Where Do English Words Come From?

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

1. Historical development of English vocabulary

1.1. The Old English Period (450-1066)
1.2. The Middle English Period (1066-1500)
1.3. Early Modern English (1500-1800)
1.4. The Modern English Period (1800-present)
2. Native English vocabulary
2.1. Anglo-Saxon element in English
2.2. Celtic element in English
3. Borrowings from classical languages
4. Scandinavian loanwords in English
5. French borrowings in English
6. German and Dutch loanwords
7. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian borrowings in English
8. Words of Slavic origin in the English language
9. Assimilation of borrowings
Summary

All languages of the world are grouped into about 300 language families, on the basis of the
similarities of their word stock and grammar. One of these families, the Indo-European, includes
most of the languages of Europe (Ukrainian being one of them), the Near East and North India.
One of the branches of the Endo-European family is called Italic, from which the Romance
languages developed. Another is called Germanic, which is traditionally subdivided into North
Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic. The only East Germanic language of which
written records have survived is Gothic, which is now extinct. From the North Germanic branch,
modern Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic) have developed.
The West Germanic branch has developed into Modern German, Dutch, Frisian, and English.
The English language originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects spoken by the Germanic
tribes – the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes – which conquered Britain in the 5th century.

1. Historical development of the English vocabulary

The historical development of the English vocabulary is traditionally divided into the
Old, Middle and Modern English periods. Each of them had its own contribution to the
development of the lexis of the language.

1.1. The Old English period (450-1066)

The first Old English inscriptions were written around the 5 th and 6th centuries in the
runic alphabet brought by the Anglo-Saxons. These are, however, short texts which do not yield
much information on the structure of old Germanic languages. The literary age began only after
the Christianity of England in the 5th century, introduced by the Roman invaders and the first
manuscripts were glossaries of Latin words translated into Old English. The most important
literary work of that period is an old English epic The Beowulf, written around 1000.
Most OE texts were written in the reign of King Alfred (849-899), who arranged for
many Latin words to be translated, but the total corpus is considered to be relatively small. David
Crystal points out that “the number of words in the corpus of Old English compiled at the
University of Toronto, which contains all the texts, is only 3.5 million – the equivalent of about
30 medium-sized novels” (Crystal 2003: 10).
The OE alphabet was very similar to the one we use today, but its distinctive feature
was the absence of capital letters. A few letters were shaped differently and some modern letters
were missing, while the numbers were only Roman. There was a great deal of variation in
spelling and the same word could be spelled differently on the same page. A marked difference
between poetic and prosaic texts is noticeable: while the majority of words in prose resemble
those in Modern English, words in poetic texts are different.
A part of the OE lexicon looks quite familiar and a modern English speaker could
easily recognize singan as sing , drinkan as drink, stod as stood and so on. But at the same time
some words, if outwardly familiar, have a different meaning in Modern English; e. g. wif refers
not only to a female spouse, but to any woman; sona meant ‘immediately’ rather than ‘in a little
while’; and meat was used in the meaning of ‘food’ rather than ‘animal flesh used for food’.
Grammatical relations in OE were expressed by means of inflectional endings. Only in
Middle English were the inflections lost, and the word order came to express grammatical
relations. This crucial change took place in the 11 th and 12th centuries and is explained by the
fact that it became increasingly difficult to hear and pronounce inflections.
During the OE period there was the Viking invasion of the 7 th-9th centuries, which had
a significant impact on the development of the vocabulary, but we are going to dwell upon it a
little later.

1.2. The Middle English Period (1066-1500)

 The Middle English period is characterized by a great impact of the French language,
which after the Norman Conquest became the ruling language in the educational, administrative
and religious aspects of life. Due to that, the early English materials are quite scarce, because
most writing was in either Latin or French. Much of the earlier Middle English literature was of
the unknown authorship, but towards the end of the period the situation had changed. Among the
prominent names of that time was Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the famous Canterbury Tales
and later on the poets who are collectively known as the ‘Scottish Chaucerians’. They all
contributed greatly to the development of the language.
The language of this period is characterized by a great diversity in spelling: according
to Jackson and Zé Amvela, spelling variation was even greater than what was found in Old
English. Even in an edited text of that time, one encounters variant spelling, e.g. naure, noeure,
ner, neure, all standing for never (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 30). But what this period is
primarily marked by is the massive borrowing from French, caused by the French-English
bilingualism that was introduced by the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Today, when English is one of the major languages in the world, it requires an effort of
imagination to realize that 400 years ago English was a despised, or as sociolinguists prefer to
call it, stigmatized language. Only a few million of rural people living on the British Isles used
English as their mother tongue, and the rest of the population were speaking the French
language, as they found it nobler, more attractive and more prestigious. The effect of the
borrowings on the balance of the vocabulary was enormous. According to Crystal, by the end of
the 13th century, some 10,000 French words had come into English. These were mostly the words
dealing with law and administration, but there were also borrowings from such fields as art,
medicine and everyday life. Crystal concludes that three quarters of them are still in use today.
Due to this fact English retains probably the richest vocabulary, and the most diverse shades of
meaning, of any language. As Bill Bryson notes, for almost every word, English has a
“multiplicity of synonyms. Something is not just big; it is large, immense, vast, capacious, bulky,
massive, whooping. No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. English is
unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly – so
that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a
stairway, shrink in fear, terror, or trepidation, and think, ponder, or cognate upon a problem”
(Bryson 2009: 62). However, borrowings were not the only way of increasing the vocabulary;
other processes of word formation, such as compounding and affixation, which were already
established in OE, continued to be used.

1.3. Early Modern English (1500 – 1660)

The Modern English period begins at about 1500 and lasts well into our own times. Within
the Modern English period it is customary to distinguish between Early Modern English (1500 –
1660) and Late Modern English (1660 till our own times). It should be noted that such dates as
1500 or 1660 cannot be taken literally: they are merely an indication that by the end of the 14 th
and again by the end of the 17th century, changes in the language had accumulated to an extent
which makes it possible for scholars to mark the beginning of two new periods respectively.
There may be no consensus about the beginning of the Early Modern English period, but
many consider the invention of printing as a determining factor. Printing played a great role not
only in fostering the norms of spelling and pronunciation; it also provided more opportunities for
people to write and to give books a much wider circulation. This period includes also important
scientific discoveries and the exploration of Africa, Asia and America. But the most significant
factor that shaped the development of the language was the Renaissance period, which was a
time of a renewed interest in the classical languages and literature, and major developments in
sciences and arts. All these factors had a major impact on the vocabulary of the language; a
considerable number of Greek and Latin borrowings were introduced into the language to
express new concepts, phenomena and technical innovations. In fact, it is generally
acknowledged that the increase in foreign borrowing is the most distinctive feature of the
Renaissance for English (Crystal 1995: 60).
It is generally accepted that the most prominent figure of this period was William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), whose role in the language could hardly be overestimated. The
Shakespearian impact on the lexicon is immense: his poems and plays introduced or popularized
thousands of new words in the language.
Another distinguished work of Early Modern English was the King James Bible (1611).
At different times it has been called “the most influential version of the most influential book in
the world, in what is now its most influential language” or “the most celebrated book in the
English-speaking world”. The King James Bible has contributed over 200 idioms to English,
more than any other source, including Shakespeare. Some of them have undergone minor
changes in grammar and vocabulary, e.g. a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the twinkling of an eye,
the salt of the Earth, can a leopard change its spots, feet of clay, money is the root of all evil,
reap the whirlwind, if the blind lead the blind, etc. The frequency of occurrence of such phrases
in both literary and everyday language is a clear indication of the impact that the King James
Bible continues to have on contemporary English (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 33).

