ENG 266 - 2008-2009
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of these lectures, the student should be able to:
- Recognize why we spell and speak English the way we do today.
- Identify words of early English origin, as well as words of more recent, non-English origin.
- Use a dictionary, and other resources, to learn the etymologies of words and chart their changes in meaning and use.
- Explain the ways in which major English authors used the resources of their language.
- Summarize the relationship of English to other European languages.
- Summarize the differences between Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME).
- Describe generally the dialect boundaries in England.