French borrowings The influence of French on the English spelling.

The largest group of borrowings are French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman Conquest. French influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also it’s spelling, because French scribes wrote documents as the local population was mainly illiterate, and the ruling class was French. Runic letters remaining in English after the Latin alphabet was borrowed were substituted by Latin letters and combinations of letters, e.g. «v» was introduced for the voiced consonant /v/ instead of «f» in the intervocal position /lufian - love/, the digraph «ch» was introduced to denote the sound /ch/ instead of the letter «c» / chest/ before front vowels where it had been palatalized, the digraph «sh» was introduced instead of the combination «sc» to denote the sound /sh/ /ship/, the digraph «th» was introduced instead of the Runic letters «0» and « » /this, thing/, the letter «y» was introduced instead of the Runic letter «3» to denote the sound /j/ /yet/, the digraph «qu» substituted the combination «cw» to denote the combination of sounds /kw/ /queen/, the digraph «ou» was introduced to denote the sound /u:/ /house/ (The sound /u:/ was later on diphthongized and is pronounced /au/ in native words and fully assimilated borrowings). As it was difficult for French scribes to copy English texts they substituted the letter «u» before «v», «m», «n» and the digraph «th» by the letter «o» to escape the combination of many vertical lines /«sunu» - «son», luvu» - «love»/.

Borrowing of French words. There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings:

· a) words relating to government : administer, empire, state, government;

· b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle;

· c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, inquest, sentence, barrister;

· d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery;

· e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl ;

· f) words relating to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew.

Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings:

· a) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville;

· b) words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre;

· c) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;

· d) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

Italian borrowings.

Cultural and trade relations between Italy and England brought many Italian words into English. The earliest Italian borrowing came into English in the 14-th century, it was the word «bank» /from the Italian «banko» - «bench»/. Italian moneylenders and moneychangers sat in the streets on benches. When they suffered losses they turned over their benches, it was called «banco rotta» from which the English word «bankrupt» originated. In the 17-th century some geological terms were borrowed: volcano, granite, bronze, lava. At the same time some political terms were borrowed: manifesto, bulletin.

But mostly Italian is famous by its influence in music and in all Indo-European languages musical terms were borrowed from Italian: alto, baritone, basso, tenor, falsetto, solo, duet, trio, quartet, quintet, opera, operetta, libretto, piano, violin.

Among the 20-th century Italian borrowings we can mention: gazette, incognito, altostrati, fiasco, fascist, dilettante, grotesque, graffitto etc.

Spanish borrowings.

Spanish borrowings came into English mainly through its American variant. There are the following semantic groups of them:

· a) trade terms: cargo, embargo;

· b) names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, habanera, guitar;

· c) names of vegetables and fruit: tomato, potato, tobacco, cocoa, banana, ananas, apricot etc.

Russian borrowings.

There were constant contacts between England and Russia and they borrowed words from one language into the other. Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations, such as: rouble, copeck, pood, sterlet, vodka, sable, and also words relating to nature, such as: taiga, tundra, steppe etc.

There is also a large group of Russian borrowings which came into English through Rushian literature of the 19-th century, such as : Narodnik, moujik, duma, zemstvo. volost, ukase etc, and also words which were formed in Russian with Latin roots, such as: nihilist, intelligenzia, Decembrist etc.

After the Great October Revolution many new words appeared in Russian connected with the new political system, new culture, and many of them were borrowed into English, such as: collectivization. udarnik, Komsomol etc and also translation loans, such as: shock worker, collective farm, five-year plan etc.

One more group of Russian borrowings is connected with perestroika, such as: glasnost, nomenklatura, apparatchik etc.

 

Краткий конспект лекций

More than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings. The majority of these borrowings is fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be hardly distinguished from native words. But now English has become a «giving» language, it has become Lingua franca of the twentieth century.

Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:

1. According to the aspect which is borrowed.

2. According to the degree of assimilation.

3. According to the language from which the word was borrowed.

According to the borrowed aspect there are the following groups: phonetic borrowings, translation loans, semantic borrowings, and morphemic borrowings.

Phonetic borrowings are words borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, the paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are also changed.

Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) translations of some foreign words or expressions.

Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings. Semantic borrowing can appear when an English word was borrowed into some other language, developed there a new meaning and this new meaning was borrowed back into English.

Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language.

According to the degree of assimilation of borrowings, they are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).

Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language.

Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into borrowings non-assimilated semantically, borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, borrowings non-assimilated phonetically, borrowings partly assimilated graphically.

Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated.

According to the borrowed language 3 major groups of borrowings are Romanic, Germanic and Slavonic borrowings.

Words of Romanic origin are Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Many Latin and Greek words came into English during the period when the British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire; during the Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century; during the Middle English period due to the Great Revival of Learning (Scientific words). Classical borrowings continue to appear in Modern English as well.

The largest group of borrowings is French borrowings. Most of them came into English during the Norman Conquest. Words were borrowed from French into English after 1650, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated.

Cultural and trade relations between Italy and England brought many Italian words into English. The earliest Italian borrowing came into English in the 14-th century. In the 17-th century some geological terms were borrowed. At the same time some political terms were borrowed. But mostly Italian is famous by its influence in music and in all Indo-European languages musical terms were borrowed from Italian.

Spanish borrowings came into English mainly through its American variant.

English belongs to the Germanic group of languages and there are borrowings from the Scandinavian, German and Dutch languages, though their number is much less than borrowings from Romanic languages.

By the end of the Old English period English underwent a strong influence of Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian conquest of the British Isles.

There are some 800 words borrowed from German into English.

Holland and England have constant interrelations for many centuries and more than 2000 Dutch borrowings were borrowed into English. Most of them are nautical terms and were mainly borrowed in the 14-th century.

Besides two main groups of borrowings (Romanic and Germanic) there are also borrowings from a lot of other languages. We shall speak about Russian borrowings, borrowings from the language which belongs to Slavonic languages.

Among Slavonic borrowings the most widely spread are Russian borrowings.

There were constant contacts between England and Russia and they borrowed words from one language into the other. Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations and also words relating to nature. There is also a large group of Russian borrowings which came into English through Rushian literature of the 19-th century.

After the Great October Revolution and Prerestroika many new words connected with the new political system were borrowed into English.