lexicology / 20-21

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e.g. Et tu Brute. (Latin). - Thou, too, Brutus, (an exclamation attributed to Julius Caesar on seeing his friend Brutus among his assassins)

Eureka (Greek) - I have found (an exclamation attributed to Archimedes on discovering a method for determining the purity of gold).

L'etat c est moi! (French) - The state is me! (the words oflxiuis XIV)

Veni, vidi, vici. (latin) - I came, I saw, ! conquered. (Jidius Caesar s report of his victory in 47 B.C.)

Eisen und Blut (German) - iron and blood (the words of Otto von

Bismarck, the I^s' chancellor of the German Empire)

Eppur si muove! (Italian) - But it turns! (the words attributed to

Galileo Galilei after recanting his assertion of the earth's

movement)

The stylistical function of barbarisms is to add atmosphere and character a peculiar flavour.

3.4. Criteria of Borrowings

Though borrowed words undergo changes in the adopting language, they preserve some of their former peculiarities for a comparatively long period. This makes it possible to work out some criteria to determine whether the word belongs to the borrowed elements.

a) Phonetic or graphic criterion. In some cases the pronunciation of the word (strange sound, sound combination, position of the stress, etc.), its spelling and the correlation between sound and letters are an indication of the foreign origin of the word.

e.g. waltz (German), psychology (Greek), soufflé (French)

Sometimes the graphic and sound form of the word in Modem English enables us to determine the immediate source of borrowing. Thus, if the digraph 'c7?' is pronounced as [S], the word is a late French borrowing (e.g. echelon, chauffeur, chef), if it stands for [k], it came from Greek (e.g. archaic, architect, chronology), if it is pronounced as [C], it is cither an early borrowing (e.g. cherry - Latin; chase - French; chime Latin), or a word of Anglo-Saxon origin (e.g. choose, child, chin).

When the consonant combinations "pn", "ps" and "pt" in the initial position, arc read as [n], [s] and [t], the words are of Greek origin.

e.g. pneumatic, psychology, pterodactyl

The diacritic signs are also an indication of words borrowed from French.

e.g. communiqué, chateau, cafe, décolleté, tête-à-tête

b) Grammatical or morphological criterion. The words that have preserved the original plural inflexion are, generally, borrowings from Latin or Greek.

e.g. phenomenon phenomena (Latin)

stratum - strata (Latin)

parenthesis - parentheses (Greek) Some borrowings have two plural forms the native and the foreign, e.g. vacuum vacua/vacuums (Latin)

virtuoso - virtuosi/virtuosos (Italian)

c) Semantic criterion. The meaning of the word shows that the referents denoted by the word refer to an object of a foreign culture.

e.g. gondola, n. - a long narrow boat used in the canals of Venice (Italian)

hara-kiri, n. - ritual suicide practised by the Japanese samurai (Japanese)

imam, n - the prayer leader in the mosque (Arabic)

3.5. Translation Loans

The term borrowing is sometimes extended to the so-called translation loans, or calques

Calques are words and expressions formed from the material available in the language after the patterns characteristic of the given language but under the influence of some foreign words and expressions, e.g. the fair sex - la beau sex (French)

after me the deluge apres mois le deluge (words attributed to Louis XV)

mother tongue - lingua materna (Latin) divide and rule - divide el impera (Latin) eternal feminine - Ewig Weibliche (German) gallows humour - Golgenhumor (German) As to their etymology, translation loans may be traced to different languages. A lot of them were borrowed from French.