Why Is English So Hard To Spell?

All classes meet in room 210. Hand in your short essay and daybook if you have not done so already.

Consider the words knight, night, through, though, bough, cough, rough, come, give, gone.

Take a short pretest about the history of English.  Look at this chart.

What does England look like in the year 0?  -ish? Well, this is already 2,000 years old.

Think Roman Empire.
Old English spoken for us.

Anglo-Saxon art

Anglo-Saxons vs. Vikings  which leads us to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

After Norman castles we come to Middle English. Okay, times change.

Fold your handout and put it in your daybook.

Here are some related links of interest on this topic:

The History of English in 10 Minutes Video

An animation of one of Chaucer's Tales

National Geographic on the buried Vikings



Homework:

1.  Friday the first draft of your observation paper is due.  It can be either hand-written or typed and PRINTED OUT BEFORE CLASS.  See the blue assignment sheet for length suggestions.

2. Tomorrow (Thursday) there will be SOME time to work on your draft, but there will be some other work as well.

3. TWFTD:  punk.  What can you find for the origin of the word?