Classification of borrowings in Modern English

with other countries, that is why it is very rich

in borrowings. The Roman invasion, the adoption of Cristianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles, the development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary. The majority of these borrowings are fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar, spelling and can be hardly distinguished from native words.

its history. More than two thirds of the English vocabulary

are borrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian, Spanish). Borrowed words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure, by their morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms. It is also characterisitic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.

the aspect which is borrowed,
b) according to the degree of

assimilation,
c) according to the language from which the word was borrowed.

1) Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages, they

are called loan words proper.
Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning.
Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language.

of the word can also be changed.
The position of

the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language.
The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the borrowed word are also changed.
Such words as: labour, travel, table, chair, people are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenklatura, sputnik are phonetic borrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings from Italian etc.

the unit existing in the language is borrowed.
It can

happen when we have two relative languages which have common words with different meanings:
There are semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning «to live» for the word «to dwell» which in Old English had the meaning «to wander». Or the meaning «дар» , «подарок» for the word «gift» which in Old English had the meaning «выкуп за жену».

into some other language, developed there a new meaning and

this new meaning was borrowed back into English:
«Brigade» was borrowed into Russian and formed the meaning «a working collective«,»бригада». This meaning was borrowed back into English as a Russian borrowing. The same is true of the English word «pioneer».

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.
We can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of words - hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin - «goddess», «beautiful» etc.

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on

the following factors:
from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier,
in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker,
how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated,
how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is.

Accordingly, borrowings are subdivided into:

completely assimilated

partly assimilated

non-assimilated (barbarisms).

the language, as the French word «sport» and the native

word «start».
Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs: correct -corrected.
Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion: gate- gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one.

in the borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word

does not bring all its meanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic: the Russian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings.

borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar

to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, e.g. sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc.
b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc.

sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words

these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ ( loss - lose, life - live ).
Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, e.g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e.g. shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization , e.g. German, child.

borrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the

word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound /k/(chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).

Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete

(French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc.

WERE BORROWED
ROMANIC BORROWINGS
Latin borrowings.
Among words of Romanic origin

borrowed from Latin during the period when the British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire, there are such words as: street, port, wall etc. Many Latin and Greek words came into English during the Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century. At this time the Latin alphabet was borrowed which ousted the Runic alphabet. These borrowings are usually called classical borrowings. Here belong Latin words: alter, cross, dean, and Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem.

during the Middle English period due to the Great Revival

of Learning. These are mostly scientific words because Latin was the language of science at the time. These words were not used as frequently as the words of the Old English period, therefore some of them were partly assimilated grammatically, e.g. formula - formulae. Here also belong such words as: memorandum, minimum, maximum, veto etc.

as well. Mostly they are words formed with the help

of Latin and Greek morphemes. There are quite a lot of them in medicine (appendicitis, aspirin), in chemistry (acid, valency, alkali), in technique (engine, antenna, biplane, airdrome), in politics (socialism, militarism), names of sciences (zoology, physics) . In philology most of terms are of Greek origin (homonym, archaism, lexicography).

of them came into English during the Norman conquest. French

influenced not only the vocabulary of English but also its spelling, because documents were written by French scribes 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/.
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.

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 money-lenders and money-changers 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, operette, libretto, piano, violin.
Among the 20-th century Italian borrowings we can mention : gazette, incognitto, autostrada, fiasco, fascist, diletante, grotesque, graffitto etc.

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, tobbaco, cocoa, banana, ananas, apricot etc.
 

group of languages and there are borrowings from Scandinavian, German

and Holland languages, though their number is much less than borrowings from Romanic languages.

underwent a strong influence of Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian

conquest of the British Isles. Scandinavians belonged to the same group of peoples as Englishmen and their languages had much in common. As the result of this conquest there are about 700 borrowings from Scandinavian into English.
Scandinavians and Englishmen had the same way of life,their cultural level was the same, they had much in common in their literature therefore there were many words in these languages which were almost identical, e.g.
ON OE Modern E
syster sweoster sister
fiscr fisc fish
felagi felawe fellow
However there were also many words in the two languages which were different, and some of them were borrowed into English , such nouns as: bull, cake, egg, kid, knife, skirt, window etc, such adjectives as: flat, ill, happy, low, odd, ugly, wrong, such verbs as : call, die, guess, get, give, scream and many others.
Even some pronouns and connective words were borrowed which happens very seldom, such as : same, both, till, fro, though, and pronominal forms with «th»: they, them, their.
Scandinavian influenced the development of phrasal verbs which did not exist in Old English, at the same time some prefixed verbs came out of usage, e.g. ofniman, beniman. Phrasal verbs are now highly productive in English /take off, give in etc.

from German into English. Some of them have classical roots,

e.g. in some geological terms, such as: cobalt, bismuth, zink, quarts, gneiss, wolfram. There were also words denoting objects used in everyday life which were borrowed from German: iceberg, lobby, rucksack, Kindergarten etc.
In the period of the Second World War the following words were borrowed: Volkssturm, Luftwaffe, SS-man, Bundeswehr, gestapo, gas chamber and many others. After the Second World War the following words were borrowed: Berufsverbot, Volkswagen etc.

for many centuries and more than 2000 Holland borrowings were

borrowed into English. Most of them are nautical terms and were mainly borrowed in the 14-th century, such as: freight, skipper, pump, keel, dock, reef, deck, leak and many others.
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 Slavoninc languages.

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.