Unit Two林路.pptVIP

Unit Two  About the English Language Questions to be answered on class How much do you know about English besides the language itself? T or F Questions: 1. It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300 million who use English as a second language. 2. It is the second most spoken language in the world. 3. Half of all business deals are conducted in English. 4. Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English. 5. The vocabulary of English had crossed the 600,000-word threshold on June 10, 2009. 6. Hamlets famous To be, or not to be lines were written in late Modern English by Shakespeare. The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but unlike other languages there is no academy to define officially accepted words and spellings. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (OED2) includes over 600,000 definitions, following a rather inclusive policy: It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang (Supplement to the OED, 1933). The editors of Websters Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (475,000 main headwords) in their preface, estimate the number to be much higher. It is estimated that about 25,000 words are added to the language each year. The Global Language Monitor announced that the English language had crossed the 1,000,000-word threshold on June 10, 2009.The announcement was met with strong scepticism by linguists and lexicographers, though a number of non-specialist reportsaccepted the figure uncritically. It is estimated that there are 300 million native speakers and 300 million who use English as a second language and a further 100 million use it as a foreign language. Half of all business deals are conducted in English. Two thirds of all scientific papers are written in English. Over 70% of all post / mail is written and addressed i