You can see this process at work by looking at groups of words for a particular concept such as Colour. This process has continued up to the present day, and at the same time words from English-speaking areas, especially the United States, have been added to our vocabulary. From about this time, through trade and colonisation, words were borrowed from other European languages, such as Spanish and Portuguese, and from languages in far-flung places such as Africa, India and the Americas. Words were also borrowed from Latin, the language of European scholarship, and their number grew during the Renaissance period in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first of these external influences, and probably the most important, was the Norman conquest of 1066 A.D., which led to large numbers of French words being imported into English. These can most clearly be seen in the vocabulary of the language, which reflects the influence of a range of other languages. In the following centuries, it was subjected to various influences which made it the language it is today. This stage of the language is usually known as Old English (OE). The English language was first brought to Britain in the fifth century A.D. Introduces two major resources for studying vocabulary.Unit 1: The Growth of the English Vocabulary
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