14.The london dialect

The term Cockney has both geographical and linguistic associations. Geographically and culturally, it often refers to working class Londoners, particularly those in the East End. Linguistically, it refers to the form of English spoken by this group. The earliest recorded use of the term is 1362.In the Reeve's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1386) it appears as "cokenay", and the meaning is "a child tenderly brought up, an effeminate fellow, a milksop". By 1521 it was in use by country people as a derogatory reference for the effeminate town-dwellers. The term could also be used for a young male prostitute; in this the progression exactly mirrors that of punk and gunsel in America.

Cockney speakers have a distinctive accent and dialect, and frequently use rhyming slang. The Survey of English Dialects took a recording from a long-time resident of Hackney and the BBC made another recording in 1999 which showed how the accent had changed.Studies have indicated that the heavy use of South East English accents on television and radio may be the cause of the spread of Cockney English since the 1960s

15. Germanic alphabet

the modern German alphabet is an extended Latin-based alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters. Although the diacritic letters represent distinct sounds in German phonology, they are almost universally not considered part of the alphabet.

The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of the Kingdom of England by the troops of William the Conqueror, Duke of NormandyThe Norman conquest was a pivotal event in English history. It largely removed the native ruling class, replacing it with a foreign, French-speaking monarchy, aristocracy, and clerical hierarchy. This, in turn, brought about a transformation of the English language and the culture of England in a new era often referred to as Norman England.

One of the most obvious changes was the introduction of Anglo-Norman, a northern dialect of Old French, as the language of the ruling classes in England, displacing Old English. Not until the fourteenth century would English regain its former primacy, while the use of French at court continued into the fifteenth century.

By this time English had itself been profoundly transformed, developing into the starkly different Middle English which formed the basis for the modern language. The grammatical structures of the language had also changed dramatically, although the relationship, if any, between this transformation and the marginalisation of English resulting from the conquest is uncertain.

16. Economic and soc. Condition in 11-12cen

Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s.

The transfer of power in 1066 resulted in only limited culture shock. But the top levels of society of English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies were removed. Their replacements spoke Norman French and used Latin for administrative purposes. Thus Norman French came into use as a language of polite discourse and literature, and this fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration.

The new English language did not sound the same as the old: for as well as undergoing changes in vocabulary, the complex system of inflected endings which Old English had was gradually lost or simplified in the dialects of spoken Middle English. This change was gradually reflected in its increasingly diverse written forms too. The loss of case-endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages, so cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population. English remained, after all, the language of the vast majority.