english language

Fun Facts About English #45 – Native American Vocabulary

02/21/2020 by admin

The legacy of the Native American peoples and their language traveled far into the European and Asian continents brought by the Portuguese and Spanish as new world fauna, flora, and language. Many of these new-world artifacts were adopted and absorbed so thoroughly that we forget the novelty they once possessed and to whom this heritage is owed.

Take, for example the word tomato. The species originated in western South America and Central America. The Nahuatl (Aztec language) word tomatl gave rise to the Spanish word tomate, from which the English word tomato derived. The Spanish took the small yellow tomato to Europe where it grew easily in the Mediterranean climates. They also distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines, where it then spread throughout the Asian continent.

More vocabulary of Native American languages origin include:

Over half of the state names in the U.S. are of Native American origin. They include:

Familiar U.S. city names include:

Though considered extinct, the Algonquian language has been woven into our everyday lives; testament that language is a living legacy where every utterance is like a memory brought back to life.

I’ll finish with a quote by Ray Bradbury:

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies?”

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in the fascinating history of the creole language known as Gullah, the beauty of the Scots language, or the influence of Spanish and French in the English language.

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Audio stories from A Telling Story Productions are great for bedtime, travel time, or story time in class! Check out all the classic children’s fairy tales and secondary short stories that will be sure to keep your kids engaged and wanting to hear more!

Fun Facts About English #26 – Shakespeare

10/11/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 26 Kinney Brothers Publishing

William Shakespeare, like many of his fellow Renaissance writers, plumbed the classical languages of Greek and Latin to borrow, change, and invent new words. As English was moving from its Middle English legacies of German, French, and Norse languages, Early Modern English was in flux, with grammar and spelling not yet formalized. This gave writers the freedom to play with existing English compound words; turn nouns into verbs, verbs into adverbs, and creatively apply prefixes. Many of these new words carried into Late Modern English – our era of contemporary language.

Though Shakespeare’s writings contain the first written instances of many new words, some may have existed in an oral tradition before he penned them. For example, researchers have found that words like puke, though originally attributed to the Bard, have been found to have earlier sources. Be that as it may, as notated in the Oxford English Dictionary, many words are held up today as Shakespeare’s own.

Here are 50 examples of words we can thank Shakespeare for:

Shakespeare's contributions to the English language

You may also be interested to learn about idioms and phrases coined by other famous writers, words that are eponymously known for legendary personalities, or how words change by “rebracketing” when they are repeatedly misheard!

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Kinney Brothers Publishing regularly blogs on a variety of educational topics important to English language teachers. Donald’s English Classroom is your one-stop shop for downloadable ESL resources. Sign up here to be kept up to date and download a free CVC I Have/Who Has Activity Set!

Fun Facts About English #17 – Average Vocabulary Size

08/10/2019 by admin

Most experts believe that the English language has about one million words. Difficult to determine and not easy to agree on, the problem rests in defining what represents a discrete “word.” It’s important to remember that this number includes different forms of the same word, or lemmas, e.g., run, running, ran, plus archaic words not commonly used in modern English. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a mere 171,476 words that are in current use.

Besides word counting, for individuals there’s a distinction between receptive knowledge — referring to our passive vocabulary, and productive or active knowledge — words we use when speaking and writing. As a rule of thumb, our receptive vocabulary is at least twice the size of our productive vocabulary.

Studies show that the average native English speaker knows about 20,000 words with a university-educated person knowing around 40,000 words. When speaking and writing (emails, letters, notes, etc.) this goes down to about 5,000 very common words that are used repeatedly.

Building vocabulary skills is a priority for many native speakers and non-native learners of English alike. The benefits include social and professional mobility as well as cognitive improvement. If you teach English as a foreign language, or you’re looking to expand your horizons abroad, check out the article, How to Teach English to Kids, from IELTS Podcast, a company dedicated to helping ESL students improve their reading, writing, and speaking skills.

Try this Ghent University (Belgium) online to test to estimate your English vocabulary size. Good luck! If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in the history of American spelling bees, or how American and British English diverged over the centuries!

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Stories for Young Readers is a graded textbook series designed to extend students’ skills and interest in developing their ability to communicate in English. To learn more, visit Kinney Brothers Publishing or check out all the textbook downloads from Donald’s English Classroom.