What words tell us

Worldwide there are many millions of books. How many have been written up to now is unknown. A great deal of knowledge is stored in these books. If one were to read all of them, he would know a lot about life. Because books show us how our world changes. Each era has its own books. By reading them one can identify what is important to people. Unfortunately, no one can read every book. But modern technology can help analyze books. Using digitalization, books can be stored like data. After that, the contents can be analyzed. In this way, linguists see how our language has changed. It is even more interesting, however, to count the frequency of words. By doing so, the significance of certain things can be identified. Scientists studied more than 5 million books. These were books from the last five centuries. A total of 500 billion words were analyzed. The frequency of the words shows how people lived then and now. Ideas and trends are reflected in the language. The word men has lost some meaning, for example. It is used less frequently today than it was earlier. The frequency of the word women, on the other hand, has increased significantly. One can also see what we like to eat by looking at words. The word ice cream was very important in the fifties. After that, the words pizza and pasta became popular. The term sushi has been dominant for a few years now. There is good news for all language lovers… Our language gains more words every year!

Guess the language!

British English is the form of English that is spoken in Great Britain. It is counted among the West Germanic languages. It is the native language of approximately 60 million people. It deviates from American English in a few areas. English is thus considered a pluricentric language. That means that it is a language that has multiple standard forms. Differences can relate to pronunciation, vocabulary, and orthography, for example. British English is divided into many dialects that in some cases are very different.

For a long time dialect speakers were considered uneducated and could not find good jobs. Today it is different, even though dialects still play a role in Great Britain. British English has also been strongly influenced by French. This dates back to the Norman Conquest in 1066. In turn, Great Britain took its language to other continents during the colonial times. In this way, English became one of the most important languages of the world in the last few centuries. Learn English, but the original please!