1.4. The Modern English Period (1800-present)

Modern English is characterized by another influx of vocabulary, which was caused by

three main factors: the unprecedented growth of scientific vocabulary, the emergence of
American English, which was to become the dominant variety of the language, and other
varieties known as ‘New Englishes’.
English scientific vocabulary had been growing steadily since the Renaissance, but the
th
19 century, due to the consequences of the industrial revolution, and as the period of extensive
scientific exploration and discovery, was the boom of innovations in the sphere of lexis. In the
words of Jackson and Zé Amvela, towards the end of the 19 th century, it was actually safe to
refer to scientific English as a variety of the language (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 35).
A remarkable factor of the historical development of English was its establishment in the
New World and the emergence of the USA as the leading economic state of the 20 th century.
Although there are still marked differences between British and American English in terms of
pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, the extensive growth of communication and the
development of mass media are making these varieties more and more alike.
In sociolinguistics, the global spread of English has been viewed as two diasporas, the
former of which involved migration of English speakers from the present British Isles to
Australia, New Zealand and North America, and the latter transported the language to Asia and
Africa. “Those English users who left the old country for new ones brought with them their
resource of language and its potentials for change, which are always with us, though we are not
often called upon to contemplate them explicitly. Thus, the language was brought into new
socio-linguistic contexts, and these contact situations have had striking and lasting effects on
English in these regions, so that although these contemporary Englishes have much in common,
they are also unique in their grammatical innovations and tolerances, lexis, pronunciation,
idioms, and discourse” (McKay, Hornberger (eds) 2010: 25).
Although Asian and African Englishes have distinctive features of their own, vocabulary is
the area in which these new Englishes best assert themselves (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 36).
The diversity of cultures that find expression in today’s English is a reminder that the history of
the English language is a story of peoples and cultures in contact over the past fifteen hundred
years (Baugh, Cable 1993:1). Following such reasoning, it seems inadequate to view loanwords
only from a linguistic standpoint and ignore the political, economic, social and technological
events that brought words like taboo, robot, cossack, gung ho, futon, intifada, boondocks,
kowtow, embargo, tycoon, paparazzi, kosher, troika and the like into the English word-stock.
Nowadays borrowing takes place on an unprecedented scale, partly because of the
enormous number of new inventions in the 20 th century made by people of various nationalities
and partly because international communications are much more rapid and important than a
century ago (www, international TV networks like CNN etc.). As a result, foreign words enter a
language like English easily, often without any change in their spelling and/or pronunciation,
e.g.: afficionado (from Spanish – an enthusiast or fan of an art or sport), laissez-faire (from
French—the policy of not interfering in the life of others), kibbutz (from Hebrew – a collective
agricultural settlement in modern Israel) and others. To render such words into English does not
only require time, but would lose a lot in translation. English with its “cosmopolitan vocabulary”
(Baugh and Cable 1993:9) does not seem to mind the overwhelming influx of foreign words into
its ranks. Quite the opposite, it has always shown a “marked tendency to go outside its own
linguistic resources and borrow from other languages” (Baugh and Cable 1993: 10).

2. Native English vocabulary

2.1. Anglo-Saxon element in English

The original stock of the English vocabulary is made up of the Anglo-Saxon lexis and
authentically English element, which was partially influenced by Celtic.
Anglo-Saxon words appeared in the language around the 5 th century A.D., when the
Germanic invaders migrated to the British Isles. These are the words of high frequency, like the
articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and modal verbs (shall, will, can, may,
must), as well as verbs and nouns, denoting everyday objects and phenomena, such as the parts
of the human body (arm, foot, head, heart, chest, bone, eye, ear), domestic life (house, home,
door, floor), animals (dog, hound, sheep, swine, cow, hen, fish, goat), the natural landscape (cliff,
hill, field, hedge, meadow, wood), the calendar (day, month, sun, moon, year), some common
adjectives (black, dark, long, good, white, wide), and common verbs (become, do, eat, fly, go,
help, kiss, live, love, see, sell, send, think) (Crystal 1995: 124).
As it is obviously seen from the above, the Anglo-Saxon words are short and concise root
words, which are highly frequent in both literal and colloquial discourse. They make up the core
of the language vocabulary.
As far as the frequency of words is concerned, we have to assume that there are half a million
words in English. Some of these words are very frequent, such as the function words (a, the, to,
etc.); some of them are quite frequent (say, 20 000 or so headwords you would find in a typical
pocket dictionary); and the rest of them are less frequent. The most frequent word in English is
the definite article the, and nearly all of the most frequent hundred words are function words,
such as pronouns and prepositions. Among the most frequent words there are only a few nouns
and verbs which can be said to have a meaning of their own, and all of these words are highly
ambiguous or fuzzy (words like thing or set) (Halliday et. al. 2004: 115).
There is a strong tendency, noticed by B. Bryson, to keep the Anglo-Saxon noun but to
adopt a foreign one for the adjectival form. Thus, figures are not figurish; they are digital. Eyes
are not eyeish, they are ocular. “English is unique in this tendency to marry a native noun to an
adopted adjective. Among other such pairs are mouth/oral, mind/mental, book/literary,
water/aquatic, house/domestic, moon/lunar, sun/solar, town/urban” (Bryson, 2005: 68).
The bulk of the Old English word stock has been preserved, although some items have
passed out of existence. The Anglo-Saxon element is estimated to make about 30% of the
English vocabulary. The semantic and word building ability as well as frequency value and
collocability of these words is great and they make up a core part of the language vocabulary.

