Text 3. Basic characteristics

SIMPLICITY OF FORM. Old English, like modern German, French, Russian and Greek, had many inflections to show singular and plural, tense, person, etc., but over the centuries words have been simplified. Verbs now have very few inflections, and adjectives do not change according to the noun. FLEXIBILITY. As a result of the loss of inflections, English has become, over the past five centuries, a very flexible language. Without inflections, the same word can operate as in any different parts of speech. Many nouns and verbs have the same form, for example swim, drink, walk, kiss, look, and smile. We can talk about water to drink and to water the flowers; time to go and to time a race; a paper to read and to paper a bedroom. Adjectives can be used as verbs. We warm our hands in front of a fire; if clothes are dirtied, they need to be cleaned and dried. Prep­ositions too are flexible. A sixty-year old man is nearing retirement; we can talk about a round of golf, cards, or drinks. OPENNESS OF VOCABULARY. This involves the free admissions of words from other languages and the easy creation of compounds and derivatives. Most world languages have contributed some words in English at some time, and the process is being reversed. Purists of the French, Russian, and Japanese languages are misting the arrival of English in their vocabulary.

THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH. So graphically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. It is the language of business, technology, sport, and aviation. This will no doubt continue, although the proposition that all other languages will die out is absurd.