3.8.1. Borrowings from Ukrainian

English words of Ukrainian origin are words in the English language which were borrowed or derived from the Ukrainian.

Some of them may have entered via Russian, Polish, Yiddish or some other languages. They may have originated in other languages, but are used to describe notions related to Ukraine. Some are regionalisms, used in English-speaking places with a significant Ukrainian diaspora population, especially Canada, but a number of them have entered the general English vocabulary. E.g.:

Bandura – a stringed instrument,

Borscht – (Ukr. borshch) beet soup, also the expression – cheep like borscht,

Cossack – (Ukr. kozak), a freedom-loving horseman of the steppes,

Gley (Ukr. hley), a sticky blue-grey waterlogged soil type, poor in oxygen,

Hetman – a Cossack military leader,

Holubtsi – plural – (Ukr. singular holubets) – cabbage rolls,

Hopack – a lively traditional dance,

Pysanka – a decorated Easter egg,

Steppe – a flat, treeless plain,

Varenyky - boiled dumplings with potato or curdled cheese.

3.9. Borrowings from other languages in English

Being very flexible, English continues to enhance its vocabulary by taking in loanwords from around the world. Some recent borrowings include: ciabatta (a type of open-textured bred made of olive oil (Italian)), gite (a self-catering holiday cottage for let in France (French)), intifada ( the Palestinian uprising against Israel (Arabic)), juggernaut (a very large lorry for transporting goods by road (Hindi), karaoke (an entertainment in which people take it in turns to sing well-known songs over a pre-recorded baking tape (Japanese), nouvelle cuisine ( a style of preparing or presenting food, with light sauces and unusual combinations of flavours and garnishes (French)), ombudsman (a commissioner who acts as independent referee between individual citizens and their government or its administration (Swedish), paparazzi (a freelance photographer who specializes in candid camera shots of famous people and often invades their privacy to obtain such photographs (Italian), perestroika (the policy of reconstructing the economy, etc., of the former Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachov (Russian), salsa (a) a type of Latin American big-band dance music, b) Mexican source (Spanish), tikka ((of meat, esp. chicken or lamb) marinated in spices then dry-roasted, usu. in a clay oven (Punjubi).

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) the language group the word was borrowed from (the assimilation is easier if the word belongs to the same or closely related groups of languages); b) oral or written way of borrowing (words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker); c) how often the word is used in the language (the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated);d) how long the word lives in the language (the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is).

Accordingly, borrowings fall into the following groups: a) completely assimilated; b) partly assimilated; c) non-assimilated (barbarisms).

Completely assimilated loanwords are those that are not felt as foreign words in the language, they are found in all the layers of older borrowings.

They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e, g: cheese, street, wall, or wine. Among Scandinavian borrowed words we find such frequently used nouns as husband, fellow, gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and wrong. Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent. Nowadays it takes some effort to imagine, that such everyday words as table, chair, face, figure, finish, matter are the aliens to the language.

The second group containing partially assimilated borrowed words can be subdivided into subgroups:

1. Loan words not assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come. They may denote foreign clothing: mantilla, sombrero; foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bei, toreador; foreign vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese), food and drinks: pillow (Persian) sherbet(Arabian); foreign currency: hryvnia (Ukraine), rupee (India), zloty (Poland), peseta(Spain).

2. Borrowed words not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns borrowed from Latin Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus - bacilli, crisis - crises, formula - formulae, bhjindex; indices. Some of these can also take typically English plural forms, but in that case there may be a difference in lexical meaning as in: indices: indexes.

Loan words not completely assimilated phonetically. The French words borrowed after 1650 afford good examples. Some of them keep the accent on the final syllable: mach'ine, car'toon, re'gime.

3. Borrowed words not completely assimilated grammatically. This group is fairly large and variegated. There are, for instance, words borrowed from French in which the final consonant is not pronounced, e.g: ballet, buffet, corps. Some may keep a diacritic mark: café, cliché, fiancé. Specifically French digraphs (ch, qu, ou) may be retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche, chef, nouveau riche.

It goes without saying that these sets are intersecting, i.e. One and the same loan word often shows incomplete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.

