Part 1

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

A. The history of the English language is a tale of centuries of evolution. In the fifth century AD, Britain was invaded by Germanic tribes from present-day Germany and Denmark. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought with them dialects of the West Germanic family of languages, which are the ancestors of English. The Angles were named from Engle, their land of origin. Their language was called Englisc, which is the origin of the word English. These invaders pushed the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants out of what is now England into Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words. One of these was the Celtic word “brocc”, which became the modern English word badger. Others include place names such as London, Dover, and Kent.

B. The next wave of invaders was the Vikings from present-day Norway and Denmark, who spoke Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Many English words that begin with “sk” are of Old Norse origin, such as sky, skill, and skin. The Vikings also gave us the pronouns they, their, and them. Although the Vikings left their mark on the English language, they did not add many words to the English vocabulary because the English already had words for the things the Vikings discussed. However, the Old Norse word “happ” meaning chance or good luck did make it into modern English as the word happy.

C. The next invasion of Britain took place in 1066, when William the Conqueror of France invaded England, bringing the French language with him. French became the language of the Norman aristocracy and added more than 10,000 words to the English language. The words crown, castle, court, parliament, army, and government all come from French, as do justice, crime, prison, and tax. The French also left their mark on English spelling. For example, the Old English “cw” was changed to the French “qu”, so the Old English word “cwene” became “queen”. Similarly, the Old English word “myln” became mill, and “cniht” became “knight”. The French also gave us many words that we use to describe food. The words “beef, mutton, pork, and veal” come from the French words “boeuf, mouton, porc, and veau”. However, the animals from which these meats come have Anglo-Saxon names: cow, sheep, pig, and calf. This is because the Anglo-Saxons were the ones looking after the animals, while the Normans were the ones who got to eat them.

D. Up until the 14th century, the English used the Roman numerals they had learned from the Normans. Then, in 1392, a Welshman named Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem called A Treatise on the Astrolabe, in which he used Hindu-Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) for the first time in English. He also wrote The Canterbury Tales, which was the first book of poetry written in English. Chaucer is known as the Father of English literature because he was the first person to prove that English was not a vulgar language but could be used for literary purposes. His works were written in Middle English, which is the name given to the English used from the 11th to the 15th centuries.

E. In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. However, English spelling was still not standardised, and the same word was often spelt several different ways in the same book. Caxton himself was inconsistent, spelling the word book in three different ways on the same page. Caxton published many books in English, which helped it to be standardised more and expand the English vocabulary by introducing words such as canon, catholic, chapter, and history. The first English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabetical, was published in 1604. It contained 3,000 words, each with a simple definition. The definitions were so simple, in fact, that the word apples was defined as a word used to describe more than one apple.

F. The English Renaissance saw the invention of new words, as well as new uses for existing ones. The word muscle, for example, comes from the Latin word meaning little mouse. Renaissance doctors thought that the muscles of the human body looked like little mice running around under people’s skin. The word fact comes from the Latin word factum, meaning a thing done. Before the Renaissance, a fact was simply something that people did. It was only in the 16th century that the word fact was used to mean something that is true.

Questions 1-6

Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-6.

1____________ ABCDEF . examples of languages which contributed to the formation of English

2____________ ABCDEF . an explanation of why a particular group of people did not contribute many words to the English language

3____________ ABCDEF . mention of a significant written piece that established English as a language worthy of formal expression

4____________ ABCDEF . examples of the different ways in which the same person wrote the same word

5____________ ABCDEF . examples of words which English borrowed from French

6____________ ABCDEF . a reference to the physical appearance of an animal

A

B

C

D

E

F

Questions 7-13

Complete the table below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 7-13.