15. Etymological composition of the English vocabulary.

Most native words possess large clusters of derived and compound words in the present-day language, e.g. the wordwood was the base for the formation of the following words: wooden, woody, wooded, woodcraft, woodcutter, woodwork. New words have been coined from Anglo-Saxon roots mainly by means of affixation, word-composition 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 the 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 developed feudalism, it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 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. A large portion of them (41%) is scientific and technical terms, Borrowings enter the language in two ways; 1) Through oral speech (by immediate contact between the peoples) and 2) Through written speech (by indirect contact through books, etc.). 0ral borrowings took place chiefly in the early periods of history, whereas in recent times written borrowings' gained importance. Words borrowed orally (e.g. L. inch, mill, street) are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e.g. Fr. communiqué, belletrist⁶) preserve their spelling; they are often rather long and their assimilation, is a long and laborious. Criteria of borrowings in English. Though borrowed words undergo changers in the adopting langu­age, they preserve some of their former peculiarities for a comparatively long period.  In some cases the pronunciation of the word, it’s spelling and the correlation between sounds and letters show I waltz⁷[wo:lz] (^ Ger.), psychology (Gr.), souffle⁸ (Fr.), buffet⁹ (Fr.). The initial position of the sounds [v, dз, з] of the letters (x, j, z) is a sure sign that the word has been borrowed, e. g. volcano (It.), vase (Fr.), vaccine¹⁰ (L.); jungle (Hindi), gesture (L.), giant (O. Fr.); zeal¹¹ (L.), zero (Fr.), zinc (Fr.), etc. The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms may also bear witness to the word being adopted from another language. Thus, the suffixes in the words neurosis (^ Gr., pl. neurosis) and violoncello (It.) betray the foreign origin of the words. The same is true of the irregular plural forms: Fr. beau [bou] (sing.)- beaux [bouz] (pl.) ; Lat. bacterium (sing.)- bacteria (pl.); Gr. parenthesis (sing.) - parentheses¹² (pl.).

American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States.^[2] English is the most common language in the United States. The use of English in the United States is a result of English colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since then, American English has been influenced by the languages of West Africa, the Native American population, German,Irish, Spanish, and other languages of successive waves of immigrants to the US. Vocabulary. The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages.^[16] Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash and moose (fromAlgonquian).^[17] Other Native American loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe articles in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonising nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie, cruller, stoop, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch; angst, kindergarten, sauerkraut from German,^[18] levee, portage ("carrying of boats or goods") and (probably) gopher from French; barbecue, stevedore, and rodeo from Spanish.

Among the earliest and most notable regular "English" additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork,snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail, timberline anddivide^{[citation needed]}. Already existing words such as creek, slough, sleet and (in later use) watershed received new meanings that were unknown in England.^{[citation needed]}Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie, butte (French); bayou (Choctaw via Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (Spanish); vlei, skate,kill (Dutch, Hudson Valley).The word corn, used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian corn by the earliest settlers; wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively referred to as grain. Other notable farm related vocabulary additions were the new meanings assumed by barn (not only a building for hay and grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms range, (corn) crib, truck, elevator, sharecropping and feedlot.^{[citation needed}

Ranch, later applied to a house style, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo, rodeo;examples of "English" additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck ("food") and Boot Hill; from the California Gold Rush came such idioms as hit pay dirt or strike it rich. The word blizzard probably originated in the West. A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson.^{[citation needed]}

With the new continent developed new forms of dwelling, and hence a large inventory of words designating real estate concepts (land office, lot, outlands, waterfront, the verbs locate and relocate, betterment, addition, subdivision), types of property (log cabin, adobe in the 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level, mobile home, multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (driveway, breezeway, backyard, dooryard; clapboard, siding, trim, baseboard; stoop (from Dutch), family room, den; and, in recent years, HVAC, central air, walkout basement).^{[citation needed]}

Ever since the American Revolution, a great number of terms connected with the U.S. political institutions have entered the language; examples are run, gubernatorial, primary election, carpetbagger (after the Civil War), repeater, lame duck (a British term used originally in Banking)^[23] and pork barrel. 

Spelling.

Most words ending in an unstressed  in -or in American English (color, flavor,harbor, honor, humor, labor, neighbor, rumor). Wherever the vowel is unreduced in pronunciation, e.g. contour, velour, paramour and troubadour the spelling is the same everywhere.

In British English, some words from French, Latin or Greek end with a consonant followed by -re, with the -re unstressed and pronounced /əɹ/. In American English, most of these words have the ending -er.^[16][17] The difference is most common for words ending-bre or -tre: British spellings calibre, centre, fibre, goitre, litre, lustre, manoeuvre, meagre, metre, mitre, nitre, ochre, reconnoitre, sabre,saltpetre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, theatre (see exceptions) and titre all have -er in American spelling.

Most English words that today use -er were spelled -re at one time or another. In American English, almost all of these have become -er, while in British English only some of them have. The latter include chapter, December, disaster, enter, filter, letter, member,minister, monster, November, number, October, oyster, perimeter, parameter, powder, proper, September, sober and tender.

