Lulu: Hello again, welcome back to Britain under the microscope. Hello Anlan.
Anlan: Hello, everybody.
Lulu: We're still on the topic of history of English.
Anlan: In the last show, we moved on from Anglo- Saxon to the Norman invasion, and then from old English to Middle English,and the question is why is the whole world learning English now?
Lulu: How did it become a world language?
Anlan: So in the16th century …
Lulu: Oh last time,we were in the 15th century, where things started to get printed in English and it became an official language.
Anlan: So now in the 16th century, English started to grow, this was the era of the renaissance.
Lulu: 文藝復興，I think most Chinese especially people who listen to this show would know what the Renaissance is about.
Anlan: Absolutely, it is the era of science, medicine and technology, it is when they started to develop as the printing press was used more,and technology was more available. So at this time, people started looking back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and more Latin words came into English.
Lulu: so that was the time when people started to think that the ancient Roman and ancient Greek they have the best.
Anlan: Yes.
Lulu: Right.
Anlan: So at this time, Latin was the language of university, educated people throughout Europe used it as a lingua franca.
Lulu: A lingua franca. Is this a Latin word itself?
Anlan: This is. A lingua franca is a language used by people of different languages, who speak different languages to communicate with each other. So for example nowadays,English is a lingua franca, it could be used by people whose mother tongue isn't English.
Lulu: En, in this I would like to say a lot of people especially in china when you are learning English, you think I need to talk to native speakers, but in real life and in real world, more likely you will be talking to people whose native language is not English. Therefore,you will be using English as a lingua franca叫通用語或者混合語。
Anlan: So back then, Latin was the language of education and also Greek became very important. And even though the Greek only has 5% of words in English. They are still very important; words about studying subjects come from Greek.
Lulu: Anything with a "gy", archaeology, biology, psychology, philosophy.
Anlan: Yep, and also history, geography, biology, these all come from Greek.
Lulu: And how many words are borrowed into English from Latin?
Anlan: Around 28%.
Lulu: 28%. I guess that's why if you are preparing for a more difficult test like GRE, for example TOEFL or IELTS, a lot of you probably have learned the GREEK and Latin roots. 在中國考一些比較難的考試的時候，大家會背這個拉丁詞根和希臘詞根。
Anlan: But it was also this time that England became a trading nation, trade and business became very important,so English ships started to travel the world and to trade with other countries.
Lulu: Was this the time that English started to borrow or getting influenced or starting to influence other languages?
Anlan: Yep. so you talked about it in one of your previous shows about it.
Lulu: 嗯，之前我做過一次。Loan words in English,叫英語里的外來語。
Anlan: So, for example, Arabic words like alcohol, chemistry, sugar and zero all come from Arabic.
Lulu: Arabic ,所以是從阿拉伯語里借來的詞。Alcohol, Chemistry, Sugar and Zero.
Anlan: Yep,and also from a language called Nahuatl.
Lulu: Where was that language originated?
Anlan: This was the language the Aztecs in Mexico.
Lulu: 阿茲特克So that's in modern Latin America.
Anlan: Yeah. So Chili, Chocolate, Tomato come from this language.
Lulu: That is very interesting. These must be the things they've been trading. Chili, 辣椒，Chocolate and tomato because they were native produce of that part of the world.
Anlan: Yes. So English is not like languages maybe like Chinese where you would invent new words to describe something. In English we would just take the word from the existed language.
Lulu: 嗯，直接用外來語。And any other examples,English also borrowed from Chinese, didn't it?
Anlan: Absolutely, tell you what, let's have a little quiz. I'm gonna say some words in English that come from Chinese, and see if you know what they are.
Lulu: Ok. I probably know the English but let's see if we can go back to what Chinese they borrowed from.
Anlan: So cheongsam.

Lulu: Cheongsam, this I know, think it's 長衫. Sometimes people think of it as 旗袍，but I think it's just the traditional Chinese attire.
Anlan: So in English it's mostly called chaongsam. Kowtow?
Lulu: Kowtow is叩頭，磕頭。
Anlan: Ketchup
Lulu: I know what ketchup is. Everyone knows. Ketchup is the tomato sauce,however, I don't really know what Chinese words they came from.
Anlan: The Chinese words they come from southern dialects.
Lulu: Like Cantonese.
Anlan: For example Cantonese or 福建。
Lulu: So what was the original?
Anlan: 茄汁。
Lulu: Ok. Oh番茄汁、茄汁。Ok, that's a bit of stretch, and also mahjong?
Anlan: Mahjong?
Lulu: Yeah, what else?
Anlan: Tai-chi.
Lulu: 太極。This is easy.
Anlan: Tofu.
Lulu: 豆腐。
Anlan: Dim sum.
Lulu: 點心. Oh, this is from Cantonese, 點心，粵式點心。
Anlan: And also typhoon.
Lulu: Oh, typhoon was from Chinese! I always thought it was the other way round. Oh,that's very interesting.
Anlan: So, English,one of reasons we have such a large vocabulary is we always borrow from other languages. Sometimes we change pronunciation, sometimes we don't.
Lulu: Hm, I think to some extent, similar in Chinese, we also have loan words. So by borrowing a lot of words from other languages, English must have a really big vocabulary.
Anlan: Absolutely. The issue is no one really knows how big the vocabulary is.
Lulu: And it is still growing.
Anlan: And it's still growing. Some people said 250 thousand words, some people said 750 thousand words.
Lulu: Lately, I saw another set of statistics saying it's already over 1 million.
Anlan: Yeah. Some people really count it to 1.5 million words.
Lulu: Wow!
Anlan: This is one of the reasons why English focuses on precision, all of our words have very very precise meanings.
Lulu: This is a little bit different from Chinese. In Chinese we have more 曖昧或者不可言傳的意思。But in English you have more precise words for things. Now this might sound like a piece of bad news for learners of English. You know, memorizing even more vocabulary but, how much do we actually need? Students often ask me how many words do I actually need to know to be able to speak English?
Anlan: Well, the average English speaker knows between 12,000 to 25,000 words.
Lulu: That's native speaker.
Anlan: That's native speaker. So an educated native speaker would know around probably25,000 words.
Lulu: To 25,000.
Anlan: To 25,000.
Lulu: That doesn't sound too much, especially if you consider it's native speakers.
Anlan: And this is all the words they know.
Lulu: How many words do people actually use in daily life, in daily conversation?
Anlan: We probably only use about 5000 words.
Lulu: 5000, oh that's good news. So all of you out there if you can learn five six thousand words you should be able to speak with no problem.
Anlan: Absolutely. But as I said before, English is a very precise language, so it is always very important to recognize exactly what that word means and how to use that word in a sentence.
Lulu: Exactly the context.
Anlan: Context and also collocations as well.
Lulu: 特別是固定搭配比較重要。All right, so we'll stop here for this episode,and next episode let's look at some of the other English speaking countries, like the united states. How is that different?
Anlan: Absolutely! Next episode we're going to start moving on to the 17th and 18thcentury, the era of the British empire, and all the different versions of English that started to emerge. So until next time.
Anlan: I'll see you next time.

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