This is what students see on their disks when they put them in the computer:
1) Find the BOLD command under STYLE. Put all transition words and phrases you find in the paper below in bold.
2) The paragraphs in the paper do not follow any logical order. Use CUT and PASTE commands to move the paragraphs to the correct order. Transition words will help you.
3) When you are finished, go to SAVE AS under FILE and name the changes you made. Save the changes to your disk.

“The Family of Words” *

1) Many words in English have complicated etymologies, because English is not really one language. It started as the language of the Anglo-Saxons, people who came to England from Germany in the 5th century. France invaded England in 1066, and many French words eventually found their way into the developing English language. But French itself came from Latin, so many Latin words became part of English. The Greek language had been closely allied with Latin for centuries, and most of the scholarly and literary words in English, such as “etymology,” are derived from Greek.
2) Very few of the foreign words in the English language have stayed exactly as they started. As foreign words were used more of ten, and as the written language became more uniform, the pronunciation and spelling of these words gradually changed.
3) Perhaps your family has a “family tree,” a history of your parents, grandparents, and ancestors back as far as anyone can remember. Words have family trees too, called etymologies. Etymologists are word detectives who search through the languages of many countries, going back hundreds or thousands of years, to find out where a word comes from.
4) Over the years, the meanings of many words have changed too. For instance, the word “salary,” which means regular payment for doing a job, has a long history. It came to English from the French word “salaire,” but the French word comes from the Latin word, “salarium,” which was the money given to Roman soldiers to buy salt. (“Sal” means salt in Latin.) In the days of the Romans, salt was so scarce that it was very valuable, and Roman soldiers spent much of their money on salt. So today, when someone is paid a salary, that person is really getting money with which to buy salt!
5) Later words from even farther away began popping up in English. Under the plain Anglo-Saxon word “food” are grouped items with names from around the world. The word “coffee” comes to English form Arabia. “Chocolate” started out as the South American Indian word “cacahuatl,” and “tea” is derived from the ancient Chinese words “d’a” or “cha.”
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The correct order of paragraphs for this paper is: 3, 1, 5, 2, 4
*This paper comes from the book “Myths, Legends, Neat Things,” published by Instructional Fair, Inc., Grand Rapids, MI, 1990.