2.2 The Celtic element in English

In the 5th century AD the Germanic tribes migrated to the British Isles and occupied most of
their territory. The Celts, the original inhabitants of the British Isles, retreated to the North and
South West of the country (modern Scotland, Wales and Cornwall). They had little cultural
contact with the invaders, thus the Celtic language had little impact on Old English. Few of
these borrowings have survived to this day, among them being dew, bald, bard, down, druid,
cradle, twig, hue. Some of them are used in local dialects in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.
By far the greatest influence of the Celtic language upon English was in the names of
places. This is natural, since place names are commonly adopted in great numbers from the
aboriginal inhabitants of a country. Celtic place names are therefore found in all parts of the
country in the names of rivers (Avon, Exe, Esk, Don, Usk, Severn, Thames, Trent, Ouse and Wye,
originating from the Celtic words meaning ‘river’ and ‘water’).
The Celtic aber ‘mouth’ is found in Aberdeen, Aberfeldie, Abergeldie, caer ‘castle’ in
Caercolon, Caerleon, dun ‘a protected place’ is recognized in Dunbar, Dumbarton, Dundee.
Town names include: London, Bray, Dover, Kent, Leeds, York and a lot of others, which are
common in all parts of England, though primarily in Scotland and Ireland (Emerson 2005: 152).
In later periods a few more loan words were introduced into English through Irish Gaelic,
Scots Gaelic and Welsh – shamrock, Tory, clan, loch, slogan, whisky, and crag. Some Celtic
words penetrated into English through other languages. Thus, the words beak, budget, bulge,
cloak, clock, gravel, harness, javelin, job, lawn, mineral, trousers, tunnel came via French.
All in all, there are no more than two dozen Celtic words in English. This testifies to the
fact that English is primarily a Germanic language (Jackson, Zé Amvela 2007: 30).

3. Borrowings from classical languages in English

For centuries, formal education in Europe has been closely associated with the teaching and
learning of Latin. Through a long period of time Latin was the classical and cultural language of
Western Europe, and it had an enormous impact on all Western European languages. From the
4th century BC to the 5th century AD, it was the language of the Roman Republic and Empire and
from the 3rd to the 20th century – the international vehicle of the Roman Catholic Church and the
learned language of Western Christendom (McArthur 1992: 586). Particularly since the
Renaissance, Latin has always been the scholarly and literally seed-corn for the vernacular
European languages. English has proved to be the most receptive among the Germanic languages
to direct as well as indirect Latin influence, largely as a consequence of the Norman Conquest.
A large part of the lexicon of Latin has entered English in two major ways: mainly religious
vocabulary from the time of Old English until the Reformation, and mainly scientific, scholarly
and legal vocabulary from the Middle Ages onwards.
 The OE period of Latin borrowings is called the ‘plant’ period, since most of these terms
indicate special spheres in which the Roman invaders excelled and which they brought with them
to the British Isles. Many of them have survived into Modern English and their origin can be
easily traced, e.g. plante, ‘plant’ (Lat. planta), pipper, ‘pepper’ (Lat. piper), win, ‘wine’ (Lat.
vinum), plum (Lat. prunum), buttere, ‘butter’ (Lat. butyrum), cese, ‘cheese’ (Lat. caseus).
Another sphere of connection of the two languages deals with Christianization of the British
people. This time may be called the period of ‘church’ borrowings. Among them were: candel,
‘candle’, sealm ‘psalm’, munyk ‘monk’, mynster ‘monastry’, maesse ‘mass’, maegester ‘master,
alter ‘altar’. During this period a number of OE words acquired a new ‘Christian’ meaning:
heaven, hell, God, gospel, holy, Easter, ghost, sin.
In the Middle English period Latin words were borrowed through French – the language
which had a dominant influence on the growth of the Middle English vocabulary. Many
borrowings also came directly from Latin, and it is sometimes very difficult to identify the origin
and the source of the borrowing.
Sometimes the same word entered English at different times, and from different sources,
thus existing in English in two or more related forms, as with canal and channel, regard and
reward, pour and pauper, catch and chase, cave and cage, amiable and amicable (examples are
taken from Bryson 2009: 66). Such words are termed etymological doublets – two or more words
of the same language that come from the same root.
The simultaneous borrowing of French and Latin words caused a highly distinctive feature
of modern English vocabulary – triplets – sets of three items, all expressing the same notion but
differing slightly in meaning or style, e.g. hotel, hostel and hospital; strait, straight, and strict;
kingly, royal, regal and others. The Latin caput (head) and its French derivative chief appear in a
series of meanings equally varied, in such words as captain, capital (city), capital (property),
chief (noun and adjective) and chef (in a restaurant). Bryson suggests another triplet – jaunty,
gentle, and genteel, all from the Latin gentilis. But the record holder is almost certainly the Latin
discus which has given us disk, disc, dish, desk, dais, and discus (Bryson 2009: 67).
There are cases when etymological doublets are the result of borrowing different
grammatical forms of the same word, e.g. the comparative degree of Latin ‘super’ was
‘superior’, which was borrowed into English with the meaning ‘high in some quality or rank’.
The superlative degree (Lat. supremus) in English is ‘supreme’ with the meaning ‘outstanding,
prominent’. So, superior and supreme are etymological doublets.
In Early Modern English period the effect of the Renaissance began to be tangibly felt in
England. We see the beginning of a huge influx of Latin and Greek words, with many of them
being learned words imported by scholars well versed in those languages. Latin continued to be
the primary language of scholarship, and most of the borrowed words belong to such fields as
religion, science, law and literature. In literature, some writers used Latin words deliberately to
produce literary or elevated styles. Religious terms of this period include: collect, mediator, and
redeemer. Legal terms include: client, conviction, and subpoena. Those connected with
scholastic activities are library, theory, metaphor and simile. Examples of scientific vocabulary
are equal, dissolve, essence, medicine, etc. The law, for example, has taken many terms from
Latin, e.g. ad litem (‘in a lawsuit’), bona fide (‘with good faith’), ad hock (‘done for a specific
purpose’), prima facie (‘at first impression’), subpoena (‘under penalty’ – i.e. to attend court’),
etc. Medicine, on the other hand, has a tendency to borrow words from Greek: an inflammatory
disease ends in -itis (peritonitis, bronchitis), a surgical removal ends in -ectomy (hysterectomy,
vasectomy), the medical care of particular groups -iatrics (paediatrics, geriatrics).
A number of terms were borrowed from Greek via Latin, and the influence on English
was largely lexical and conceptual with some orthographic and other effects. As noted by
McArthur, for speakers of English, Greek has been traditionally perceived as remote, esoteric
and yet worth some respect (McArthur 1999: 453): compare the idiom It’s Greek to me (I can’t
understand it) and the saying The Greeks had a word for it (expressing a traditional view of the
richness of the language). Greek words, word-forming patterns and word elements were adopted
and adapted into Latin and passed through it into many Indo-European languages. The
significant influx was in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, e.g. rhetorical, catalogue,
analytical, dogma, psychology, stratagem, synonym, pseudonym and others.
Sometimes a Latin or Greek adjective was adopted, but the native one was kept as well,
so one can choose between motherly and maternal, earthly and terrestrial, timely and temporal.
Borrowings from classical languages continued well into the Modern English period. At
the time English borrowed words and morphemes from Latin and changed them into new words
which did not exist in classical Latin. Such words are termed Neo-Latin and they were used
literally or for the purpose of expressing scientific ideas to form the basis for the majority of
modern scientific terminology. This was a time when terminology, or what is known as a kind of
terminological ‘lingua franca’ used as a means of international communication, was coined. If
we consider the same terms in different languages, their ‘international dimension’ is immediately
obvious:

a) Linguistic terms derived from Greek:

