Latin/German 1 gapfill

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Latin/German 1 gapfill

Special Focus - information and contents

English is a Germanic language, that is, it belongs to the same family of languages as German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, and shares a core vocabulary with these languages. However, a very large proportion of words in English derives ultimately from Latin, which is the mother language of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian.

As a result, English has many synonym pairs, with one from Germanic and one from Latin or French. Usually, if the Germanic synonym is informal or colloquial, the Latin synonym is neutral or more formal. If the Germanic synonym is neutral, the Latin synonym is either also neutral or more formal than the Germanic one.

This worksheet explores some of these synonyms and aims to familiarise the student with the contexts in which they are used. Each of the sentence pairs has a gap to be filled by either a Germanic or a Latin word. In general, the choice is one of style, register and usage, although some words can be used in both sentences of each pair. Type one of the words in each gap in the correct form, and indicate if it is of Latin or German origin, e.g. for the adjectives lucky and fortunate, you write: and .

apprehend, commence, consume, criminal, crook, domesticate, eat, embrace, empty, end, folk, grab, hug, people, sight, start, tame, terminate, vacant, vision

1. Thirty (1) were injured today when a bus crashed into a bridge in North London.

2. The (2) around these parts are very simple, but they're friendly and welcoming. You'll like them a lot.

3. Applications are invited for the (3) position of Office Manager.

4. When Alex arrived at the hall for the meeting it was (4) . "Where is everybody?" he thought.

5. When Sarah opened the door after the burglary, an awful (5) met her eyes.

6. The new president said that he was a man of great (6) and wanted to create a world where everyone would have work and no one would go hungry.

7. The queen is going to attend a special ceremony to (7) the construction of a new hospital in the city.

8. Quick! Switch on the TV. The game (8) fifteen minutes ago.

9. As soon as the children saw their Grandma, they just ran up and (9) her. They were so happy to see her after such a long time.

10. After they had signed the peace agreement, the two presidents (10) each other warmly.

11. Last year the population of Great Britain (11) 10 million tonnes of potatoes.

12. "Don't (12) your food so quickly," Mary's mother said.

13. Humans long ago realised that it was more advantageous to capture and keep animals in their care than to hunt them. Thus, the first animals were (13) .

14. "When I grow up I want to join the circus and (14) lions," said little Jimmy.

15. My wife was sitting outside a cafÃ© drinking coffee, when a thief tried to (15) her bag. Luckily, someone stopped him and he ran off without it.

16. We are hearing reports that police have (16) three men suspected of the attempted bomb attack at the airport yesterday.

17. I didnÂ’t realise that John was just a small-time (17) till I saw all the stolen credit cards at his flat.

18. The government is planning to make significant changes to the (18) justice system.

19. We originally booked a holiday in Spain for two weeks, but we had to (19) it after only a week and come home when my mother fell ill.

20. Unfortunately, as a result of your poor performance over the last three months at his company, we have decided to (20) your contract.