Part 3: Questions 76 – 85. (2.0 points- 0.2/ each).
Read the text and think of the word which best fits each gap.
English was first written down in the 6th century. At that time, writers had to use the twenty-three letters of the Latin (76)………..……………. to write down what they heard. Because English has sounds that do not (77)………..……………. in Latin, they added letters to represent the forty-four sounds of English. This resulted (78)………..……………. some irregular spelling. After the Norman invasion of England in 1056, French became the language spoken by the king and other people in positions of power (79) ………..……………. influence. Many French words introduced and the spelling of many English words (80)………..……………. to follow French patterns. The result was a rich and irregular mix of spellings.
The (81)………..……………. press was invented in the 15th century. Many early printers of English texts spoke other first languages, especially Dutch. They often paid little attention to how English words spelled. Sometimes technical decisions were (82) ………..……………. to give columns of print straight edges. To do this, letters were taken off the ends of words and sometimes added to words. With time, people became (83) ………..……………. to seeing words spelled the same way. Fixed spellings were therefore created by the printers’ decisions. Spoken English, however, was not fixed. It continued to change, as it still does. It is no (84) ………..……………. that English spelling seems irregular. Words such as although, through and cough, for example, all have the same spelling at the end, but are (85) ………..……………. differently. Words such as feet, meat and seize, on the other hand, are spelled differently but have the same sound in the middle.
At that time, writers had to use the twenty-three letters of the Latin (76)
………..……………. to write down what they heard.
