Unit 12

Languages in the modern world

Difficult languages

Part 1

PRE-LISTENING SECTION

Exercise 1. Discuss the following issues.

• What does the term “difficult language” mean for you? What defines the level of its difficulty?

• Do you think English and Ukrainian/Russian languages are difficult?

Exercise 2. Match these words and collocations to their definitions (synonyms). Translate them into your native language.

1	Extol	a	an ignorant or foolish person
2	Idiosyncrasy	b	subsidiary; auxiliary; supplementary
3	Booby	c	a tendency, type of behaviour, mannerism, etc.
4	Unwary	d	(of a verb) to undergo inflection according to a specific set of rules
5	Conjugate	e	having or making a loud or harsh sound
6	Wordsmith	f	to praise lavishly; exalt
7	Ancillary	g	of or relating to the lungs
8	Decline	h	to state or list the inflections of (a noun, adjective, or pronoun), or (of a noun, adjective, or pronoun) to be inflected for number, case, or gender
9	Pulmonic	i	lacking caution or prudence
10	Strident	j	a person skilled in using words

LISTENING SECTION

Exercise 1. Listen to the recording and decide if the following statements are true or false.

1. Books that extol supposed difficulty of English are usually slightly fact-challenged.

2. It is natural to think that your own language is simple and easy to learn.

3. English is pretty hard.

4. Polish verb has a total of 48 forms.

5. The “hardest” language studied by many English-speakers is Latin.

6. Languages tend to get “easier” the farther one moves from English and its relatives.

7. Often the foreigner is struck by how differently languages can sound.

8. The most exotic sounds are clicks.

Exercise 2. Listen again and answer the questions.

1. Do the books praising the difficulty of English have some scientific value?

2. Why is Latin so hard for English-speakers to learn?

3. What strikes the foreigner first while learning the language?

4. What language stands out for its sound complexity? Why?

DISCUSSION SECTION

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions.

1. Which you think is harder: English or Russian?

2. Do you think Latin and Greek are hard for Russian-speakers? Why?

3. Do you think that phonetic difficulties make the language hard?

4. Do you think that the language that cause changes in the structure of human body (!Xóõ) will (and may) exist long?

Exercise 2. Comment on the statements below.

1. The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells."

2. If you can speak three languages you're trilingual. If you can speak two languages you're bilingual. If you can speak only one language you're an American.

3. Any man who does not make himself proficient in at least two languages other than his own is a fool.

4. He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.

5. Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English.

TRANSLATION SECTION

Exercise 1. Make the transcript of the recording and translate it into Ukrainian.

Exercise 2. Present a translation-oriented analysis of the text.