For advice / advise and device / devise, American English and British English both keep the noun/verb distinction (where the pronunciation is -[s] for the noun and -[z] for the verb). For licence / license or practice / practise, British English also keeps the noun/verb distinction (the two words in each pair are homophones with -[s] pronunciation, though). On the other hand, American English uses license and practice for both nouns and verbs (with -[s] pronunciation in both cases too).

American English has kept the Anglo-French spelling for defense and offense, which are usually defence and offence in British English. Likewise, there are the American pretense and British pretence; but derivatives such as defensive, offensive, and pretensionare always thus spelled in both systems.

Australian^[29] and Canadian usage generally follows British.

-xion, -ction The spelling connexion is now rare in everyday British usage, its use lessening as knowledge of Latin lessens,^[30] and it is not used at all in the US: the more common connection has become the standard worldwide. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the older spelling is more etymologically conservative, since the original Latin word had -xio-. The American usage comes from Webster, who abandoned -xion in favour of -ction by analogy with verbs like connect.^[31] Connexion was still the house style of The Times of London until the 1980s and was still used by the British Post Office for its telephone services in the 1970s, but had by then been overtaken byconnection in regular usage (for example, in more popular newspapers).

Complexion (which comes from complex) is standard worldwide and complection is rare.^[32] However, the adjective complected (as in "dark-complected"), although sometimes objected to, is standard in the US as an alternative to complexioned,^[33] but is not used in this way in the UK, although there is a rare usage to mean complicated.

American spelling avoids -ise endings in words like organize, realize and recognize.^[35] British spelling mostly uses -ise, while -ize is also used (organise / organize, realise / realize, recognise / recognize):^[35] the ratio between -ise and -ize stands at 3:2 in the British National Corpus.^[36] In Ireland, Australia and New Zealand -ise spellings strongly prevail: the -ise form is preferred in Australian English at a ratio of about 3:1 according to the Macquarie Dictionary.

Worldwide, -ize endings prevail in scientific writing and are commonly used by many international organizations, such as theInternational Organization for Standardization and the World Health Organization. The European Union switched from -ize to -ise some years ago in its English language publications, meaning that -ize spellings are found in older legislative acts and -ise spellings in more recent ones. Proofreaders at the EU's Publications Office ensure consistent spelling in official publications such as the Official Journal (where legislation and other official documents are published), but the -ize spelling may be found in other documents.

The ending -yse is British and -yze is American. Thus, in British English analyse, catalyse, hydrolyse and paralyse, but in American English analyze, catalyze, hydrolyze and paralyze.

British and Commonwealth English uses the ending -logue and -gogue while American English usually uses the ending -log and -gog for words like analog(ue), catalog(ue), dialog(ue), demagog(ue), pedagog(ue), monolog(ue), homolog(ue), synagog(ue), etc. Catalogue is sometimes used in the US but catalog is more common^[47] (thus the inflected forms, cataloged and cataloging vs. catalogued andcataloguing).

Canadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. English is the first language, or "mother tongue", of approximately 24 million Canadians (77%), and more than 28 million (86%) are fluent in the language.^[2] 82% of Canadians outsideQuebec speak English natively, but within Quebec the figure drops to just 7.7%, as most residents are native speakers of Quebec French.

Canadian English contains elements of British English and American English in its vocabulary, as well as many distinctive Canadianisms. In many areas, speech is influenced by French. There are notable local variations.^[4] The phonetics, phonology,morphology, syntax and lexicon for most of Canada are similar to that of the Western and Midland regions of the United States.^[4] TheCanadian Great Lakes region has similarities to that of the Upper Midwest & Great Lakes region and/or Yooper dialect (in particularMichigan which has extensive cultural and economic ties with Ontario), while the phonological system of western and central Canadian English is similar in some aspects to that of the Pacific Northwest of the United States.^[5]

The intonation and pronunciation of some vowel sounds has similarities to the dialects of Scotland and to accents in Northern Englandsuch as Geordie, for example the raising to "about" to sound roughly like "aboot" or "aboat", is also heard in Scotland and the Tynesidearea of England.

Canadian English and American English are sometimes classified together as North American English, emphasizing the fact that many outsiders from English speaking countries cannot distinguish Canadian English from American English by sound. Canadian English spelling is largely a blend of British and American conventions.

Canadian spelling of the English language combines British and American conventions.

French-derived words that in American English end with -or and -er, such as color or center, retain British spellings (colour, honourand centre). While the United States uses the Anglo-French spelling defense (noun), Canadians use the British spellings defenceand offence (note that defensive and offensive are universal.)

• In other cases, Canadians and Americans differ from British spelling, such as in the case of nouns like curb and tire, which in British English are spelled kerb and tyre (see below for an explanation of the Canadian spelling of tire.)

• Words such as realize and paralyze are usually spelled with -ize or -yze rather than -ise or -yse (the etymological convention that verbs derived from Greek roots are spelled with -ize and those from Latin with -ise is preserved in that practice.^[13])

• Some nouns take -ice while matching verbs take -ise – for example, practice is a noun and practise is a verb; in addition, licence is a noun and license is a verb (note that advice and advise are universal.)

• Canadian spelling sometimes retains the British practice of doubling consonants when adding suffixes to words even when the final syllable (before the suffix) is not stressed. Compare Canadian (and British) travelled, counselling, and controllable (always doubled in British, more often than not in Canadian) to American traveled, counseling, and controllable (only doubled when stressed; both Canadian and British English use balloted and profiting.