Handout 2
 Read the text about languages and match the abstracts below with the text paragraphs.                          

  1. Words match the demands of their users.

  2. Language is a social phenomenon and changes with time.
  3. Different sounds for different languages.
  4. Definition of language.
  5. I do not use those words but I understand them.ò
  The structure of language 
from: http://www.ecml.at/edl/default.asp?t=celebration                                                              
1 Language is an arbitrary system of sounds and symbols which is used for many purposes by a group of people, chiefly to communicate with each other, to express cultural identity, to convey social relationships, and to provide a source of delight (for example, in literature). Languages differ from each other in their sounds, grammar, vocabulary, and patterns of discourse. But all languages are highly complex entities.
2 Languages vary in the number of their vowel and consonant sounds from less than a dozen to over a hundred. European languages tend to have inventories in the middle range - from around 25 such sounds (e.g. Spanish) to over 60 (e.g. Irish). Alphabets reflect these sounds with varying degrees of accuracy: some alphabets (e.g. Welsh) are very regular in the way they symbolise sounds; others (e.g. English) are very irregular.
3 Within grammar, each language comprises several thousand points of word formation and sentence construction. Each language has a huge vocabulary available to meet the needs of its users - in the case of European languages, where scientific and technical vocabulary is very large, this reaches several hundred thousand words and phrases.
4 Individual speakers know and use only a fraction of a language's total vocabulary. The words educated people use - their active vocabulary - can reach some 50,000 words; the words they know but do not use - their passive vocabulary - is somewhat larger. In everyday conversation, people often make use of a small number of words, but with great frequency. It has been estimated that a 21-year-old has already uttered some 50 million words.
5

Living languages and cultures are constantly changing. People influence each other in the way they speak and write. New media, such as the Internet, give languages fresh opportunities to grow. Languages are always in contact with each other, and affect each other in many ways, especially by borrowing words. English, for example, has over the centuries borrowed from over 350 languages, and European languages are all currently borrowing many words from English.

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