3.2. Native English vocabulary

3.2.1. Anglo-Saxon element in English

The original stock of the English vocabulary is made up of Anglo-Saxon element and English proper element, which was partially influenced by Celtic.

Anglo-Saxon words appeared in the language around the 5^th century A.D., when the Germanic invaders migrated to the British Isles. These are the words of high frequency, like the articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and modal verbs (shall, will, can, may, must), as well as verbs and nouns, denoting everyday objects and phenomena, such as the parts of the human body (arm, foot, head, heart, chest, bone, eye, ear), domestic life (house, home, door, floor), animals (dog, hound, sheep, swine, cow, hen, fish, goat), the natural landscape (cliff, hill, field, hedge, meadow, wood), the calendar (day, month, sun, moon, year), some common adjectives (black, dark, long, good, white, wide), and common verbs (become, do, eat, fly, go, help, kiss, live, love, see, sell, send, think) (see Crystal 1995;124).

As it is obviously seen from the above, the Anglo-Saxon words are short and concise root words, which are highly frequent in both literal and colloquial discourse, they make up the core of the language vocabulary.

There is a strong tendency, noticed by B. Bryson, to keep the Anglo-Saxon noun but to adopt a foreign one for the adjectival form. Thus, figurers are not figurish; they are digital. Eyes are not eyeish, they are ocular. “English is unique in this tendency to marry a native noun to an adopted adjective. Among other such pairs are mouth/oral, mind/mental, book/literary, water/aquatic, house/domestic, moon/lunar, sun/solar, town/urban” (See B. Bryson, p.68).

The bulk of the Old English word stock has been preserved, although some items have passed out of existence. The Anglo-Saxon element is estimated to make about 30% of the English vocabulary. The semantic and word building ability as well as frequency value and collocability of these words is great and they make up a core part of the language vocabulary.

3.2.2. The Celtic element in English

In the V-th century AD the Germanic tribes migrated to the British Isles and occupied most of its territory.

The Celts, the original inhabitants of the British Isles, retreated to the North and South West of the country (modern Scotland, Wales and Cornwall). They had little cultural contacts with the invaders, thus, the Celtic language had little impact on Old English. Few of these borrowings remained in Modern English (dew, bald, bard, down, druid, cradle, twig, hue); a couple of them are used in local dialects of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

By far the greatest influence of the Celtic upon English was upon the names of places. This is natural, since place names are commonly adopted in great numbers from the aboriginal inhabitants of a country. Celtic place names are therefore found in all parts of the country in the names of rivers (Avon, Exe, Esk, Don, Usk, Severn, Thames, Trent, Ouse and Wye, originating from the Celtic words meaning ‘river’ and ‘water’).

Celtic aber ‘mouth’ is found in Abredeen, Aberfeldie, Abergeldie, caer ‘castle’ in Caercolon, Caerleon, dun ‘a protected place’ is recognized in Dunbar, Dumbarton, Dundee. Town names include: London, Bray, Dover, Kent, Leeds, York and a lot of others, which are common in all parts of England, though much more largely in Scotland and Ireland (Emerson, O.

In later periods a few more loan words were introduced into English through Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Welsh – shamrock, Tory, clan, loch, slogan, budget, whisky, and crag.

Some Celtic words penetrated into English through other languages. Thus, the words beak, budget, bulge, cloak, clock, gravel, harness, javelin, job, lawn, mineral, mutton, tunnel came via French.

All in all, there are no more than two dozen Celtic words in English. That testifies to the fact, that English is primarily a Germanic language. (See Jackson 2004, p.38.).