The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called barbarism, i. e. words from other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents. The examples are the Italian addio, ciao - ‘goodbye’, the French affich for’ placard’ and coup or coup d’ Etat ‘a sudden seizure of state power by a small group’, the Latin ad libitum ‘at pleasure’ and the like.

Exercise 1. Specify the period of the following Latin borrowings and point out structural and semantic features of words from each period:

Wall, cheese, intelligent, candle, major, moderate, priest, school, street, cherry, phenomenon, nun, plum, pear, pepper, datum, cup, status, wine, philosophy, method.

Exercise 2. Arrange the following Latin loan words into groups according to the period of their borrowing:

Altar, angel, animal, ass, beet, bishop, butter, camp, candle, cap, chalk, cross, cup, devil, dish, for, genius, inch, index, item, junior, linen, maximum, mile, mill, monk, mute, oil, palm, pea, peach, pear, pepper, pine, plant, plum, port, pound, priest, psalter, school, senior, series, stratum, street, tiger, veto, wine.

Exercise 3. Give Modern English equivalents of the following abbreviations of Latin origin:

A.D.(Anno Domini), a.m. (ante meridiem), e.g. (exempli gratia), etc. (et cetera), i.e. (id est), lb (libra, librae), op. cit (opere citato), p.a. (per annum), p.m. (post meridiem), v.v.(vice versa).

Exercise 4. Arrange the following Scandinavian borrowings according to the word class they belong to:

Anger, birth, both, to call, to cast, to clip, to die, to doze, fellow, flat, gate, to get, to glitter, to happen, happy, to hit, husband, ill, knife, to lift, loose, low, meek, odd, to raise, root, saga, same, sister, skill, skin, sky, sly, to take, they, though, till, ugly, to want, weak, window, wing, wrong.

Exercise 5. Pick out Norman and Parisian borrowings from the following sentences.

1. It was while they were having coffee and a waitress brought a message to their table. 2. I know nothing about the film world and imagined it to be a continuous ferment of personal intrigue. 3. A limousine and chauffeur, available at any time from the bank’s pool of cars, were perquisites of the executive vice-president’s job, and Alex enjoyed them. 4. His bandaged head was silhouetted in the light from the little window. 5. Apart from being an unforgivable break of etiquette, you only make yourself extremely ridiculous. 6. However this John Davanent evidently knew more about the army and commerce than either of them.

Exercise 6. Arrange the following French borrowings into: a) law terms; b) military terms; c) religious terms; d) cookery terms; e) art terms; f) medical terms.

To accuse, admiral, army, arrest, art, bacon, banner, battle, to boil, cadet, clergy, colour, conquest, court, defence, dinner, fatigue, fortress, fruit, genre, gout, image, jelly, judge, juice, malady, music, mutton, ornament, pain, paradise, pastry, pulse, remedy, saint, sausage, siege, surgeon, talent, to taste, toast, veal, vinegar, war.

Exercise 7. Differentiate between the following synonyms, applying componential analysis:

a) Piece, slice, lump;

b) like, love, enjoy, appreciate, adore;

c) brave, courageous, valiant, fearless, gallant, audacious;

d) to look, to gaze, to glance, to glare, to stare.

Exercise 8. Analyze the following hyperonymous groups, applying componential analysis:

a) flats, high heels, loafers, moccasins, pumps, tennis shoes;

b) captain, lieutenant, major, corporal, general;

c) tiger, bear, wolf, lion, elephant;

d) bottle, box, can, carton, crate, jar, jug, pack, pitcher, pot, tube.

Exercise 9. Analyze the lexical field of kinship in English and Ukrainian, applying componential and contrastive analyses:

a) mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, cousin, niece, nephew, father-in-law, sister-in law, etc.

Exercise10. Using transformational procedures, explain the difference in certain components of meaning of the following words:

a) birthday card, business card, credit card, health card, identity card, index card, invitation card, library card, post card, visiting card.

b) baking pan, cake pan, frying pan, oil pan, saucepan.

c) ice-cream corn, pine corn, traffic corn.