Unit 35: A brief history of English spellings
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Blame all those invaders from other countries who have messed about with the English language for over 2000 years. |
The first inhabitants of England were the Celts who spoke a dialect from
a large group of languages known as Indo European. Only a few words,
mainly place names, remain from their language.
When the Romans invaded in AD43 and stayed for 400 years, they brought with them their own language, Latin, which is just one reason for the number of Latin origin words that still remain in our language.
| Soon after they left, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (the Anglo-Saxons) arrived, forcing the Celts out to the north and west, establishing the area we now know as England. They brought with them a different dialect of the Indo-European language and many of our words can be traced back to that time. |  |
Try to guess the modern word from these examples:
Old English word - and a clue |
Type the modern word. |
The Spellzone interactive course is intended to be used online and may not be printed.
One of the students has put in a huge amount of effort in completing Spellzone at least 3 times a week since his arrival with us in January. Looking at his scores after the latest GL testing, his standardised score has risen from 99 to 131. This is a truly phenomenal result. I just wanted to share the best result I have ever seen.
Terrie Penrose-Toms, Casterton College
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