THE

ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HAS
A LOT OF WORDS BECAUSE IT IS A
MIXTURE OF MANY LANGUAGES
The Germanic influence

• The Anglo-Saxons, who invaded England in AD350,

came from Germany, Denamark and Holland. They
spoke a Germanic language which became the bases
of Old English. Even today, words used in modern
English for ordinary objects are mostly Anglo-Saxon,
or as Danish, German, Norwegian and Swedish, have
similar words for objects as:

• shoe clothes earth sun moon day man wife

child friend house food water sleep love say
live have be work

Words of germanic origin are usually short (often just

one syllable) and tend to be informal in modern
English
 • English also has many similarities with
Romanic Languages, whose origin is Latin.
The words in the examples came to England
with French-speaking Normans. Notice than
the words are associated with power:
Norman-French was used as the language of

The french goverment. Words of Latin origin are

usually longer than words of Germanic

influence
origin and ofteN have a more formal
meaning in English than in the original
Romance language.

examples:
goverment – parliament - judge – court –
legal – military – army - crown - nation –
state – country – power – authority - people
• Norman-French words did not enter English immediately. When the
Normans invaded in 1066, ordinary people still spoke Old English.

Imagine a Norman feast. The English would look after the animals and
cook the meat , still calling the animals by their Old English names.
The Normans, when they saw the cooked meat arrived at the table,
would use French ones. This explains why the English language now
has different words for animals and meats.
Animals Meat
Anglo-saxon Modern French Modern
english english
Pigga Porc
pig pork
scep Mouton
sheep mutton
cu boeuf
cow beef
 • Two centuries later came the Renaissance: there was
a revival of interest in ancient culture, Greek and
Latin. Some Latin words already existed because of
the influece of Norman-French, but thousands more
words of Latin origin flooded into English. This
explains why modern English has pairs of words
which mean almost the same thing, such as base,
which came info English from Norman-French, and
basis, which came into English during renaissance.
The latin words were joined by hundreds of greek
words.
At the same time, it became more popular
throughout Europe to use your mother tongue, not

The classical latin, for written documents: the bible, in particular,

began to be read in the language of the country. By

influence
the seventeenth century, it became possible to
describe something in english with words of
germanic, latin and greek origin. This is still true
today.
The expansion
of learning
• The period from the Renaissance to the
present day has seen many new ideas and
inventions especially in science and
technology. As new things are invented,
new words have to be created. Often these
new words are created from existing Greek
or Latin words put together in new ways.

When someone invented an instrument for

speaking to another person at a distance, it
was called a telephone, from the Greek
words tele (=far) and phone (=sound).
There are now thousands of such words in
English. Just think of television,
microscope, psychology and
thermometer.
 The colonial
influence • Words from foreign countries have entered English
as a result of trade and colonial expansion: alcohol
and algebra come from Arabic; divan and khaki
from Persian; chocolate and tomato from native
American languages; bungalow and cot
from Gujerati; tea and tycoon from Chinese.

Other words were invented in the English-

Speaking former colonies, the USA in particular.
Many British people complain about Americanisms
entering the English language, but do not realize how
many of the words they use come from American
English. It is because of the USA that English is now
truly a world language: a world where over 90 per
cent of scientific papers are written in English and a
world where people who do not speak each other's
mother tongue are most likely to communicate in
English.
Nowdays the importance of
computer software, often
invented in America, spreads
the English language
worldwide
Languages in Bolivia
• In Bolivia, Spanish, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani and
a variety of lesser-used indigenous languages are
spoken. During the 2001 Census, 47% of the
population declared speaking some indigenous
language, while 36% had it as their mother
tongue. 33.2% of the population was bilingual, in
contrast to 11.6% of indigenous monolinguals and
49.8% of monolingual Hispanic speakers.
• In the altiplano and sub-Andean regions, the
languages spoken are Aymara and southern
Quechua, in addition to Chipaya. In the eastern
region of the plains, there is a greater diversity of
indigenous languages (about 33), although they are
spoken to a lesser extent within ethnic localities and
some are on the verge of extinction. Among these
languages are Chiriguano (or Eastern Bolivian) and
Sambá (or Western Bolivian).
 List of languages:
• Afroboliviano
• Movima
• Araona
• Moxeño
• Ayoreo
• Nahua (etnia)
• Bauré
• Pacahuara
• Canichana
• Sirionó
• Cavineño
• Takana
• Cayubaba
• Toromona
• Chácobo
• Yaminahua
• Chimane
• Yuqui
• Chiquitano
• Yuracaré
• Chiriguanos
• Guaraní
• Ese Ejja
• Tapieté
• Guarasugwe
• Weenhayek
• Guarayo
• Aymara
• Itonama
• Chipaya
• Joaquiniano
• Kallawaya
• Leco
• Quechua
• Machineri
• Uru
• Maropa

• Moré

• Moseté
Aymara language

• The Aymara language—sometimes spelled Aymara

—is the main language belonging to the Aymaraic
languages. This language is spoken in various
variants, by the Aymara people in Bolivia (where it
is one of the majority Amerindian languages), Chile,
Peru and Argentina (in the province of Jujuy).

