76 B1+ | 6. Klasse | Unit 06: Of angst and Oscars Read the text about how new words are made. Some words are missing. Complete the text by writing one word for each gap (1–15) in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. LANGUAGE IN USE 6 How new words are born English speakers already have over a million words at their disposal – so why are they adding 1,000 new ones a year? And who invents these words, and how? We have no (0) who came up with most new words, but we know exactly how new words are made. Here is how: The most common (1) of creating a new word is to add a prefix or suffix to an existing one. For example, the prefix pre- was added to the word ‘teen’ in 1926 to describe (2) who are not quite teenagers yet. Sometimes two separate words, mostly nouns, become a single unit. A nice word which was (3) in this way is ‘daydream’. Another process is taking a word from one context and applying it to (4) . For example, the computer mouse was named after the long-tailed animal. Words can also join a new word class. In this way, the noun ‘friend’ has recently (5) a verb in sentences such as ‘Why didn’t you friend me on Facebook?’ Speaking of social media, acronyms (new words made up out of the first letters of several words) are very (6) there, such as ‘BRB’ (be right back) and ‘IMHO’ (in my humble opinion). However, often we do not even know that a word we use all the time started its life as an acronym. Did you know that ‘laser’ is an acronym? And then, of course, there are loanwords. Languages all over the world (7) words from English, but English has adopted an awful lot of foreign words as well. Linguists (8) that English contains words from over 350 languages, and German is one of them. Loanwords from German include ‘schadenfreude’ (taking delight in the bad luck of others) and ‘wanderlust’ (a strong desire to explore the world). One day there might be (9) more German loanwords in English because the coronavirus pandemic inspired many new German words – according to some experts, as (10) as 1,200. Some of these new words are the (11) in German and English. For instance, the word ‘covidiot’ exists in both languages. Others can only be found in German. For example, the word ‘Coronafrisur’ (Covid hairstyle) is used to describe somebody who has not been to the hairdresser for a (12) time because of the pandemic. Perhaps the cutest German word that was created during the pandemic is ‘Coronafußgruß’ (Covid foot greeting). It is a word that (13) how humans always try to connect with each other, even under difficult (14) . Wouldn’t it be nice if this word was added to the English language? The next time you read a text in English, (15) attention and see if you can spot any German loanwords from the time of the pandemic or before. You might be surprised! 0 idea 8 1 9 2 10 3 11 4 12 5 13 6 14 7 15 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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