The First Language In The World

1. Nobody knows what the first language was. But scientists feel sure that nobody speaks it today because all languages change and keep on changing as long as people use them. One language may change in different ways in different places and grow into several languages.

2. Children don’t always use words exactly the way their parents do. They make small changes in the sounds or in the meaning. In time these little changes add up to big changes. If we could meet the people who spoke English five hundred years ago, we probably couldn’t understand much what they said.

3. English itself is a mixture of several languages. Scientists believe that these languages and many others all grew out of the same language which they call Indo-European. Nobody speaks it now. But some of its descendants are Latin, German, English, French, Greek, Russian and many of the different languages spoken in India.

4. Most civilizations and cultures – in their writings, traditions, folk stories – have some traces of the old language. Only sometimes the ancients tried to learn something about the languages by experiments. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about the Egyptian king named Psammetichos. He decided to learn which of the world’s languages was the oldest. For this he isolated two small children who could not speak yet. Sooner or later they had to begin to speak, but they didn’t have any language to imitate, so they would speak the most primitive of the languages, the king thought. One day the children said the word “bekos”, it was similar to the Phrygian word for “bread”. That was why Phrigian (a language once spoken in Asia Minor) was thought to be the first language in the world, at least by king Psammetichos.

Notes:

Phrigian – фригийский язык

Asia Minor – Малая Азия

Questions:

1) Why do all languages change?

2) What manner do they keep on changing?

3) What language is a mixture of several languages?

4) What languages are descendants of English?

5) Have most civilizations and cultures any traces of the old language?

6. What experiment did historian Herodotus write about?

7. What language was thought to be the first language in the world?

Text 4 Peter the Great

1. Peter the Great went down in Russian history for having rejected the Moscovite past. He enthusiastically made Russia closer to West. He was a giant among his contemporaries and a man of genius.

2. Peter intended to modernize his country and raise it to the first rank of European powers. He engaged skilled foreigners from Russia, Holland, Great Britain to bring the latest western technology to Russia.

3. Peter had a passion for navigation. As a founder of the Russian navy, Peter first started to develop the Russian fleet in 1695. He wanted to capture from Turkey the fortress town of Azov and gain access to the Black Sea.

4. His greatest wish was also to win a seaport on the Baltic Sea and access to western trade. The Great Northern War against Sweden was declared in 1700 and lasted for more than twenty years.

5. In 1703 Peter captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenschanz on the River Neva, and on an island nearby he ordered to construct the Peter and Paul Fortress, the first building of the future city of St. Petersburg.

6. King Charles Xll of Sweden fought against Peter l, but suffered a heavy defeat at Poltava in 1709; this event was the turning point of the war. Finally in 1721 the Treaty was signed in Nystadt, by which Russia acquired a large part of the Baltic coast, including Ingria, Karelia, Livonia, Estonia and a part of Finland.

7. In order to maintain the huge armed forces of Russia, Peter l had to reform many of the traditional administrative, social and fiscal structures of the country. One of the first major steps was to introduce compulsory military service. Another action was to replace the traditional Muscovite hierarchy of titles of the nobility with the Table of Ranks, a system closer to western models. In the three branches of state service (armed forces, civil service and Court) he listed fourteen categories for each, corresponding to different functions and offices.

8. The Tsar's reforms extended to many different fields: law, police, military discipline, the navy, commerce, the sciences, the fine arts and education. He introduced a simplified new Russian alphabet. He devoted his whole mind and energy to his mission in life: to add to his empire and to hack a window open on Europe.

9. The city of St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 as a harbour for the Russian fleet. It was built as a fortress from which Russia could threaten the Swedes, and as spiritual centre of the new European Russia. The construction of St. Petersburg was undertaken at a great speed. Forty thousand peasants were engaged in the building of Russia's new capital. Many of them suffered from disease and malnutrition and met their end in the marshlands.

10. Peter the Great's rule had been harsh and his reign was full of radical changes. He died in 1725 at the age of fifty-two. Long after his death, he remained a dominant figure in the minds of the people. Catherine the Great commissioned the most famous monument to him, the Bronze Horseman. The monument was designed by the French sculptor Falconet. It was unveiled in St. Petersburg in 1782 with great pomp and ceremony.

Notes:

Table of Ranks – Табель о рангах

malnutrition – плохое питание

the Bronze Horseman – Медный всадник

Questions:

1. What kind of person was Peter the Great?

2. Can Peter be considered as a father of Russian fleet? Why did Peter start to develop the fleet?

3. What was Peter's greatest wish?

4. What building did Peter order to construct after capturing the Swedish fortress on the River Neva?

5. What were the results of the Great Northern War against Sweden?

6. In what fields did Peter conduct the reforms? Give some examples of Peter's reforms.

7. When and why was St.Petersburg founded by Peter the Great?

8. Who was engaged in the building of Russia's new capital? What were the labour conditions?

9. By whom was the monument to Peter the Great designed? When was it unveiled?

10) To what mission did Peter devote his whole mind and his energy? What is the role of Peter the Great in Russian history?