EVOLUTION AND FUNCTIONING OF FRENCH BORROWINGS IN THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN THE FIELD OF FASHION, FOOD, CLOTHES

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University

Diploma paper

THE THEME: EVOLUTION AND FUNCTIONING OF FRENCH BORROWINGS IN THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN THE FIELD OF FASHION, FOOD, CLOTHES

050119- “Two foreign languages: The English and German languages”

Done by: A. Nurzhigitova

3 year student- Foreign language: two foreign languages

Supervisor: B.E.Bukabayeva,

candidate of philological sciences

Almaty, 2013

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..3

1. EVOLUTION OF FRENCH BORROWINGS……………………….……5

1.1 The role of English language in a global world………………………………5

1.2 The historical background of the English language………………………….12

1.3 The main periods of borrowings in the English language…………..………16

1.3.1 The borrowed words in the Middle English language……………………..17

1.3.2 The borrowed words in the Modern English language ……………….….25

2. THE FUNCTIONING OF FRENCH BORROWINGS IN THE FIELD OF FASHION, FOOD, CLOTHES …………………………………………….34

Functioning of French borrowings in Middle English…………..…………34

Functioning of French borrowings in Modern English…………………….48

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………61

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………63

Introduction

The actuality of the diploma paper. The English is a Germanic language and took origin from the Indo-European Family. It is the second spread spoken language in the world after Chinese. Nowadays about 300 million people considered as native speakers, 300 million people use English as a second language and 100 million people use it as a foreign language. English is a language of science, aviation, computing, diplomacy, tourism and friendship. Over 45 countries use English as official and co-official language, but in some countries where it has not official status English is spoken extensively and more actively.

English becomes the world`s unofficial international language and this domination is unique in history. Chinese is spoken by more people, but English is now the most wide spread language in the world. All business agreements, official deals and documents conducted in English. Not only business documents, but two third of all scientific papers are written in English. Over 70% of State post and mails are written and addressed in English. Most international tourism and business, aviation and diplomacy, computing and research works are conducted in English.

English contains many borrowed words from other languages, brought to England during its development. One of this languages is French. French borrowed words brought to country during the 11th century by Norman Conquest.

In learning French borrowings we learn its importance. Its theoretical importance is used when we learn borrowings deeply in science. It means we learn theoretical importance deeply for learning the lexicological studies. This importance is used in the science, and in oral speech we needn`t to learn theoretically. We can note that borrowed words were built by word-building suffixes, and nowadays we know several French suffixes which build English word.

In practice we analyze the functioning of French borrowed words when we try to explain our minds. In the theoretical importance we need to learn the cognitive and cultural aspects of borrowed words, their origin and structure of these words and we try to understand their meanings. But in practice we needn`t learn them deeply, we only use them in our speech.

The objects of the diploma paper are French borrowed words from other languages. There used the column of English-French equivalents.

The aims of the diploma paper are to research the cognitive and cultural origin of French borrowed words in the English language and its main role in our days, to research the structure of the language and to divide borrowings into periods according to their functioning.

Tasks: First of all we must divide borrowings into three periods and learn their classification according to their functioning. The classification of French borrowed words consists of three periods: 1066-1250, 1250-1400, 1400- our days.

In the first period there appeared about 900 words, because that was the time when Normans began to settle and William the Conqueror allowed the common people to keep their mother tongue. We can count very few borrowed words because of it. But later there increased the number of loan words.

In the second period there used borrowed words in such direction of the life, in government, in cousin, in culture and etc. Norman Aristocracy began to use non-English words, and those words used to be native ones.

In the third period the number of French borrowed words increased and people mixed them with their native words. Nowadays those words used to be English and the English lexicology full of them.

In comparison of Middle English with Modern English is difficult, because in some way we found some difficulties to derive words into periods. One of the famous writers of Middle English is Chaucer, when we read his “Canterbury tales” we note some borrowed words which were spoken at that time. Nowadays we don`t use them very rarely. The language of that time was called “Anglo-Norman”.

But how the language became Modern English. The language developed and needed exchange. There came the time of technology and computing, this was the first reason for changing it. The second reason is the wide spread of English. So English is completed by foreign words.

