czech, we have one really nice proverb: „How many languages you know, the more you have been born“.