English French German Ukrainian

Phonetics phonetigue Phonetik фонетика

Paradigm paradigme Paradigma парадигма
Morphology morphologie Morphologie морфологія
Deixis deixis Deixis дейксис
Synthetic synthetigue Synthetisch синтетичний

b) Linguistic terms derived from Latin:

English French German Ukrainian

Intonation intonation Intonation інтонація

Article article Artikel артикль
Function function Funktion функція
Articulation articulation Artikulation артикуляція
Inflexion flexion Flexion флексія

The peculiarities of the national metalanguage come to the fore when a sequence of
international terms is broken by a nationally based term. The following cognates can be used as
an illustration:

English French German Ukrainian

Mark marque Merkmal знак

Neutralization neutralization Aufhebung нейтралізація
Timbre timbre Klangfarbe тембр
 The two variants – the nationally based and the international one – can co-exist, functioning
side by side:

English Ukrainian

Temporal часовий, темпоральний

Vocative кличний відмінок, вокатив
Аttributive означальний, атрибутивний
Transitivity перехідність, транзитивність
Inflexion закінчення, флексія
Definition визначення, дефініція

Not only words, but morphemes of classical origin were borrowed into English as well.
Moreover, such neo-classical words are used abundantly not only in international terminology,
but also in other spheres of modern life.
A number of compound words were formed from roots taken from the classical languages
(Greek and Latin) and put together to form, for the most part, new words that were unknown in
classical Greek and Latin. They are known as ‘neo-classical compounds’, e.g.:
Anthro- (human) + -morphic (in the form of);
Biblio-(book) + -graphy (writing);
Bio- (life) + -logy (study);
Neuro-(nerve) + -algia (pain);
Tele-(distant) + -pathy (feeling);
Xeno-(foreigner) + -phobia (fear).
The adoption of a great number of foreign words led to the emergence of hybrid words in the
English vocabulary. Hybrids are words whose elements come from more than one language:
television (from Greek tele-, Latin vision), jollification (from English jolly-, Latin -ification)
(OCTEL: 490). There are two basic types of forming hybrid words: 1) a foreign base is
combined with a native suffix, e.g.: colorless, uncertain; 2) a native base is combined with a
foreign affix, e.g. drinkable, ex-husband. There are also many hybrid compounds, such as
schoolboy (Greek + English), blackguard (English + French). Many hybrids used to be
considered barbarisms. Some of them have not survived; others are now part of the language.
Hybridization has grown steadily in the 20th century, with such words as genocide, hypermarket,
microwave, homophobe, biodegradable, photo-shop, megastar and others. It is particularly
common where English is used alongside other languages.

TASK 1.
(1) Specify the period of the following Latin borrowings and point out the structural and
semantic features of the words from each period:
Wall, cheese, intelligent, candle, major, moderate, priest, school, street, cherry,
phenomenon, nun, plum, pear, pepper, datum, cup, status, wine, philosophy, method.

(2) Arrange the following Latin loan words into groups according to the time of
borrowing:
Altar, angel, animal, ass, beet, bishop, butter, camp, candle, cap, chalk, cross, cup, devil,
dish, for, genius, inch, index, item, junior, linen, maximum, mile, mill, monk, mute, oil, palm,
pea, peach, pear, pepper, pine, plant, plum, port, pound, priest, psalter, school, senior,
series, stratum, street, tiger, veto, wine.
 (3) Provide neutral English equivalents for the following abbreviations of Latin origin:
A.D.(Anno Domini), a.m. (ante meridiem), e.g. (exempli gratia), etc. (et cetera), i.e. (id est), lb
(libra, librae), NB (nota bene), PS ( post scriptum), op. cit (opere citato), p.a. (per annum), p.m.
(post meridiem), v.v.(vice versa).
4. Scandinavian loanwords in English

From the end of the 8 th century to the middle of the 11th century, Britain suffered from several
Danish or Viking raids, which in 878 resulted in the occupation of a great part of the country.
The linguistic effect of the Danish conquest was a contribution of a great many Scandinavian
words to the English vocabulary.
Since the varieties of Old Norse spoken by the Vikings were close to English, the
Scandinavian invaders did not have too many difficulties in making themselves understood, and
the contact between the invaders and the natives was intense. Given the fact that the two
languages, Old Norse and Old English, were so similar, the perception of Old Norse words as
foreign may not have been high. In many cases the forms in both languages were similar (due to
their generic relationship) and so cannot be retrospectively distinguished. However, there are
certain characteristic features of Scandinavian as opposed to English which are reliable in
identifying borrowings. The most evident one is the consonant sound cluster [sk]. In Old English
it was palatalized at an early stage; in Scandinavian, this sequence was retained in its
unpalatalized form. This means that the native English words have [sh]: ship, shin, fish, while the
Scandinavian loans have [sk]: score, scowl, scrape, scrub, sky, skirt, skill, bask, whisk.
The vowel in a word can also be an indication of the Scandinavian borrowing. Thus, the Old
English diphthongs were replaced by long vowels, but in Old Norse they remained and this fact
can explain an unexpected vocalism in some later English words such as dairy, die, hale, swain.
Due to the fact that the Scandinavian invaders were in close contact with the native English
population, loan words could be found in all spheres of everyday life. All in all, there are about
2000 Scandinavian loanwords in English, which can be grouped into word classes :
1) Nouns: anger, bag, booth, bulwark, cake, cart, club, crook, dirt, egg, fellow, fir, fog,
gate, gun, gap, guess, harbour, husband, kid, leg, link, race, lump, rug, reef, scales,
skin, slang, snob, window, wind.
2) Verbs: blend, call, cast, clip, crave, crawl, cut, dash, die, droop, gape, grasp, give,
glitter, happen, hit, hurry, jump, kick, lift, leak, nag, raise, rid scare, sniff, struggle,
stumble, take, wag, want, welcome.
3) Adjectives: awkward, big, cozy, flat, happy, nasty, odd, shy, sly, tight, tipsy, ugly,
wrong, weak.
4) Pronouns: they, them, their, same, both.
Sometimes Scandinavian loans involve a little more than the substitution of one word for
another, but some borrowings expressed new concepts (such as certain Scandinavian legal terms)
or new things (for various kinds of Viking warship) (Jackson, Zé Amvela: 43). A large number
of duplicate words also arose from this contact. In some cases the OE word was retained, in
others it was an ON (i.e. Old Norse) borrowing, as egg vs. OE ey, sister vs. OE sweoster, etc. In
a number of cases both words survived, but while OE words are standard, their ON equivalents
tend to be dialectal: yard vs. garth, church vs. kirk, leap vs. laup, turnip vs. neep, alley vs.
vennel, true vs. trigg. All these dialect forms are used in Scotland or the North of England.
Doublets are similar in their phonetic form as can be recognized from the examples above.
However, in many cases there are loans which have developed a certain difference in meaning:

