6.3 The foreign component in the English vocabulary

English vocabulary is composite and varied. In its 15 century history English happened to come in long and close contact with a number of foreign languages. As a result, many foreign words were borrowed. The source of borrowing is applied to the language from which the loan word was taken into English. The origin of borrowing refers to the language, to which the word may be traced,

e.g. paper < Fr. papier < Lat. papyrus < Gr. papyrus

French is its source of borrowing, Greek is its origin.

Sometimes the word borrowing is used in a wider sense, and is extended onto the so-called translation-loans (or calques) and semantic borrowings.

Criteria of borrowings:

• phonetical

• grammatical

• lexical

The phonetical criteria are strange sounds, sound combination, position of stress and the correlation between sounds and letters.

e.g. waltz (G.), psychology (Gr.), communiqué (Fr.)

The initial position of sounds [v], [z] or the letters x, j, z is a valid sign that the word is borrowed, e.g. volcano (It.), vaccine (L.), jungle (Hindi), zinc (G.)

The morphological structure of the word and its grammatical forms also indicate that the word is adopted from another language,

e.g. the suffixes in the words neurosis (Gr.), violoncello (It.);

the irregular plural forms: bacteria <bacterium (L.), papyri < papyrus (Gr.)

You can recognize such words by certain suffixes, prefixes, endings.

Latin Affixes Suffix -ion e.g. communion, legion, opinion, union Suffix -tion e.g. relation, revolution, starvation, temptation Suffix -ate e.g. appreciate, create, congratulate Suffix -ute e.g. att’ribute, contribute, constitute, distribute Suffix -able e.g. detestable, curable Suffix -ate e.g. accurate, graduate Suffix -ant e.g. arrogant, constant Suffix -ent e.g. absent, decent, evident Suffix -or e.g. major, minor, junior, senior Suffix -al e.g. cordial, final, fraternal, maternal Suffix -ar e.g. lunar, solar, familiar Remnant suffix -ct e.g. act, conduct, collect Remnant suffix -d(e) e.g. applaud, divide, exclude, include Prefix dis- e.g. disable, distract, disown, disagree

French Affixes Suffix -ance e.g. arrogance, hindrance Suffix -ence e.g. consequence, patience Suffix -ment e.g. appointment, experiment Suffix -age e.g. courage, marriage Suffix -ess e.g. tigress, lioness, adventuress Suffix -ous e.g. curious, dangerous, joyous, serious Prefix en- e.g. enable, enslave

Borrowed element

Celtic: 5th – 6th c Latin: 1st group 1st c BC 2nd group 7th c AD 3rd group the Renaissance period Scandinavian: 8th c AD French: Norman borrowings 11th – 13th c Parisian borrowings – 17th c Renaissance time Greek: Renaissance Italian: Renaissance time and later Spanish: Renaissance time and later German Indian Russian

Why are words borrowed?

a) To fill a gap in vocabulary.

• Latin butter, plum and beet – no words in Saxon vocabulary;

• potato and tomato from Spanish when these vegetables were first brought to England.

b) No gap in the vocabulary.

• one more word is borrowed because it represents the same concept in some new aspect, enlarging groups of synonyms and greatly enriching the expressive resources of the vocabulary.

E.g. Latin cordial was added to friendly; French desire to wish; Latin admire and French adore to like and love.

c) "Accidental" borrowings

• Words were borrowed "blindly“, for no obvious reason, they were not wanted. Quite a number of such "accidental" borrowings are very soon rejected by the vocabulary and forgotten.

e.g. The adjective large was borrowed from French in the meaning of wide. It was not actually wanted, because it fully coincided with the English adjective wide without adding any new shades or aspects to its meaning. Large managed to establish itself very firmly in the English vocabulary by semantic adjustment. It entered another synonymic group with the general meaning of "big in size".