KWB213 Lecture Notes - Germanic Languages, Queensland University Of Technology, Norman Conquest Of England
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Lecture notes for kwb213: corporate writing & editing 29/07/13: week 2: Modern english can be a difficult language, even for native speakers. Latin), it"s relatively language (about halfway through the 16th century), full of inconsistencies, uncontrolled by a central authority (unlike french) and difficult to learn as a second language (unlike say, spanish or japanese). There are words that are spelt the same, but have different meanings depending on how it is pronounced or said (the technical term being homograph). There are words which are both verb and noun (such as post or book). There are inconsistent plurals (louse to lice, mouse to mice, but houses are not hice). There are rules that don"t apply, such as i before e, except after c despire neighbour and weight. There are irregular verbs, such as drink, drank, drunk. Things like this make english a problematic language. There have been many changes, theft/borrowing and adapting from other languages (like.