OE ON

whole hale
shriek screak
ditch dike
rear raise
craft skill
shirt skirt
ill sick

The extent of Scandinavian influence on English can be determined by looking at the place
names of Scandinavian origin in Britain. There are a great many places with the suffix -by
(meaning ‘village’): Fleckeby, Appleby, Derby, Ashby, Schysby; the suffix -toft (meaning ‘a piece
of ground or homestead’): Eastoft, Nortoft, Brimtoft; the suffix -thwaite (meaning ‘an isolated
piece of land or clearing’) as in Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Satterthwaite.
Though borrowings from Scandinavian are not numerous, they are part and parcel of the
English vocabulary. There is a great deal of truth to Otto Jespersen’s words: “…Scandinavian
loan-words are homely expressions for things and actions of everyday importance; their
character is utterly democratic. Just as it is impossible to speak or write in English about higher
intellectual or emotional subjects or about fashionable mundane matters without drawing largely
upon the French (and Latin) elements, in the same manner Scandinavian words will crop up
together with the Anglo-Saxon ones in any conversation on the thousand nothings of daily life or
on the five or six things of paramount importance to high and low alike. An Englishman cannot
thrive or be ill, or die without Scandinavian words; they are to the language what bread and eggs
are to the daily fare (Jespersen 1912: 80).”
It should be mentioned that English continued borrowing from Scandinavian in later periods;
among the more recent borrowings are rug, ski, rune, saga, tungsten, easel and ombudsman.

TASK 2.

(1) Arrange the following Scandinavian borrowings according to the word class
they belong to:

Anger, birth, both, to call, to cast, to clip, to die, to doze, fellow, flat, gate, to get, to
glitter, to happen, happy, to hit, husband, ill, knife, to lift, loose, low, meek, odd, to
raise, root, saga, same, sister, skill, skin, sky, sly, to take, they, though, till, ugly, to
want, weak, window, wing, wrong.

5. French borrowings in English

The Norman Conquest of 1066 had an enormous effect on language development. The
language, spoken by the Normans, known as Norman French became the language of the King’s
court, the government and the new upper social classes. Norman French was therefore the
language of honor, chivalry and justice. Such a context was favorable for the development of
French-English bilingualism: many Normans learned English in their everyday contacts, while
Englishmen learned French to gain advantage from the aristocracy. Indeed, Matthew of
Westminster said, “Whoever was unable to speak French was considered a vile and contemptible
person by the common people” (1263).
There were three periods of French borrowings. The first, from about 1066 to 1250 represents
the height of the Norman power. French was the language of the aristocracy and therefore also
the language of prestige, government and polite social intercourse. English was the language of
the common folk. There were not many French borrowings at that time, since English was used
largely in its own, low-level settings, and French and English speakers were kept separate.
The second period, roughly from 1250 to 1400, represents the period of the abundant influx
of Norman French borrowings. According to D. Crystal, by the end of the 13 th century, about
10,000 French words had been borrowed into English, and about 75 per cent of them are still in
use (Crystal 1995: 46). These words were quickly assimilated into English. By way of example,
English roots and affixes were readily added to the borrowed French words, e.g. gentle,
borrowed in 1225, is found compounded with an English word, yielding as a result gentlewoman
in 1230 (Baugh and Cable 1993: 444).
French loanwords of that period could be found in all domains, namely those relating to:
1) Law and administration: accuse, advocate, arrest, attorney, constable, court, crime,
deny, goal, jail, judge, justice, prison, punish, verdict.
2) Military affairs: admiral, arms, battle, camp, chivalry, combat, command, defence,
destroy, enemy, navy, penalty, soldier, surrender, traitor, troops.
3) Political life: empire, government, policy, parliament, minister, state, sovereign, crown,
power, administration, office, counsel, mayor, agreement, treaty, reign, civil.
4) Titles and professions: baron, duke, duchess, prince, emperor, count, viscount, butcher,
painter, tailor, barber, carpenter, draper, forester, fruitier, grocer, merchant,
apprentice, surgeon, physician.
5) Religion: abbot, clergy, preach, sacrament, service, tempt, saint, charity, faith,
commandment, baptize, parish, divine, chapel.
6) Cuisine: biscuits, boil, dinner, fry, pastry, pork, roast, soup, stew, spice, sausage, veal,
jelly, salad, juice, sauce.
7) Names of plants: cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, onion, radish, cucumber.
8) Names of precious stones: amethyst, diamond, emerald, pearl, ruby, sapphire, topaz,
turquoise.
9) Fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery, frock, garment, gown, robe,
cotton, fur, button, fashion.
10) Terms for emotional states: ease, disease, joy, delight, felicity, grief, despair, distress,
courage, passion, desire, jealousy, ambition, arrogance, despite, disdain, malice,
envy, certainty, doubt, enjoy, despise, furious.
11) Geography: country, coast, river, valley, lake, mountain, frontier, border, city,
hamlet, village, estate.
The third period of French borrowings is from around 1400 onwards. Its feature is that,
unlike the loanwords of the first two periods, which expressed the core notions and became
quite nativised (it takes some effort to imagine that the words like arm, car, case, change,
clear, dance, fine, line, finish used to be aliens in English). The later borrowings from French
were more distant from the core, being more refined and sophisticated, with their evident
‘French flavor’. Note the spelling and pronunciation of some of them: ballet, statuesque,
cliché, coup d’état, motif, format, trousseau, lingerie, rouge, avant-garde, vis-á-vis, etiquette.
Words that were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French
literature, are not so numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. These
borrowings fall into the four broad categories:
1) Words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatoire, nuance, vaudeville;
2) Words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;
3) Words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manoeuvre.
4) Words relating to food and cooking: ragout, sauté, hors d’oeuvre, cuisine;
French borrowings which came into English after 1650 retained their spelling, e.g. the
consonants p, t, s are not pronounced at the end of the word (buffet, coup, debris). The typical
French word combination of letters -eau can be found in such borrowed words as gateau,
chateau, bureau, art nouveau and the like. Some of the diagraphs1 retain their French
pronunciation: ch is pronounced as [ʃ] , e.g. chic, chef, parachute; qu is pronounced as [k], e. g.
bouquet, quartet; ou is pronounced as [u], e. g. coupe, boutique, soup.
It is evident that this heavy borrowing from French had several effects on English. Firstly,
native English words were replaced by the borrowed ones. Secondly, native and loan words were
retained with a differentiation in meaning (swine – pork, house – mansion, calf – veal, sheep –
mutton, hearty – cordial). Another consequence was the emergence of etymological twins
(borrowings from different languages that are historically descended from the same root), e. g.
senior (Latin), sir (French); captain (Latin), chieftain (French); canal (Latin), channel (French);
secure (Latin), sure (French). Some of them had originated from the same language, but where
borrowed at different periods, e.g. cavalry (Norm. French), chivalry (Par. French); travel (Norm.
French), travail (Par. French); chief (Norm. French), chef (Par. French). Etymological twins are
also known as doublets, and may occur as triplets, quadruplets and so on, as in: hospital (Latin),
hostel (Norm. French), hotel (Par. French); right (Germanic), rich (Celtic), regalia (Latin), reign
(Norm. French), royal (Par. French), real (Portuguese).
Finally, as a result of Middle English borrowing extensively from French and Latin,
Modern English abounds in synonyms of three levels: informal (English), literary (French) and
formal (Latin), as in:

