Culture through the understanding of history
jueves, 3 de septiembre de 2009
Procedure: Time machine
As a team research the background material for your story:
- What kind of clothes did people wear during the time period you've selected?
- How did they speak to one another?
- What were their surroundings like?
- How was the language at taht time?
- Why did the normands want to invade England?
- What was the influence of the normand-french language in terms of vocabulary?
As a team decide where you will be transported to in your time machine. This will determine the historical setting of your story.
The time machine: A webquest activity
English is one of the most complex language in terms of semantics and vocabulary. Why does english has many words from different languages? Why does english has 50 % of french words? Take your time machine and uncover the answers
Task
Select one of the two following topics below:The normand conquest and the normand-french influence in terms of linguistics
The battle of hastings and the invasion of the normands in the year 1066
your task is to travel back in time and write your own short story taking into consideration the elements we’ve discussed in class
Procedure
Select your team and decide who is going to be the:
Project Director who is responsible for typing the final copy in Microsoft Word and overseeing the creation of the PowerPoint presentation.
Sound technician who is responsible for locating sounds and music for the PowerPoint presentation
Graphic coordinator Who is in charge for locating graphics that can be used in the presentation
The time machine: " A travel through english language history"
Middle English
In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-1400), but it would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand. French became the language of the Norman aristocracy and added more vocabulary to English. More pairs of similar words arose.
French
English
close
shut
reply
answer
odour
smell
annual
yearly
demand
ask
chamber
room
desire
wish
power
might
ire
wrath / anger
Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic animals are English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal, mutton, pork, bacon, venison).
The Germanic form of plurals (house, housen; shoe, shoen) was eventually displaced by the French method of making plurals: adding an s (house, houses; shoe, shoes). Only a few words have retained their Germanic plurals: men, oxen, feet, teeth, children.
French also affected spelling so that the cw sound came to be written as qu (eg. cween became queen).
It wasn't till the 14th Century that English became dominant in Britain again. In 1399, King Henry IV became the first king of England since the Norman Conquest whose mother tongue was English. By the end of the 14th Century, the dialect of London had emerged as the standard dialect of what we now call Middle English. Chaucer wrote in this language.
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