The language is co-official in Bolivia and Peru

along with Spanish. It constitutes the first language
of at least a third of the population of Bolivia, and is
the main Amerindian language of southern Peru and
northern Chile. In the case of Argentina, it is still
spoken by the Aymara communities that live with
the Amerindians. Quechuas in the northwest of the
country.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization (Unesco) considers this
language to be in a "vulnerable" situation in terms of
its future survival.
 • It is spoken in the departments of La
Andean Paz, Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Oruro
and Potosí. Due to the rugged
Spanish geography and the presence of parallel
native languages (Quechua and
Aymara), Andean Spanish in Bolivia is
very varied and has different
characteristics depending on the
region, social stratum, dominant native
language, etc. The variations can be so
drastic that in cities like La Paz the
way of speaking can distinguish the
neighborhood where people live.
 • Quechua called southern or southern Quechua by linguists, to
distinguish it from other languages of the Quechua language family, is
an indigenous South American language used by approximately 6 to 7
million people in southern Peru (Huancavelica, Ayacucho
departments). , Apurímac, Cuzco, Puno, part of Arequipa), southwestern
Bolivia, the puna of Chile and areas bordering Bolivia in Argentina as
well as in Santiago del Estero, where it is called Quichua. With more
than 5 million speakers, it is the most widespread of the Quechua
languages.
• Currently, southern Quechua is official at the national level in Bolivia
and in the areas where it is used in Peru. It is also spoken without being

Southern
official at the national level in bordering regions of Argentina and Chile.
• It has an orthographic norm proposed for Quechua by the linguists
Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino and Alfredo Torero based on the

Quechua
characteristics of the Quechua II-C dialectal branch, known as
Meridional, including the dialects of the southern departments of Peru,
western Bolivia, in the Argentine provinces of Salta, Jujuy and Santiago
del Estero and the Chilean Puna of Atacama.

In Bolivia, the Quechua language is spoken by more than 2 million

people in the western departments of the country, mainly in its southern
form . The national government has developed a standard for the edition
of official publications. The largest proportion of Quechua speakers is in
the departments of La Paz, Chuquisaca, Cochabamba and Oruro.
 Absolute Number of Quechua
Departments %
speakers
 • Western region

Dialects of Spanish in Andean Spanish or colla

• It corresponds to the speech of the highland
Bolivia departments of La
Paz , Oruro , Cochabamba and Chuquisaca .
Different • It is strongly influenced
by Quechua and Aymara , which coexist with
sociolinguistic studies Spanish in a situation of diglossia . It is
characterized by its slow intonation, the
divide Bolivian accentuated pronunciation of intervocalic "s"
and at the end of words, and the absence of
Spanish into three yeismo and voseo.
• Among its varieties are La Paz Spanish and
dialect zones: the dialects of the Los Valles region (such
as Vallegrandino Spanish ).
• Eastern region
Spanish camba
• It is spoken in the Bolivian East , corresponding to the
departments of Santa Cruz , Beni and Pando . In this
region, Spanish is the mother tongue of the majority of
the population, having its bases in Andalusian Spanish,
with influences from native languages such
as Chiquitano , Chané and Guaraní , as well as foreign
words from Portuguese and Arabic.
• This dialect is more common and is characterized by the
aspiration of the "s" at the end of the words. The use of
"voseo" is almost hegemonic, as well as the use of
the diminutive-ingo and the augmentative -ango (for
example, chiquitingo and grandango ).
• In the region of Los Yungas there is a transitional dialect
between Andean Spanish and Camba Spanish, with
important African contributions.
• Southern region
Chapaco and Chaqueño Spanish
• It is spoken in the department of Tarija , and it
also extends to the Chaco Cruceño and
Chuquisaqueño (Chaqueño Spanish).
• Its main influences are River Plate Spanish , due
to its proximity to Argentina . It is characterized
by the particular tones, in the chapaca region the
prolongation is present in the syllable before the
tonic, due to this the intermediate section of
each word is lengthened, while in the chaco
region there tends to be a slight prolongation in
the last section of a sentence or word, in both
regions the use of the "voseo" and the aspiration
of the "s" are taken into account.