21 Have you ever heard about Esperanto? Where is Esperanto spoken? Read the text to find out if you are right.
In 1887 a new language was invented by Dr Zamenhof, who was born in Poland. He lived a great part of his life in Russia. This new language was called Esperanto. It was a mixture of a number of European languages and it had a very simple grammar. Dr Zamenhof believed that lots of people would speak the new language as a second language. It was very easy to learn and rich enough to express thoughts and feelings.
But the language has not been very popular or successful. Russia is one of the countries where Esperanto is still alive. Today only a small number of people in the world can speak it.
22 Discuss the following:
1. Why do you think Esperanto didn’t become popular in the world?
2. What other artificial languages (invented by people) have you heard of?
23 Read, compare and remember.
1. Have you seen the boy (who / that) won the competition?
2. Look! Here are the students (who / that) we spoke to yesterday?
3. This is the computer (which / that) I’d like to have.
4. Name the languages (which / that) Mr Dean knows.
who / that = people
which / that = animals and things
24 Put in: who or which.
1. Have you talked to the lady who lives on the ground floor?
2. Has Andrew bought the book which he wanted?
3. I like the blouse which I am wearing.
4. These are the flowers which we have grown in our garden.
5. It was a wonderful film. It is the best film which I’ve seen recently.
6. What have you done with the money which she gave us?
7. The people who have arranged the competition care about our future.
25 If you had to invent a new international language, how would you range the following in order of importance.
— simple grammar
— few words
— short words
— international words
— simple pronunciation
— no transcription
— simple reading (no special reading rules)
— fixed word stress
Share your opinion with your classmates.
26 Find the pairs of words that have the same pronunciation.
there, won, through, too, week, write, no, piece, I, hour, hear, sea, meat
eye, one, weak, peace, here, threw, right, know, see, two, our, meet, their
27 Read the words in transcription. Write them using letters
28 Do some research. What does your name mean? Where does it come from? (Greek, German, French, Russian… ) Share the results of your research.