Novelty of the diploma paper is the researching of the French borrowed words from other languages. Especially information about French borrowed words. There used table of bilingualism equivalent of French and English words, map where shown the territory of Normandy (the country of Norman people). The extract from the work which was written in the Old English language.

Structure of the diploma paper consists of two parts. In the first part I try to research origin, the historical background, the cognitive and cultural structure of borrowed words in the English language. We can know how developed the language, its role in our lives and we get information about loan words and native English words. In researching of the lexical structure of the language we find interesting information about borrowed words from other languages.

In the second part we find more information about borrowed words from the French language. The French borrowed words consist of three main periods. The first period depended on the Old Middle English period. The second period depended on the Middle English period. The third period depended on the Late Middle and Early Modern English period.

PART I

EVOLUTION OF FRENCH BORROWINGS

1.1 The role of English language in a global world

English is Germanic language and took origin from Indo-European Family. It is the first world spread language in the world. Nowadays it is considered as a language of development, computing and technology. About 45 countries use English as official and co-official language, 300 million people speak English as a native speakers, 300 million people use the language as the second language, and about 100 million people learn English as foreign language. The status of the English language is more active and extensive. English is used in trade sphere also, it is the language of international business, mailing and tourism. Today learning the English language is essential [1, 35-40pp].

You will find more people communicating in English than those speaking Arabic and French collectively. Undoubtedly, the popularity of the language has termed English as the international language of diplomacy, business, science, technology, banking, computing, medicine, aviation, engineering, tourism, UN & NATO armed forces, Hollywood films and the best pop and rock music of the world. Want anymore? Apart from these unfamiliar and strange facts, there are several other reasons that state the importance of learning the universal language, English.

In addition to this, western culture carried in foreign countries in the form of music and movies. If you want to be successful in international business, learning English is very important. In many places, in Asia, Africa and South America, the chance to learn English determines who will increase their living standards, and who will remain in poverty.

It is essential to understand IT, to work for international business and organization or government. It is also very important requirement for all the major multinational companies. It is very important for your leisure: it permits you to travel around the world, being able to communicate and understand people around you and to see movies and read the books in their original language.

Most of the businesses engaged in dealing with international clients and suppliers prefer using English as the primary source of communication. While people have their own native languages, English serves as the most common and user-friendly language to interpret, translate and communicate with English-speaking customers and professionals. Hence, to make the best out of the available opportunities, one has to be highly fluent in English.

Languages differ from country to country and from region to region. Thus, if you happen to travel to another country, either for business or leisure purpose, you are sure to land yourself into great trouble, in case you are not conversant with the native language. In such circumstances, English comes to your rescue as it is a global language spoken by more than 900 million people across the globe, either as native language or second language. Familiarity to English can get you to communicate with anyone and everyone where you travel, thereby easily handling the situation.

People not only travel to places worldwide for business and pleasure, but they leave their homeland and travel to another country for study purpose as well. Travel to any country on this earth and you would find English as the main medium of teaching, as it is practically impossible for a new person to study in the local language of the country, in particular. Hence, education has, by far, increased the importance of English to a great extent.

Parents residing in an English-speaking country are bound to face difficulties in raising their children, who mostly attend an English school nowadays, if they themselves aren’t able to understand English. For instance, if the teacher of your kids does not speak your native language, you will definitely have problems in communicating with him/her. Furthermore, if your kids bring back homework to be done in English, you will be of no help to them if you do not understand the language.

English language teaching classes start at nursery schools, where children can learn English easily. The teaching of English helps to get the final goal to make children grow up and get a multicultural education.

Generally speaking, English is the universal language on the internet, but it has no official status and it will never have. The reason for the position of English are the imperialism and economical and political importance of English speaking countries.

The position of English can only be altered by major world-scale political and economical changes, such as increasing importance of the European Union or a coalition between Japan and China. Such powers might wish and be able to promote a language other than English, possibly a constructed language, for international communication.

International English is the concept of the English language as a global means of communication in numerous dialects, and also the movement towards an international standard for the language. It is also referred to as Global English, World English, Common English, Continental English or General English. Sometimes these terms refer simply to the array of varieties of English spoken throughout the world.

Sometimes “International English” and the related terms above refer to a desired standardization, i.e. Standard English; however there is no consensus on the path to this goal.

Braj Kachru divides the use of English into three concentric circles.

