Modern english period

Late modern english: The Expansion of the British Empire

• More new words seeped into the English language after the year 1700. This is because the English language started to spread all around the world due to the development of Britain’s new colonies.
• As the British Empire grew, English words were absorbed into the languages of the colonised countries, spreading the English language far and wide.
• At the same time, the English language expanded to accommodate many new foreign words within its vocabulary. For example, Late Modern English contains many words borrowed from Hindi and other Indian languages, such as ‘pyjamas’, ‘bungalow’ and ‘shampoo’.

Late modern english

• In fact, English contains some words from most other languages: from the Finnish ‘sauna’, German ‘kindergarten’ and Japanese ‘tycoon’, to the Russian ‘balaclava’, Sanskrit ‘jungle’, Swahili ‘jumbo’ and West African ‘banana‘.
• Although Late Modern English includes words from many languages, the largest number of words come from French and Latin.

Late modern english: maritime Language

• In connection with Britain’s colonial explorations, the words and phrases of sailors (‘seaspeak’) were adopted into the mainstream vocabulary of Late Modern English.
• Many English phrases come from maritime roots, including: ‘three sheets to the wind’-‘to be drunk’, ‘close quarters’, ‘the bitter end’-‘the last extremity however painful or calamitous’, ‘cut and run’-‘make a speedy departure from a difficult situation rather than deal with it’, ‘hand over fist’-‘very rapidly’, ‘fathom out’,-‘to understand something complicated or mysterious’, ‘in the offing’-‘likely to happen or appear soon’, ‘taken aback’-‘to surprise or shock (someone)’, ‘high and dry’-‘out of the water’ and ‘walk the plank’-‘(in former times) be forced by pirates to walk blindfold along a plank over the side of a ship to one's death in the sea’.