English French Latin

ask question interrogate
rise mount ascend
fire flame conflagration
holy sacred consecrated
end finish terminate
hatred enmity animosity
kingly royal regal

The general rule of thumb is that the synonym from the Latinate strata tends to be used in
more formal contexts than the one from the Anglo-Saxon stratum, with the French equivalent
found somewhere in between.
French influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, since most
documents were written by French scribes as the local population was mainly illiterate. Runic
letters, remaining in English after the Latin alphabet was borrowed, were substituted by Latin
letters and combinations of letters, e. g. the letter v was introduced for the voiced consonant [v]
instead of f in the intervocalic position (lufian – love), the diagraph ch was introduced to denote
the sound [t∫] as in chest before the front vowels where it had been palatalized, and the diagraph
sh was introduced instead of the combination sc to denote the sound [∫] as in ship etc. As it was
difficult for French scribes to copy English texts, they replaced the letter u before v, m and n with
the letter o to avoid too many vertical lines: son instead of sunu, love instead of luvu.

TASK 3

(1) Pick out Norman and Parisian borrowings from the following sentences.

1. It was while they were having coffee that a waitress brought a message to their
table. 2. I know nothing about the film world and imagined it to be a continuous
1
A pair of characters used together to represent a single sound, such as th in thing, thorn, through etc.
 ferment of personal intrigue. 3. A limousine and chauffeur, available at any time from
the bank’s pool of cars, were perquisites of the executive vice-president’s job, and
Alex enjoyed them. 4. His bandaged head was silhouetted in the light from the little
window. 5. Apart from being an unforgivable break of etiquette, you only make
yourself extremely ridiculous. 6. However, this John Davanent evidently knew more
about the army and commerce than either of them.

(2) Arrange the following French borrowings into: a) law terms; b) military terms; c)
religious terms; d) cookery terms; e) art terms; f) medical terms.

To accuse, admiral, army, arrest, art, bacon, banner, battle, to boil, cadet, clergy, color,
conquest, court, defense, dinner, fatigue, fortress, fruit, genre, gout, image, jelly, judge,
juice, malady, music, mutton, ornament, pain, paradise, pastry, pulse, remedy, saint,
sausage, siege, surgeon, talent, to taste, toast, veal, vinegar, war.

6. German and Dutch loans

From the Middle Ages on, various kinds of contacts have existed between the Dutch and the
British. Since the Dutch had a long naval tradition and were excellent seafarers and traders,
English borrowed from Dutch a lot of nautical terms. Among these are ahoy, bowline, bowsprit,
buoy, commodore, cruise, deck, keel, leak, moor, reef, skipper, smuggle, yacht. The Dutch and
Flemish were also famous for their cloth making and associated commercial activities. Together
with cloth, they exported the words related to cloth-making: cambric, duck, jacket, nap, and
spool. Other commercial terms include: dollar, groat, guilder, and mart.
Loanwords also came into English through contacts between American and Dutch settlers,
who lived close to each other, sharing the territory and the languages. The diversity of contacts
accounts for the wide range of loanwords: boodle, boss, cookie, cranberry, dope, lowery, Santa
Clause (Sante Klaas, Saint Nicholas), spook, waffle.
Another region of contacts was in South Africa, where Afrikaans – South African Dutch –
was spoken. From this language English has borrowed a number of lexical items, among them
being apartheid, commandeer, commando, outspan, spoor, trek, veld and a few others.
The contacts between English and High German have been somewhat less productive.
Words have been borrowed in specialist fields, such as geology and mineralogy: cobalt, feldspar,
nickel, quarts, seltzer, zinc. Some food and drink terms include delicatessen, frankfurter, noodle,
sauerkraut, schnapps, strudel. German borrowings can be easily identified in English by their
phonetic form, e.g.: blitz, ersatz, Gestalt, hinterland, leitmotiv, rucksack, umlaut, waltz,
Weltanschauung. They also preserve morphological and graphical features of the original
language and are non-assimilated.

7. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian borrowings in English

Apart from Latin and French, English has borrowed from other Romance languages, such
as Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Many Spanish words have come into English from three
primary sources: many of them entered American English in the days of Mexican and Spanish
cowboys working in what is now the U.S. Southwest. Words of Caribbean origin entered English
by way of trade. And finally, since the intermingling of cultures has expanded Spanish diet, it
has also spread Spanish vocabulary for the names of foods which had no English equivalents.
Many of the words changed their meaning upon entering English, often by adopting a narrower
meaning than in the original language.
Spanish and Portuguese borrowings could be arranged into the following groups:

1.Food and cookery terms: apricot, avocado, banana (the word, originally of African origin,
entered English via either Spanish or Portuguese), barbecue (from barbacoa, a word of
Caribbean origin), tomato, vanilla.
2. Military and political terms: armada, conquistador, comrade, embargo, guerilla, junta.
3. Nature phenomena: El Niňo, hurricane, savanna, tornado.
4. Trade and business terms: cargo, embargo, bonanza, El Dorado
5. Names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, habanera, guitar.
A good mixture of English and Spanish can be observed in the so-called Spanglish (a
blend of English + Spanish) – a variety of English heavily influenced by Spanish, commonly
spoken in US Hispanic communities and the British communities in Argentina. For example, a
fluent bilingual speaker addressing another bilingual speaker, might indulge in code switching, 2
as in the sentence: ‘I’m afraid I can’t report at the meeting next week porque tengo una
obligación de negocious en Chicago, pero espero que I’ll do it a week after’.
The influence of Italian on English is mostly lexical and has continued over many
centuries. Since the medieval times, Italian has had a strong influence on French, as a result of
which many borrowings into English have had a distinctly Gallic aspect, as with battalion (16th
c: from battalion, from battaglione), caprice (17th c: from caprice, from capriccio, the skip of a
goat, a sudden sharp movement), frigate (16th c: from frigate, from fregata), picturesque (17th c:
from pittoresque, from pittoresco, with assimilation to picture).
Direct borrowings fall into four broad categories:
1) Terms from the old pan-European tradition of using Italian to discuss and describe music:
adagio, alto, andante, basso, bel canto, cello, coloratura, concerto, contralto, crescendo,
diminuendo, duet, fortissimo, libretto, pianoforte, pizzicato, scherzo, solo, sonata, violine.
2) Comparable literary, architectural, artistic, and cultural terms, such as canto, conversazione,
cupola, extravaganza, fresco, novella, palazzo, stanza, tarantella.
3) Internationalized culinary terms, such as lasagne, minestrone, mozzarella, pasta, pizza,
ravioli, spaghetti, vermicelli.
4) A variety of social words, including alfresco, bimbo, bravo, confetti, dilettante, fascist, fiasco,
gazette, ghetto, gigolo, graffiti, incognito, mafia, regatta.
Some loans have adapted the spelling, such as macaroni (from Italian maccherony). In
addition, some words have moved – to a greater or lesser extent – from their original area of
application to a wider use, as with crescendo, piano, solo and others.

