Why are Shakespeare's plays considered difficult for modern students to understand?A.Most modern students are not interested in the ideas presented in the plays.B.Shakespeare used many foreign words that are hard for students to translate correctly.C.The plays are based on historical events that took place hundreds of years ago.D.Shakespeare used words that are unfamiliar or no longer used in modern language.SUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

Which words from this sentence are common nouns?William Shakespeare's plays are still incredibly popular almost five hundred years after they were written.

Why do modern audiences relate to adaptations of Macbeth?A.Modern audiences like to watch plays that include elements of witchcraft and death.B.Modern audiences can easily understand the themes of ambition and desire that the characters show.C.Modern audiences believe that only plays written long ago have any creative worth.D.Modern audiences like to see plays in which the main character is evil and has no redeeming qualities.SUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

What is a major difference between modern audiences and audiences during Shakespeare's time?A.Audiences during Shakespeare's time were much more likely to believe that supernatural elements were real.B.Modern audiences don't care as much about historical accuracy as audiences during Shakespeare's time did.C.Modern audiences are more interested in comedy, while audiences during Shakespeare's time preferred drama.D.Audiences during Shakespeare's time were poorer and therefore rooted more for lower-class characters.SUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

Which words from this sentence are common nouns?William Shakespeare's plays are still incredibly popular almost five hundred years after they were written.popular; incredibleplays; stillWilliam; Shakespeare'splays; years

Read the text.Language Change1In some ways, it is surprising that languages change. After all, they are passed down through the generations reliably enough for parents and children to communicate with each other. Yet linguists find that all living languages change over time—albeit at different rates. For example, while Japanese has changed relatively little over a thousand years, English evolved rapidly in just a few centuries. Many present-day speakers find Shakespeare's sixteenth-century plays difficult and Chaucer's fourteenth-century The Canterbury Tales nearly impossible to read.2Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic, and political pressures, as there are many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization, and migration. Even without these kinds of influences, a language can change dramatically if enough users adopt a new way of speaking.Frequently, the needs of speakers drive language change. New technologies, industries, products, and experiences simply require new words. By using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change. But the unique way that individuals speak also fuels language change because no two individuals use a language in exactly the same way. The vocabulary and phrases people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status, and other factors. Through our day-to-day interactions, we pick up words and sayings from other people and integrate them into our speech. Teens and young adults, for example, often use different words and phrases from their parents. Some of them spread through the population and slowly change the language.The three main areas of language that change over time are vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronunciation. Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get coined, combined, or shortened. Some words are even created through misinterpretation of form. As noted in the Linguistic Society of America's publication Is English Changing?, the word pea is one such example. Up until about four hundred years ago, pease could refer to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people assumed that pease was the plural form of a new word, pea, based on the way pease sounded. While vocabulary can change quickly, sentence structure—the order of words in a sentence—changes more slowly. Changes in sound are somewhat harder to document, but just as interesting. For example, during the Great Vowel Shift five hundred years ago, the pronunciation of vowels in English changed dramatically. This shift represents the biggest difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English.For a language to change, speakers must adopt new words, sentence structures, and/or sounds; spread them through the community; and transmit them to the next generation. According to many linguists, children can serve as agents of language change: In the process of learning a language, children can acquire and internalize the sounds and structures differently from previous generations. Over time, children can propagate these variations in the language and potentially catalyze long-term language change.Adapted from the National Science Foundation, "Language and Linguistics: Language Change"What is the main focus of the text?how and why language changes over timewhy different languages evolve at different rateswhy the works of Shakespeare and Chaucer are difficult for modern readersSubmit