CAE Press, 2005. — 103 p.When you learn English, you take on a family of languages. The original Anglo-Saxon is responsible for our most basic words - 100 out of 100 on the 'Most Popular Words' list. Then there is French - originally imported by William the Conqueror in 1066; extra shipments have been arriving ever since. There is Latin; the Roman legions did a great job in Britain with well-built roads and fancy plumbing, but Renaissance scholars proved that, where introducing a language was concerned, the pen was truly mightier than the sword. There is Greek too. Greek words travelled the world with the conquering Roman armies and were giving European scholars ideas back in the Middle Ages. It was a habit that took on; when Alexander Graham Bell perfected his new gadget in 1876, he gave it a name as Greek as you can get -telephone.
As if all these were not enough, over the past few hundred years words from all over the world have been added, making English a truly multicultural language.
Spelling English well involves dealing with the different language groups. There are reasonable and knowable techniques to make the job easier, and this book offers some of them.
