Etymology and Borrowed Words in English

Key Terms

• Borrowed language includes words taken into English from another language.
• Native/indigenous word are those words created by native speakers.
• Origin of a word refers to the language the word came from.

What is a Word?

• A word is a unit of language, spoken or written, that carries meaning.
• Words consist of one or more sounds or symbols.
• Words are used to express ideas, emotions and communicate information.

What is Etymology?

• Etymology is the study of the origin and development of words over time.
• Etymology traces a word's evolution from its earliest known use to its current usage.
• Etymology looks at linguistics, cultural and historical factors that have influenced a word's meaning and usage.

Tasks of Etymology

• Comprehend the historical nature of the English vocabulary
• Examine the origin and sources of vocabulary units
• Reveal the historical causes of the appearance and development of English words
• Comprehend the role of native and borrowed elements in the expansion of the English vocabulary
• Appreciate the role of English in intercultural communication.

Origin of Words

• Any language's vocabulary consists of native words and borrowed words
• In the 15th century, English came into contact with Latin, French, and Old Norse (Scandinavian).
• Around 70% of English vocabulary is borrowed.
• It is very difficult to identify borrowed words from indigenous words: "street", "face", and "school" are all borrowed.
• Although the word "table" is borrowed from French, its origin is Latin.

Word Examples Over Time

• "Meat" in Modern English means animal flesh used as food.
• "Meat" in Old English had a more general meaning for food.
• "Silly" in Old English meant happy
• "Silly" in Modern English means foolish or stupid

Basic Features of Native Words

• A native word belongs to the original English stock, as known from the Old English period.
• Native words subdivide into those of Indo-European stock and those of Germanic origin
• Germanic tribes brought native words have been brought to the British Isles in the 5th century. These tribes included Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
• The law code of King Ethelbert of Kent is the first written document in Old English, dating from the early 602s.

Areas of the Native Lexicon

• Indo-European origin words are mainly kinship terms, terms from nature, names of animals/birds, parts of the human body, and frequent verbs.
• A large portion of native words are formed by Germanic stock.
• These Germanic stock words have parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, and Icelandic, such as "summer", "winter", "rain", "house", "bridge", "life", "to learn", and "to see."
• Native words make up 80% of the 500 most frequent words in English and are characterized by a high lexical grammatical valency.

Examples of Native Words

• Man, woman, boy, brother, wife, son
• Sleep, read, die, dream, work, write, eat
• Bird, hare, rabbit, horse, goose, hen
• Kind, keen, long, hard, heavy, hearty
• This, that, the a, to, or, but, also, with
• What, why, who, where, how
• One, two, three, four, five....
• Bread, soup, apple, pie, milk

Classical Heritage

• Latin appears in almost every language.
• Et cetera means "and the rest".
• E.g. - Exempli gracia means "for the sake of example".
• A.M – Anti Meridiem.
• P.M - Post Meridiem.
• Greek and Latin elements include words related to calculation and measurement such as kilogram, centimeter, quadrillion, globalization privatization, and social security

Frequent Loan Words

• Greek loan words include analysis, anatomy, angel, prophet
• Latin loan words include butter, area, bonus, audio, city
• French loan words include river, price, money, coin, double
• Arabic loan words include alcohol, algebra, coffee, cotton
• Italian loan words include banquet, bergamot, biscuit, candy
• Indian loan words include guru, sari, avatar, pyjamas
• American Indian loan words include canoe, moccasin, Turkey

Assimilation of Loans

• The process is a partial or complete adaptation to the phonetical, grammatical, semantic, morphological, and graphical system of the borrowing language
• The degree of assimilation depends on the semantic importance, frequency and length of use of the borrowed word
• The assimilation process involves changes in sound-form, morphological structure, grammatical characteristics, meaning, and usage

Phonetic Assimilation of Borrowings

• Some French borrowings have retained their stress on the last syllable, such as cartoon and garage.
• Russian loans change stress, for example, bol'shevik, 'Moscow.
• Some borrowings retain unusual sound combinations as in the French / wa:/
• Old English "scyrte" comes from Germanic and evolved into "shirt", and related to Old Norse "skyrta", which became "skirt" and means 'short garment'

Grammatical Assimilation

• Grammatical assimilation involves changing grammatical categories and paradigms of borrowed words
• Grammatical assimilation changes a word's morphological structure based on analogy with other English words
• The Latin suffix -us (barbarous) was replaced with the suffixes -ous or -al: bararus – barbarous; botanicus – botanical

Lexical Assimilation

• Lexical assimilation includes changes in semantic structure and the formation of derivatives
• Polysemantic words are usually adopted in only one or two of their meanings
• An example is the Spanish word cargo, which adopted the meaning 'the goods carried in a ship' but not debt or position
• A borrowing sometimes acquires new meaning that wasn't original to it
• An example of this is the French word mouvoir which means "to move", but gained different meanings after being adopted into the English language.

Degrees of Assimilation

• Completely assimilated borrowed words: L. wall, cheese, street, wine; Sc. husband, root, fellow; Fr. courage, -age, -ance, -ess.
• Partially Assimilated borrowed words: sherbet, sari, sombrero, admiral, piano, repertoire, candy.
• Unassimilated borrowed words or barbarism: Italian: Ciao‘goodbye', French: coup d' etat, bouquet, L. phenomenon. Gr, formula.

Explore grammatical and lexical assimilation in borrowed words and the concept of native words. Understand the role of etymology, the 15th century significance, and Germanic tribes' influence on English lexicon. Identify Latin-derived words and the challenges in distinguishing borrowed from native words.