8. Words of Slavic Origin in the English Language

Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of
the Slavic peoples, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of
central Europe, and in northern part of Asia. Scholars traditionally divide them into three main
branches:
1) East Slavic, further subdivided into Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian;
2) West Slavic: Czech, Slovak, Polish and a few others;
3) South Slavic, which further subdivides into:
a) Western subgroup composed of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovene;
b) Eastern subgroup composed of Bulgarian, and Macedonian.
2
A linguistic term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language or language variety in conversation
 Most scholars agree that despite a comparable extent of historical proximity, the Germanic
languages demonstrate a less significant Slavic influence, partly because Slavic migration was
mostly headed south rather than west and partly for political reasons3.
The Slavic nations have made a contribution through the millions of immigrants to the
English-speaking nations. Thus Canadian English features a number of borrowings from
Ukrainian, e. g.: babka, bandura, borscht, chernozem, cossak, hetman, holubtsi, hopak, kasha,
pysanka. As is often the case with loanwords, many have ended up with a changed form
(borscht) and/or semantics (kasha). Interestingly, the loanword kasha, which in Eastern Europe
has a general meaning of ‘a meal prepared from crushed grain’, has acquired a specialized
meaning of buckwheat or food prepared from it. American English shows a more significant
Slavic influence due to Yiddish, which embraced a significant number of Slavic words. The term
‘Ameridish’ is used to describe new words, or new meanings of existing Yiddish words, created
by English-speaking persons with some knowledge of Yiddish. Some of these words have the
Slavic diminutive suffix – chik(-ik)(-ic): boychick – boy, young man; nudnik – a pest, ‘pain in the
neck’, a bore (from Polish or Ukrainian ‘nudnyi’, ‘nyduty’); alrightnik – a male or female
individual who has been successful; a nouveau riche; bulbenik – an actor, who muffs his lines
(from bilbul – mixup (alternative theory – from bulba (Ukrainian)– potato).

Although, all in all, Slavic borrowings constitute an insignificant amount vis-a-vis loanwords
from other sources, it is Russian borrowings that account for the majority of loanwords of Slavic
origin in English. It must be noted that not all borrowings believed to have derived from a
Russian source are unequivocally Russian in origin: some of them are found in other Slavic
languages and it is often difficult to determine exactly whether they have made their way into
English from Russian, Polish, Czech or Ukrainian (e.g. borscht). Besides, quite a few borrowings
from other languages may have entered English via Russian (Ukr. hopak → gopak). Many
Russian borrowings are used to designate Russian culture-specific objects, phenomena and
events: agitprop, Bolshevik, kadet, knout, kolkhoz, kommissar, kulak, Menshevik, perestroika,
czar, czarina, ukase, etc. Nevertheless, there is a body of Russian loanwords that have secured
their place in mainsream English and may be used independently of any Russian or Eastern
European context: apparatchik, gulag, Kalashnikov, mammoth, troika, vodka and a few others.
The earliest loanwords from Russian are attested from the 16 th century: boyar, czar, kvass,
muzhik, rouble. The 18th and 19th centuries saw the following Russian words enter English:
balalaika, borzoi, dacha, kulak, pogrom, samovar, troika, vodka. More recently, in the 20 th
century, some borrowings from the Soviet times referring to political issues have gained a wider
currency: apparatchik, babushka, Bolshevik, glasnost, gulag, Kalashnikov, (the) Kremlin,
perestroika, refusenik, samizdat, soviet, sputnik, troika.

As was demonstrated above, loanwords tend to alter their semantics in the ‘host’ language. The
word babushka is an interesting case in point. In Russian it means an old lady or grandmother. In
English, this loanword has altered its meaning to ‘a headscarf tied under the chin’. This semantic
transformation was possible due to metonymic processes – older Russian women, especially in
rural areas, traditionally wore (and still wear) kerchiefs on the head.

An important point to be made is that the meanings of loanwords – just like those of regular
words – tend to evolve with time. A notable example is the word troika. Its first attested use in
English was in 1842 in the meaning of a cart or sleigh drawn by three horses abreast. Since the
19th century, however, the word has developed another meaning, which is ‘a group of three
people or organizations associated in power’. This seems to be the better understood and the
3
According to some sources, there was a tendency to diminish Slavic contribution to Germanic languages
[www.thefullwiki.org/Slavonic_languages]
more common meaning of troika now, as in Negotiations with the newly-established troika (the
IMF, the EC and the European Central Bank) are well under way.
As regards other Slavic loanwords, some words have entered English from Polish. It must
be noted that most Polish borrowings tend to be items designating Polish cuisine, types of Polish
folk dances and music and several other realia 4. Some loanwords have entered English directly,
others – via other languages: German, French, Russian, Yiddish etc. Here is a small sampling of
loanwords from Polish: chapka – ‘the type of a hat worn by the 19th century Polish cavalry’, Sejm
– ‘the lower house of the Polish parliament’, kiszka – ‘a dish made from stuffed intestine’,
kielbasa – ‘spicy smoked sausage’, kluski – ‘noodles prepared in an ethnic Polish manner’,
pierogi – ‘semicircular dumplings with various fillings’ etc.
A few words were borrowed from Czech, the most famous being robot – a word, coined by
Karel Čapek, the Czech novelist, short-story writer and playwright. It might be surprising that
the word dollar can be traced back to 1519, when it was a monetary unit in Bohemia. The Czech
word tolar is a borrowing and adaptation from the German Joachimsthaler, connected to the
place where the silver coin was minted (name of the town in Bohemia). The other two words
worth mentioning are pistol and howitzer (a large gun with a short barrel) – perhaps an allusion
to the Czech tradition in precision weapon making.
A close examination of the lexical transfer between English and Slavic languages has
enabled Danko Ŝipka to draw the following conclusions: 1) Lexical and cultural influence from
subordinate to dominant language is by and large limited by the culture-bound items. Borrowed
vocabulary items remain marginal in the overall English vocabulary. Several exceptions from
this trend, i.e. words which have made it to the core of the English vocabulary as a result of the
butterfly effect and cannot be accounted for by some general trend; 2) Lexical influence of each
particular language is directly proportionate to the language size. Exceptions from this general
trend occur, as demonstrated by East Slavic languages, when one language clearly dominates
others; 3) The timeline of borrowing is directly proportionate with the growth and deepening of
the international communication networks of the 20th century (Ŝipka 2004: 353-365).
If we examine the English vocabulary in its totality, it is apparent that a great proportion of it
consists of words of ultimately foreign origin. Yet, according to Algeo, quite a few such words
were actually formed in English, so the extremely high percentage of borrowing sometimes
reported for English seems to be exaggerated (Algeo 1991: 4).
Algeo divides borrowings into three types: simple loans, adapted loans and loan translations.
Simple loans are words adopted directly into English, sometimes with minor changes in
pronunciation to make them conform to English sound norms and patterns. Occasionally,
spelling changes of a similar kind are also required but with no major change of form. E.g. artel,
glasnost, (from Russian), dumka (from either Czech or Ukrainian), and polka (from Polish).
Adapted loans, on the other hand, involve some morphological change (change of form),
rather than slight modifications of phonology and orthography. In other words, they are adapted
from their foreign word pattern into a more native (English) one. For example, a foreign ending
may be omitted and replaced with a native suffix, e. g. constructivism (Rus.
«конструктивизм»), akathisia (from Czech akathiste).
Loan translations or calques differ from the above borrowings in that they are not foreign
in their form but in the meaning they convey, i.e. instead of borrowing the form of a foreign
word, English sometimes borrows its meaning, rendering the foreign sense by suitable words in
the form of literary translation already part of the English vocabulary. In calque or loan
translation the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexeme itself. The word loanword is
itself a calque of the German Lehnwort, while calque is a loanword from French. Some
examples of calques are: wall newspaper (from Russian «стенгазета»), godless (from Russian
4
Realia are words and expressions that denote culture-specific objects and artifacts
«безбожник»), foregrounding (from Czech aktualisace). Often calques exist alongside the
corresponding simple loans they translate, e.g. plum pox and the Bulgarian sharka (a virus
affecting some fruit trees).

