ETYMOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ENGLISH WORDSTOCK
1. Some basic assumptions.
2. Words of native origin.
3. Borrowings in the English language.
4. Assimilation of borrowings.
Some Basic Assumptions
Are All English Words Really English?
As a matter of fact, they are — if we regard them in the light of present-day English. If, however,
their origins are looked into, the picture may seem somewhat bewildering. A person who does
not know English but knows French (Italian, Latin, or Spanish) is certain to recognize a great
number of familiar-looking words when skipping through an English book.
It is true that English vocabulary, which is one of the most extensive amongst the world's
languages contains an immense number of words of foreign origin. Explanations for this should
be sought in the history of the language which is closely connected with the history of the nation
speaking the language.
Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogeneous. It
consists of two layers - the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words. Numerically
the borrowed stock of words is considerably larger than the native stock of words. In fact native
words comprise only 30 % of the total number of words in the English vocabulary but the native
words form the bulk of the most frequent words actually used in speech and writing. Besides the
native words have a wider range of lexical and grammatical valency, they are highly
polysemantic and productive in forming word clusters and set expressions.
The most characteristic feature of English is its mixed character. While it is wrong to speak of
the mixed character of the language as a whole, the composite nature of the English vocabulary
cannot be denied.
Some special terms:
1. native words - words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the
continent in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes - the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes;
2. borrowing - l) the process of adopting words from other languages and 2) the result of
this process. Not only words, but also word-building affixes (-able, -ment, -ity) and some
word-groups, too, were borrowed in their foreign form (coup-d'etat, vis-a-vis).
3. The term source of borrowing is applied to the language from which a particular word was
taken into English. The term origin of the word should be applied to the language the word may
be traced to.
Words of Native Origin
Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements - Indo-European,
Germanic and West Germanic cognates. The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been
preserved, although some words have passed out of existence. The Anglo-Saxon stock of
words makes 25-30% of the English vocabulary.
Almost all of them belong to very important semantic groups, among them form-words:
- auxiliary and modal verbs: shall, will, should, would, must, can, may;
- pronouns: I, you, he, my, your, his, who, whose;
- prepositions: in, out, on, under;
- numerals: one, two, three, four, etc.;
- conjunctions: and, but, till, as.
Notional words of Anglo-Saxon origin:
- parts of the body: head, hand, arm, back;
- members of the family and closest relatives: father, mother, brother, son, wife;
- natural phenomena and planets: snow, rain, wind, frost, sun, moon, star;
- animals: horse, cow, sheep, cat;
- qualities and properties: old, young, cold, hot, heavy, light, dark, white, long;
- common actions: do, make, go, come, see, hear, eat.
Native words are highly polysemantic, stylistically neutral, and enter a number of phraseological
units.
Borrowings in the English Language
Borrowed words (or loan words or borrowings) are words taken over from another language
and modified according to the patterns of the receiving language.
In many cases a borrowed word especially one borrowed long ago is practically indistinguishable
from a native word without a thorough etymological analysis (street, school, face). The number
of borrowings in the vocabulary of a language and the role played by them is determined by the
historical development of the nation speaking the language. The most effective way of
borrowing is direct borrowing from another language as the result of contacts with the people of
another country or with their literature. But a word may also be borrowed indirectly not from the
source language but through another language.
When analyzing borrowed words one must distinguish between the two terms - "source of
borrowing" and "origin of borrowing". The first term is applied to the language from which the
word was immediately borrowed, the second - to the language to which the word may be
ultimately traced e.g.
-table source of borrowing - French, origin of borrowing - Latin
-elephant - source of borrowing - French, origin-Egypt
-convene - source of borrowing - French, origin Latin.
The closer the two interacting languages are in structure the easier it is for words of one language
to penetrate into the other.
There are different ways of classifying the borrowed stock of words:
Translation loans (calques) are words or expressions formed from the elements existing in the
English language according to the literal patterns of the source language (word-for-word or root-
for-root translation e.g. the moment of truth - sp. el momento de la verdad).
A semantic loan is the borrowing of a meaning for a word already existing in the English
language, in other words, the extension of its meaning e.g. the compound word shock brigade
which existed in the English language with the meaning "аварийная бригада" acquired a new
meaning "ударная бригада" which it borrowed from the Russian language.
In its 15-century-long history the English language has come in long and close contact with several
other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). The great influx of
borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes.
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, e.g.: absolute < absolutus, algebra < algebra, arm < armare,
autumn < autumnus, beast < bestia, calculate < calculus, habit < habitum, intelligence <
intelligentia, machine <machina, number < numerum, propaganda <propagare, recommend <
recomendare, sentence < sentential, square < quadrus.
Latin Loans are classified into the subgroups.
1. Early Latin Loans. Those are the words which came into English through the language of
Anglo-Saxon tribes. The tribes had been in contact with Roman civilization and had adopted
several Latin words denoting objects belonging to that civilization long before the invasion of
Angles, Saxons and Jutes into Britain (cup, kitchen, mill, port, wine).
2. Later Latin Borrowings. To this group belong the words which penetrated the English
vocabulary in the sixth and seventh centuries, when the people of England were converted to
Christianity (priest, bishop, nun, candle).
3. The third period of Latin includes words which came into English due to two historical events:
the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the Renaissance or the Revival of Learning. Some words
came into English through French but some were taken directly from Latin (major, minor,
intelligent, permanent).
4. The Latest Stratum of Latin Words. The words of this period are mainly abstract and scientific
words (nylon, molecular, vaccine, phenomenon, vacuum).
