2. Some words are very resistant to change or mutation and thus appear  and sound pretty much the same after many generations. One such category concerns:
A. numbers     B. cleanliness         C. adjectives

3. Regular verbs in the past tense take "ed" at the end. True or False: This is because at one time the structure of English was quite different. The response to the question "Did you work today?" would be "I the work did."
A. True           B. False             C. It depends

4. To be is the most irregular of all English verbs having eight forms:  be, being,been, am are, is, was were, and is derived from
A. Saxon      B. Latin     C. a mixture of several languages and verbs

5.  Spoken English is evolving much faster than written English.
A. True        B. False             C. It depends

6. In Old English,  phrasal verbs were extremely rare, unlike the present day where they are so widely used.  The came into their own
about the same time as Shakespeare. Did  William Shakespeare, master playwright and consummate poet, refuse to use them?
A. Yes, he abhorred  use of phrasal verbs deeming them too coarse or common  B. No, he used thousands of them in his work      

7.   Many researchers today are trying to reverse engineer  languages like English, Greek, or Sanskrit to recreate the original Proto-Indo-European language 
A. True         B. False      

8. Many languages have both a formal and an informal or intimate form for the second person. This often sparks class conflicts or poses questions of respect. English is nicer using only the informal or friendly YOU for everyone.
A. Absolutely true
B. More or less right      
C. Misleading
D. Utterly false

9.  According to Jean-Baptiste Michel and others the rate that a word mutates in a language is directly proportional to how often it is used.
A. True           B. False         C. It depends

10.  Children from the age of about 18 months until they reach their teens learn about ______ new words each day..
A. half a dozen          B. 11 or so         C. twenty five

Bonus question What does Eeny, meeny, miny, moe mean?

 

Play the irregular verb game?

Dreams have but one owner at a time. That is why dreamers are lonely.

Ce texte © 2008 Christopher Yukna - tous droits réservés .

feel free to contact me with any questions

Christopher YUKNA