Native Words and Borrowings in English

Student: Vrforeanu Nicolae Alin, anul III Semantica limbii engleze, seminar

The most characteristic features of English is said to be its mixed character. The term borrowing is used to denote the process of adopting new words from other languages and also the resulting of this process, the language material itself. Not only words, but also word-building affixes were borrowed into English such as -able, -ment, -ity, etc. As well as some word-groups: coup d'etat, vis--vis. Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogenous. It consists of two layers - the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words. Numerically the borrowed stock of words is considerably larger than the native stock of words. The tendency of the English language to borrow extensively can be traced during the centuries. Thus, one can confidently claim that borrowing is one of the most productive sources of enrichment of the English vocabulary. Words of Native Origin Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements (Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic). The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although some words have passed out of existence. As we know almost all words of Anglo-Saxon origin belong to very important semantic groups. They include Most of the auxilary and modal verbs: shall, will, should, would, must, can, may, etc. Pronouns: I, you, he, my, your, his, who, whose. Prepositions: in, out, on, under, etc. Numerals: one, two, three, four, etc. Conjunctions; and, but, till, as, etc. National words of Anglo-Saxon origin include: such groups as words denoting: Parts of the body: head, hand, arm, back, etc. Members of the family and closest relatives: father, mother, brother, son, wife. Natural phenomena and planets: snow, rain, wind, frost, sun, the Moon Animals: horse, cow, sheep, cat. Qualities and properties: old, young, cold, hot, heavy, light, white, long, etc. Common actions: do, make, go, come, see, hear, eat, etc. New words have been coined from Anglo-Saxon roots mainly by means of affixation, wordcomposition and conversion. Such affixes of native origin as -er, -ness, -ish, un-, -niss have been widely used to build numerous new words throughout the whole history of English.

Borrowings in the English language In its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts English language happened to come in long close contacts with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization, Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who merged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. French (to be more exact its Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher-social system from a developed feudalism. It was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle 11th century to the end of the 14th century. The greatest number of borrowings has come from French. They referred to the various fields of social, scientific and cultural life.

I. Germanic period Latin It can be deduced that these borrowings date from the time before the Angles and Saxons left the continent for England, because of very similar forms found in the other old Germanic languages (Old High German, Old Saxon, etc.). The words are generally attested in Latin texts, in the large body of Latin writings that were preserved through the ages: anchor, butter, chalk, cheese, kitchen, church, dish, mile, pound, sack, street, wall, wine. II. Old English Period (600-1100) Latin: apostle, caesar, emperor, city, chest, circle, comet, martyr, paper. Celtic: The Celtic languages influence English in three phases. The first phase involves loans into Germanic languages on the continent. The second one covers adoptions into old English both before and after the introduction of Christianity. The third phase involves the influence of the Celtic languages after the Old English period. e.g.: brocc 'badger', cumb 'combe, valley'; (few ordinary words, but thousands of place and river names: London, Carlisle, Devon, Dover, Cornwall, Thames, Avon...) III. Middle English Period (1100-1500) Middle English is considered to begin around 1150, when the synthetic character of Old English starts to change. Scandinavian Most of these first appeared in the written language in Middle English; but many were no doubt borrowed earlier, during the period of the Danelaw (9th-10th centuries): anger, blight, by-law, cake, call, clumsy, doze, egg, fellow, gear, get, give, hale, hit, husband, kick, kill, kilt, kindle, law, low, lump, rag, raise, root, scathe, scorch, score, scowl, scrape, scrub, seat, skill, skin, skirt, sky, sly, take, they, them, their, thrall, thrust, ugly, want, window, wing. French The Norman conquest made the change from Old English to Middle English look more sudden that it really was, by introducing new spelling conventions. Norman scribes disregarded traditional English spelling, and simply spelt the language as they heard it, using many of the conventions of Norman French. Law and government: attorney, bailiff, chancellor, chattel, country, court, crime, defendent, 2

evidence, government, jail, judge, jury, larceny, noble, parliament, plaintiff, plea, prison, revenue, state, tax, verdict; Church: abbot, chaplain, chapter, clergy, friar, prayer, preach, priest, religion, sacrament, saint, sermon. Nobility: baron, baroness; count, countess; duke, duchess; marquis, marquess; prince, princess; viscount, viscountess; noble, royal. Military: army, artillery, battle, captain, company, corporal, defense, enemy ,marine, navy, sergeant, soldier, volunteer. Cooking: beef, boil, broil, butcher, dine, fry, mutton, pork, poultry, roast, salmon, stew, veal. Culture and luxury goods: art, bracelet, claret, clarinet, dance, diamond, fashion, fur, jewel, oboe, painting, pendant, satin, ruby, sculpture. Other: adventure, change, charge, chart, courage, devout, dignity, enamor, feign, fruit, letter, literature, magic, male, female, mirror, pilgrimage, proud, question, regard, special. Also Middle English French loans: a huge number of words in -ance/-ence, -ant/-ent, -ity, -ment, -tion, con-, de-, and pre-. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a given word came from French or whether it was taken straight from Latin. Words for which this difficulty occurs are those in which there were no special sound and/or spelling changes of the sort that distinguished French from Latin.

Reference: 1. Elly van Gelderen, A history of the English Language, 2006. 2. Charles Barber, The English language: a historical introduction, 2011. 3. http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/etymology.htm 4. major-theoretic.narod.ru