Some of these words are actually Greek by their origin, but they came to English through the medium of Latin. Latin was the language of the Catholic Church and contained a great number of words connected with religion: abbot, altar, angel, anthem, candle, canon, deacon, devil, martyr, mass, nun, pope, priest, psalm, rule, shrine, temple. The second layer of Latin borrowings is connected with Christianity which was introduced by the Latin clergy at the end of the 6 th century AD. The borrowings of the first layer are known as spoken Latin borrowings. Thus, such Latin words as colonia and castra are reflected in the following names: Lincoln, Manchester, Glouster, Leicester.
Some Latin words of the last thematic group are retained in place names. The Romans brought with them some names of objects that were new to the population of Britain: names of food ( wine, butter, cheese, pepper, pear, plum, etc.), words, naming objects of material culture such as household articles ( kitchen, kettle, cup, dish), measures ( pound, inch), civil and military constructions ( mill, street, camp, port). The first layer goes back to the time of the Roman Conquest of the British Isles, the 5 th century AD (нашей эры (ср.: BC)). There are three layers of ^ Latin borrowings in English. Words were borrowed, first of all, from Latin, Scandinavian and French. The term “semantic loan” denotes the process when native words develop new meanings under the influence of foreign languages (in OE the word bread meant “a piece” under the influence of the Scandinavian brand it acquired its modern meaning).Ībout 75 percent of the English vocabulary are borrowed words. Translation loans are words and word combinations formed from native elements according to foreign patterns, by way of literal morpheme-for-morpheme or word-for-word translation ( wonderchild ← Wunderkind (Germ), it goes without saying ← cela va sans dire (Fr)). Written borrowings are words borrowed from foreign texts when they are translated into the target ]language.Īlongside borrowings proper, there are translation and semantic loans (кальки). Oral borrowings are the result of live communication of different nations. There are two channels of borrowing: oral and written. So it is necessary to distinguish between the “sourse of borrowing” and “origin of borrowing” – the language from which the word is taken and the language to which it may be traced ( table ← la table (Fr) ← tabula (Lat)). The main intermediary languages for English are Latin and French. Simple structure (they are often monosyllabic)Īn ability to enter a great number of phraseological unitsĪ wide range of lexical and grammatical valencyīorrowings may be direct and indirect (via an intermediary language). Besides high frequency value words of the native word stock are characterised by the following features: They include most of the auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns, prepositions, numerals, conjunctions, articles. Almost all native words belong to very important semantic groups. Native words constitute about 25 percent of the English vocabulary, but they make up 80 percent of the 500 most frequent words. Many adverbs and pronouns are of Germanic origin. Terms of kinship, the most frequent verbs and the majority of numerals belong to the Common Indo-European word stock. Words of both groups denote parts of the human body, animals, plants, phenomena of nature, physical properties, basic actions, etc. Thematically these two groups do not differ very much. Numerically the Germanic group is larger. To sing (OE singan, Gothic siggwan, German singen) Words of the Common Germanic stock have cognates only in the Germanic group: in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc.: Words of the Indo-European stock have cognates (parallels) in different Indo-European languages: Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Polish, Russian and others:įather (OE fæder, Gothic fadar, Swedish fader, German Vater, Greek patér, Latin páter, French pere, Persian pedær, Sanscrit pitr) Native words are subdivided into two groups:ġ) words of the Common Indo-European word stock A borrowed word is a word taken over from another language and modified according to the standards of the English language. A native word is a word which belongs to the original English word stock and is known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. Etymologically, the English vocabulary is divided into native and loan words, or borrowed words. Native and Borrowed Words in EnglishĮtymology is a branch of lexicology studying the origin of words.