17. Norman and Parisian borrowings.

Norman borrowings (most numerous group)

Norman French borrowings began with the famous battle of Hastings when English were defeated by the Normans. England became bilingual country and the impact on the English vocabulary made over this 2 hundred years period was immense. French words from the Norman dialect penetrated every aspect of social life. French became the lang. of state. Teaching was led in French, business documents were also written in French.

1. Administrative terms: state, government, council, power, country, people, nation,

2. Feudalism: liege, vassal, fief – these words are disused.

3. servant, prince, count, duck, baron.

4. words, denoting qualities: honor, glory, noble, fine, genteel.

5. Military terms: siege, defense, victory, conquest, captain.

6.Legal terms: judge, prison, slander, felony, fraud.

7. religion: perish, communion, parson, abbey, saint, vice, blame.

8.Education: people, library, science, pencil, pen.

9.Entertainment: moda, supper, dinner, pastry, to fry, dice, luxury, jewels.

10. Everyday life: table, plate, autumn, uncle.

11. Literature and art: to paint, colour, architecture, design, prose, story, volume, arch, vault.

18. Italian, Portugal, Spanish borrowings.

Italian borrowings.(at the end of renaissance)

1. The first group of them occurred during the renaissance period, among them: cornice, solo, colonnade, opera, concert, tempo.

2. Military terms: alarm, cartridge, cavalry, colonel, fantry.

1. lagoon, volcano, monkey, risk, gurgle, corridor, revolt, isolate.

Portugal, Spanish borrowings.

1. Spanish: comrade, ambuscade, dispatch.

2.Later borrowings: cigar, vacate, mosquito, chocolate, potato, tobacco

3. Portugal: cast, tank, port, cobra.

German borrowings.

1. Geology terms: zinc, quartz, cobalt.

2.Philosophical: objective, subjective, determinism.

3.Swindler, lobby, iceberg, waltz.

19. Some facts about Etymological structure of English vocabulary.

1. The percentage of borrowed words in the English vocabulary is rather high, about 67-70 %. This is explained by the country’s eventful history and by its many international contacts.

2. Despite of a fact that French and Latin words are obviously prevail their frequency of occurrence is relevant in comparison with the native Anglo-Saxon heritage. The native element comprises a large number of high frequency words like articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and also words denoting everyday objects and ideas.

3. The grammatical structure is essentially Germanic, having remained unchanged and unaffected by foreign influence. Syntactic structure remained also unaffected as far as morphological structure is concerned, the influence Latin and French isn’t so high. It comprises in penetrated a few affixes no more.

4. Instead of being smashed and broken by the powerful intruding, the English language managed to preserve its essential structure and vastly enriched its expressive reserves with the new borrowings.