LANGUAGE FACTS

Read Professor David Crystal's short explanation why languages die.

"Languages die because . . . well, there are three reasons really. The first reason is that the community dies. The second reason is that in some parts of the world there is antipathy towards minority languages, people do not want them to grow, and they want them to die. And then the third reason, which is the most important reason, are the effects of globalization. Everybody knows about plants and animals dying . . . But how many people know that languages are dying out faster than plants and animals are?"

Answer the questions below in note form.

What happens to the minority languages in some parts of the world?
There is antipathy towards them.
What is a sad fact about languages?
They are dying faster than plants and animals.

Listen to Professor David Crystal talking about the three criteria about preserving languages.

Listen again and put the criteria in the correct sequence as he states them.

People themselves must want the language to survive.

The government must want a language to survive.

Money is needed if we want a language to survive.

Professor Crystal’s says:

"In Britain we have only 50 million or so people who speak English, even America only has 230 million or so who speak it there, only, if you add all the English speakers in the world, you get to 400 million or something like that. And there are 1.5 billion speakers of English, so who are the others? They are people like you. They are the people who have learned English as a second or foreign language. For every one native speaker there are three non-native speakers of English in the world. English is now owned by the world, not by Britain, not by America, not by the native speakers. It's beginning to be owned by the people who have chosen to use it. And the power of English, the centre of gravity of English has moved away from people like me towards people like you. And this is the most fascinating situation. There has never been a world language before. A world language is a global language spoken by somebody in every country of the world. And English is the first language to have achieved that kind of status. And it has never happened to the human race before."

Choose the right answers. Check the facts in the text.

The number of native English speakers in Britain	{about_50_million;230_million;400_million}
The number of the native English speakers in the States	{230_million;600_million;400_million}
The number of all the native speakers of English	{400_million;200_million;600_million}
The number of all the English speakers in the world	{1.5_billion;230_million;400_million}

Read again and answer the questions below in your notebook.

GRAMMAR LOG

Cardinal numbers

Cardinal numbers answer the question How many? and give us a precise answer about the number of people or things. Examples:

How many students own an iPad? - One/12/15.
How many English books have you read so far? - Three.

The numbers from one(1) to ninety-nine(99) are also called cardinal numerals. However, a/one hundred (100) a/one thousand (1,000) etc. are nouns.

Look up the cardinal number table/chart in Google.

Depending on their use, numbers can be written either with the numeric symbol or the word. How we say or read the symbols (figures, digits) depends on what they stand for.
Example:

58: How many people? = Fifty-eight people
Which room? = Room five eight
1,926: How many citizens? = one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six citizens
1926: Which year? = In the year nineteen hundred and twenty-six.
357: Which flight? = three five seven

There are a number of ways you can say 0 in English (oh, zero,nil, nought, love). Here are two of them:
Example:

after a decimal point
7.03 = "Seven point oh three"
in bus or room numbers
room 404 = "room four oh four "
bus 102 = "Bus one oh two."
in phone numbers
3031427 = "three oh three one four two seven"
0 = zero
in temperature
-20°C = "twenty degrees below zero."

The spelling
From thirteen (13) to nineteen (19) numbers end in ‘-teen,' e.g. thirteen (13). So, the word teenagers, which means youngsters aged 13-19. They are in their teens or teenage years.

The tens add the ending -ty to the ones, like six+-ty = sixty (60).
Mind: two-twenty, three-thirty, four-forty, five-fifty
Numbers from twenty-one (21) to ninety-nine (99) are compounds using a hyphen.
A/one hundred, a/one thousand, a/one million, a/one billion are nouns, but have no plural -s.
Examples:

132 = one hundred and thirty-two
241 = two hundred and forty-one NOT: ~~two hundreds~~
600 (= hundred) miles
2,000,000 (= two million) people
5,003 = five thousand and three
13,055= thirteen thousand and fifty-five
9,483 = nine thousand, four hundred and eighty-three
1,000,000,000 = a/one billion (= milijarda)

A hundred, a thousand, etc. seem to be less formal than one hundred, one thousand etc.
It may have other meanings too. The symbol is %, which we read or say per cent or percent or pct.

Examples:

1,300: one thousand, three hundred

One web page has very good information on the topic (not two or more of them).

Percentage
It means any proportion in relation to the whole or proportion or rate per hundred parts. It may have other meanings to. The symbol is %, which we read or say per cent or percent or ptc. NOT: ~~per cents~~
Mind the question: What percentage of ......? - 99% = ninety-nine per cent

The year
A year is a period of twelve months or 365 days. Every four years, there is a leap year as it has 366 days.
A period of ten years is a decade, the one of one hundred years is a century, the one of a thousand years is a millennium (plural: millennia). Mind the abbreviations:
AD or A.D. stands for Anno Domini (in the year of Our Lord), more recent C.E. for Common Era.
BC or B.C. = Before Christ, more recent B.C.E. for Before Common Era.

In the year:
10 = ten
613 = six thirteen/six hundred (and) thirteen
1998 = nineteen ninety-eight/nineteen (hundred and) ninety-eight
1000 = one thousand
2000 = two thousand
1001 = one thousand (and) one/ten oh one
2001 = two thousand (and) one/twenty oh one
1011 = ten eleven/ten hundred and eleven/one thousand and eleven
2014 = twenty fourteen/two thousand (and) fourteen
1509 = fifteen oh nine/fifteen hundred (and) nine
1500 = fifteen hundred