22 The Linguist Vol/60 No/2 2021
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Robin Meyer outlines how teachers can foster an understanding of
the history and evolution of words as an aid to language learning
W
hen you have been teaching
languages for a while, it is
almost inevitable that you will
come across that one student
who asks a question you did not anticipate,
do not have an answer to, or simply cannot
afford the time to answer in sufficient detail.
It happens and one gets over it.
What, however, if it happens multiple times
in a class? Worse yet, what if the question is
'why?' – 'Why do some French words, like
œuil and œuf, have plurals with unpredictable
pronunciations?' 'Why do some Ancient
Greek verbs have a supposedly regular weak
Sceptical? Let me try to convince you. In a
year-long, intensive language-learning setting
at university, my approach was to differentiate
between three categories of linguistic facts:
1 Those that make language learning easier
2 Those that contribute to general knowledge
3 Less important ones (from a language
learning perspective), of interest only to a
small number of students.
The first would always form a firm part of
the lesson plan; the second would be
included if time allowed; the latter I would
share with individuals after class or by email.
Making learning easier
What do historical linguistic facts that make
language learning easier look like, I can hear
you ask. Let's consider a few examples. At
the most basic level, this might involve telling
students of French that the circumflex in
many cases is the remnant of a historical 's' in
the word: think of the French-English pairs
hôtel/'hostel', forêt/'forest', pâté/'paste'.
Coming back to the Greek aorist tense,
here the linguistically savvy learner saves time
and energy by turning 'irregular' forms, which
would have to be learnt by rote, into regular
forms with a twist. That twist – a historical
sound change – can be expressed as a simple
rule: verbs whose stem ends in a nasal or
liquid ('m', 'n', 'l', 'r') 'lose' the regular tense-
marker -σ- and lengthen their stem vowel in
compensation. So you have μένω-ἔμεινα ('I
remain(ed)'), ἀγγέλλω-ἤγγειλα ('I announce(d)'),
δέρω-ἔδειρα ('I flay(ed)').
1
Knowing about this,
and similar historical sound changes for other
classes of verb, saves you the trouble of
learning a whole host of irregular verbs.
What's in a word?
aorist tense but lack the tell-tale past marker,
like ἔμεινα without -σ-?' 'Why is it 'orange' in
English, Orange in German, orange in
French, but naranja in Spanish?'
How do you engage with a student who
wants not only to learn a language, but to
understand how and why it works the way it
does? As a language teacher and historical
linguist, I recognise this need to know. A
well-curated set of historical linguistic details
of the language one studies can make
learning and understanding some of its
idiosyncrasies easier – or at least more
memorable. Call it enrichment if you like.
