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Latin/German 2 gapfill Bookmark and Share

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.

The sentences below are in pairs, with the first sentence in each pair (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11) expressed in informal or colloquial language, and the second sentence (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) expressed in more formal or official language. After reading through the sentence pairs to get the gist, for each pair select a phrasal verb (which are mostly Germanic in origin) from box A and put it in the first sentence and then choose a Latin derived word from box B to put in the second sentence. Make sure you put them in the correct forms.

A B
get off, go off, pay back, put up, put up with, watch over accommodate, dismount, invigilate, putrefy, reimburse, tolerate

1. I'm not going to (1) this noise any longer. It's got to stop. I can't get any sleep.

2. The school does not (2) any form of anti-social behaviour among the pupils, including bullying and fighting.

3. Urgh! Who left the milk out? It's (3) . It smells awful!

4. After the flood waters receded, dead animals lay everywhere, (4) in the hot sun.



5. Darling, is it OK if we (5) my brother for a few days in the spare room? He's got nowhere to stay at the moment.

6. This hotel is the biggest in the city and can (6) over 500 guests.

7. Could you (7) the kids for me for a few minutes? I'm just popping out to the shops.

8. There will be no teaching in the last week of term, but all the teachers are expected to (8) the examinations.



9. You can't ride on the pavement. (9) your bike and push it.

10. Cyclists must (10) before crossing the road.

11. If I leave my job, I'll have to (11) the money that they lent me to buy my bicycle.

12. If the goods are faulty, we will (12) you for the full cost on the production of a receipt.