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Can We Help?: Borrowed words: the processes of language change

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Presenters sit on set, text overlay reads "What is the origin of 'Short shrift'?"
Can We Help?: Borrowed words: the processes of language change

SUBJECTS:  English

YEARS:  7–8


Do you know any words from another language?

Chances are, you know more than you think you do! English is a polyglot language; one that borrows words from other languages.

In this Professor Kate Burridge discusses the origins of the phrases 'short-shrift' and 'lily-livered'.


Things to think about

  1. 1.How much of the English language do you think is actually English? Surprisingly, only about a quarter of our words today come from the Angle tribes and these people were not even native to England! Do you know where they were from? See if you can find out.
  2. 2.From which language does the word 'shrift' come? What did it originally mean? What do we use the phrase 'short-shrift' to mean nowadays? What is the meaning of 'lily-livered'? Why is the colour white associated with this idea?
  3. 3.Liver' is also believed to come from an early form of German, from a word meaning 'sticky', possibly because the liver produces bile. Explain how the liver came to be associated with courage. What is Kate Burridge's profession? Why are we more likely to believe her explanations of word origins than if we were told them by the host, Peter Rowsthorn?
  4. 4.Use the internet to find other German words that have made their way into English. Find out what their direct translations are. For example, the word 'kindergarten' is German, and it literally means 'children's garden'. Kate talks about the symbolism of colour. Create a colour wheel on which you identify the symbolic meanings of other colours.



Date of broadcast: 4 Apr 2008


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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