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. Examples of Scandinavian borrowings are: anger < anger, angr, fellow
< fellawe, felagi, fit < fitten, fitja, fro < fro, fra, hap < hap, happ, hit < hitten, hitta, leg < leg, leggr,
low < low, lagr, swain < swayn, sveinn, sky < skye, sky, skill < skile, skil, take < taken, they
< they, want < want(e), vant.
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 the upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11 th
century to the end of the 14th century: action < accioun, accusation < accusacioun, agreable <
agreable, arms < armes, baron < baron, baroun, chamber < chambre, chivalry < chyval(e)rie, crown <
coroune, duke < duk, empress < emperesse.
Norman-French Borrowings may be subdivided into subgroups:
1. Early loans - 12th - 15th century
2. Later loans - beginning from the 16th century.
The Early French borrowings are simple short words, naturalized in accordance with the English
language system (state, power, war, pen, river) Later French borrowings can be identified by
their peculiarities of form and pronunciation (regime, police, ballet, scene, bourgeois).
The Etymological Structure of the English Vocabulary:
The Native element:
I. Indo-European element
II. Germanic element
III. English proper element (brought by Angles, Saxons and Jutes not earlier than 5th c. A.D.)
The Borrowed Element:
I. Celtic (5-6th c. A.D.)
II. Latin: 1st group: B.C. 2nd group: 7th c. A.D. 3d group: the Renaissance period
III. Scandinavian (8-11th c. A.D.)
IV. French: 1. Norman borrowings (11-13th c. A.D.); 2. Parisian borrowings (Renaissance)
V. Greek
VI. Italian (Renaissance and later)
VII. Spanish (Renaissance)
VIII. German
IX. Indian and others
Assimilation of Borrowings
Assimilation - the process of adaptation of foreign words to the norms of the language. The
process of assimilation of borrowings includes changes in sound form of morphological
structure, grammar characteristics, meaning and usage.
Types of assimilation - phonetic, grammatical, lexical.
Phonetic assimilation comprises changes in sound, form and stress. Sounds that were alien to the
English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds, e.g. in the recent French borrowings
communique, cafe the long [e] and [e] are rendered with the help of [ei]. The accent is usually
transferred to the first syllable in the words from foreign sources.
The degree of phonetic adaptation depends on the period of borrowing: the earlier the period the
more completed this adaptation. While such words as "table", "plate" borrowed from French in
the 8th - 11th centuries can be considered fully assimilated, later Parisian borrowings such as
regime, valise, cafe" are still pronounced in a French manner.
Grammatical adaption is usually a less lasting process, because in order to function adequately in
the recipient language a borrowing must completely change its paradigm. Though there are some
well-known exceptions as plural forms of the English Renaissance borrowings - datum pl. data,
criterion - pl. criteria and others.
The process of semantic assimilation has many forms: narrowing of meanings (usually
polysemantic words are borrowed in one of the meanings); specialization or generalization of
meanings, acquiring new meanings in the recipient language, shifting a primary meaning to the
position of a secondary meaning.
Degree of Assimilation
Completely assimilated words do not differ from the native ones in pronunciation, spelling,
frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. It is difficult to distinguish them from
words of Anglo-Saxon origin, e.g.: pupil, master, city, river, window, dish, box. The majority of
early borrowings have acquired full English citizenship. Such words are frequently used and are
stylistically neutral, they may occur as dominant words in a synonymic group. They take an
active part in word formation.
Partly assimilated loan words fall into subgroups:
- words not assimilated semantically, e.g.: sari, sombrero, shah, radja, sfeih; bei, toreador,
rickshaw/picksha; Such words usually denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from
which they came.
- loan words not assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin or Greek
preserve their original plural inflexion: phenomenon - phenomena, addendum - addenda, radius -
radii, antenna - antennae;
- loan words not assimilated phonetically: These words contain peculiarities in stress,
combinations of sounds that are not standard for English: communique, chaussee, café, machine,
cartoon, police, bourgeois, camouflage, prestige, regime, sabotage, memoir/(Fr.); spits (G.);
pneumatics, psychology, ptolomey (Gr.);
- loan words not completely assimilated graphically: ballet, buffet, corps, cafe, cliche, bouquet,
brioche( Fr.).
Completely unassimilated words, or barbarisms, Barbarisms are words from other languages
used by the English people in conversation or in writing but not assimilated in any way, and for
which there are corresponding English equivalents e.g.: addio, ciao (It.) - «good-bye»; affiche
(Fr.) - «placard», ad libitum (Lat.) - «at pleasure».
The borrowed stock of the English vocabulary contains not only words but a great
number of suffixes and prefixes. When these first appeared in the English language they were
parts of words and only later began a life of their own as word-building elements of the
English language (-age, -ance, -ess, -merit) This brought about the creation of hybrid words
like shortage, hindrance, lovable and many others in which a borrowed suffix is joined to a
native root. A reverse process is also possible.
In many cases one and the same word was borrowed twice either from the same language
or from different languages. This accounts for the existence of the so called etymological
doublets like canal - channel (Latin - French), skirt - shirt (Sc. - English), balsam - halm
(Greek - French).
International words. There exist many words that were borrowed by several languages.
Such words are mostly of Latin and Greek origin and convey notions which are significant in
the field of communication in different countries. Here belong names of sciences
(philosophy, physics, chemistry, linguistics, etc.), terms of art (music, theatre, drama, artist,
comedy, etc.), political terms (politics, policy, progress, etc.). The English language became a
source for international sports terms (football, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis).
