BLIZZARD BAG ASSIGNMENT #1

For D-Block Public Speaking: please visit our Google Classroom https://classroom.google.com/c/MjYyOTE0NzYxMDVa

For English 12 AP:

Your Blizzard Bag assignment should take about an hour.  It starts here, then goes to a doc with questions, and from there connects to links and clips from various places.  Feel free to email me if you have questions along the way.  Good luck!  —Mr. G. :)

So, let’s begin with a little background.  As we are about to start down the path of reading Hamlet, I thought we might want to consider taking a look at a little History of the English Language.  The short version is this:

     1. Once upon a time, the island we now know as England was invaded by seafaring people called Angles and Saxons.  England is derived from Ang-land, and English (the language) is derived from Ang-lish (or Old Saxon).

     2. At first, the Anglo-Saxon language was limited.  It featured short, single-syllable words, and not many of them compared to modern languages (about 30% of today's total).  It was a functional language, and not a particularly poetic or sophisticated one.

     3. Then one day, in 1066, William the Conqueror (the Norman King of France) defeated Harold (the Saxon King of England) -- bringing the French language (and its Latin roots) to the island. This event sparked a dramatic change in the English language, which soaked up French-and-Latin words like a sponge.

     4. For three hundred years, the English language expanded to become more and more sophisticated -- leading to the late 1300's and the first "great" literature written in English: Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  The language of this period is sometimes referred to as Middle English.

     6. Over time, the language continued to evolve and embrace new words and subtleties of meaning, and by 1600, the English language had reached advanced degree of sophistication needed to produce Hamlet.

     7. Today, there are over 150,000 words in the English language, and it is the dominant global language of commerce, the internet, and literature.

Your BLIZZARD BAG #1 assignment is available as a google doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TvDEtn09tSd0frSJiZRqWYDn7fnTDoMt7Mv0abS2zOA/edit

Please follow the link above and complete your BLIZZARD BAG #1 assignment by 11/29.