9. Borrowings from other languages

The flexibility of English ensures it continuously expands its vocabulary by taking in

loanwords from around the world. Some recent borrowings include: ciabatta (Ital. ‘a type of
open-textured bread made of olive oil’), gite (Fr. ‘self-catering holiday cottage for let in
France’), intifada (Arab. ‘Palestinian uprising against Israel’), juggernaut (Hindi ‘a very large
lorry for transporting goods’), karaoke (Jap. ‘an entertainment in which people take it in turns to
sing well-known songs over a pre-recorded backing tape’), nouvelle cuisine (Fr. ‘a style of
preparing food, with light sauces and unusual combinations of flavours and garnishes’),
ombudsman (Swed. ‘a commissioner who acts as independent referee between individual citizens
and the government, banks etc.’), paparazzi (Ital. ‘a freelance photographer who specializes in
candid camera shots of famous people and often invades their privacy to obtain such
photographs’), perestroika (Rus. ‘a policy used to describe the social, political, and economic
changes in the former USSR in the 1980s’), salsa (Span. ‘a type of Latin American dance music
or a type of (hot) sauce in Mexican cuisine’), tikka (Punjabi ‘of chicken or lamb, marinated in
spices and then dry-roasted’), wok (Chin. ‘a type of cookware’) etc.
English still borrows and is likely to continue borrowing from other languages. The terms
borrow and loanword, although traditional, conflict with the ordinary meaning of those words
because nothing is returned to the donor languages. However, note that this metaphor is not
isolated to the concept of loanwords, but also found in the idiom "to borrow an idea." An
additional issue with the term loanword is that it implies that the loaning is limited to one single
word as opposed to phrases such as déjà vu, an English loanword from French. While this phrase
may be used as one lexical item by English speakers, that is to say, an English speaker would not
say only déjà to convey the meaning associated with the full term déjà vu, in the donor language
(French), speakers would be aware of the phrase consisting of two words.

1. Assimilation of borrowings

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) the language
group the word was borrowed from (the assimilation is easier if the word belongs to the same or
closely related group of languages); b) oral or written way of borrowing (words borrowed orally
are assimilated quicker); c) how often the word is used in the language (the greater the frequency
of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated); d) how long the word has been in the language (the
longer its time in the language, the more assimilated it is).
Accordingly, borrowings fall into the following groups: a) completely assimilated; b)
partially assimilated; c) non-assimilated (barbarisms).
Completely assimilated borrowings are those that are not perceived as foreign at all.
They are mostly found among older loanwords.
They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e. g. cheese, street, wall, or wine.
Among Scandinavian borrowed words we find such frequently used nouns as husband, fellow,
gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and
wrong. Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequently used.
Nowadays it takes some effort to imagine that such everyday words as table, chair, face, figure,
finish, matter used to be alien to English.
Partially assimilated borrowed words can be broken down into:
 a) Loan words that are not assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and
concepts specific to the country from which they come. They may denote items of clothing:
mantilla, sombrero; names of titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, toreador; names of
vehicles: caique (Turk.), rickshaw (Chin.); food and drinks: pilaf (Persian), sherbet (Arab.);
foreign currency: hryvnia (Ukr.), rupee (Ind.), zloty (Pol.), peseta (Sp.).
b) Borrowed words that are not assimilated grammatically, for example, nouns
borrowed from Latin and Greek which keep their original plural forms: bacillus – bacilli, crisis –
crises, formula – formulae, stratum – strata, index – indices. Some of these can also take
typically English plural forms, but in that case there may be a difference in lexical meaning, as in
indices: indexes, mice: mouses.
c) Borrowed words that are not completely assimilated phonetically. The French
words borrowed after 1650 afford good examples. These words are fairly numerous and
variegated. Some of them keep the accent on the final syllable: machine, cartoon, regime, hotel.
In others, the final consonant is not pronounced, e.g. ballet, buffet, corps. Yet another group may
keep a diacritic mark5: café, cliché, fiancé. Specifically French diagraphs (ch, qu, ou) may be
retained in spelling: bouquet, brioche, chef, nouveau riche.
It goes without saying that these sets are intersecting, i.e. one and the same loanword
often shows incomplete assimilation in several respects simultaneously.
The third group of borrowings comprises the so-called barbarisms, i. e. words from
other languages used by English people in conversation or in writing, but not assimilated in any
way, and for which there are corresponding English equivalents. Examples are the Italian addio,
ciao – ‘goodbye’, the French affiche – for ‘poster’ and coup or coup d’Etat – ‘a sudden seizure
of state power by a small group, the Latin ad libitum – ‘at pleasure’ and the like.
These words are on the outskirts of the literary language, but they are used for certain
stylistic purposes. Many of them have their synonyms in the literary language, e.g. chic –
‘stylish’, bon mot – ‘a clever witty saying’, ad hoc – ‘for this particular purpose’, impromptu –
‘improvised, without preparation, unplanned’.

5
A diacritic mark is a small mark above, under or through a letter indicating a foreign word and a different
pronunciation