The inner circle is the traditional base of English and includes countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland and the Anglophone populations of the former British colonies of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and various islands of the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean.

In the outer circle are those countries where English has official or historical importance. This includes most of the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, including populous countries such as India, Pakistan and Nigeria; and others, such as the Philippines, under the sphere of influence of English-speaking countries. Here English may serve as a useful lingua franca between ethnic and language groups. Higher education, the legislature and judiciary, national commerce, and so on, maybe all be carried out predominantly in English.

The expending circle refers to those countries where English has no official role, but is nonetheless important for certain functions, notably international business. This use of English as a lingua franca by now includes most of the rest of the world not categorized above.

Research in English as a lingua franca in the sense of “English in the Expending Circle” is comparatively recent. Linguists who have been active in this field are Jennifer Jenkins, Barbara Seidlhofer, Christiane Meierkord and Joachim Grzega.

English is an additional language (EAL) is usually based on the standards of either American English or British English. English as an international language (EIL) is EAL with emphasis on learning different major dialect forms; in particular, it aims to equip students with the linguistic tools to communicate internationally. Roger Nunn considers different types of competence in relation to the teaching of English as an International language, arguing that linguistic competence has yet to be adequately addressed in recent considerations of EIL.

Several models of “simplified English” have been suggested for teaching English as a foreign language: Basic English, developed by Charles Kay Ogden ( and later also I. A. Richards) in the 1930s, a recent revival has initiated by Bill Templers.

Threshold Level English, developed by van Ek and Alexander

Globish, developed by Jean-Paul Nerriere

Basic Global English, developed by Joachim Grzega

International English sometimes refers to English as it is actually being used and developed in the world; as a language owner not just by native speakers, but by all those who come to use it.

Basically, it covers the English language at large, often (but not always or necessarily) implicitly seen as standard. It is certainly also commonly used in connection with the acquisition, use, and study of English as the world's lingua franca ('TEIL: Teaching English as an International Language'), and especially when the language is considered as a whole in contrast with British English, American English, South African English, and the like.

It especially means English words and phrases generally understood throughout the English-speaking world as opposed to localisms. The importance of non-native English language skills can be recognized behind the long-standing joke that the international language of science and technology is broken English.

"What could be better than a type of English that saves you from having to re-edit publications for individual regional markets! Teachers and learners of English as a second language also find it an attractive idea — both often concerned that their English should be neutral, without American or British or Canadian or Australian coloring. Any regional variety of English has a set of political, social and cultural connotations attached to it, even the so-called 'standard' forms."

According to this viewpoint, International English is a concept of English that minimizes the aspects defined by either the colonial imperialism of Victorian Britain or the so-called "cultural imperialism" of the 20th century United States. While British colonialism laid the foundation for English over much of the world, International English is a product of an emerging world culture, very much attributable to the influence of the United States as well, but conceptually based on a far greater degree of cross-talk and linguistic trans cult ration, which tends to mitigate both U.S. influence and British colonial influence.

The development of International English often centers on academic and scientific communities, where formal English usage is prevalent, and creative use of the language is at a minimum. This formal International English allows entry into Western culture as a whole and Western cultural values in general.

The continued growth of the English language itself is seen by many as a kind of cultural imperialism, whether it is English in one form or English in two slightly different forms.

Robert Phillipson argues against the possibility of such neutrality in his Linguistic Imperialism (1992). Learners who wish to use purportedly correct English are in fact faced with the dual standard of American English and British English, and other less known standard Englishes (including Australian, Scots and Canadian).

Edward Trimnell, author of Why You Need a Foreign Language & How to Learn One (2005) argues that the international version of English is only adequate for communicating basic ideas. For complex discussions and business/technical situations, English is not an adequate communication tool for non-native speakers of the language. Trimnell also asserts that native English-speakers have become "dependent on the language skills of others" by placing their faith in international English.

Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca, is the dominant language or in some instances even the required international language of communications, science, information technology, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy. Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late 19th century its reach was truly global. Following the British colonization of North America, it became the dominant language in the United States and in Canada. The growing economic and cultural influence of the US and its status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language's spread across the planet. English replaced German as the dominant language of science Nobel Prize laureates during the second half of the 20th century (compare the Evolution of Nobel Prizes by country).

A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level (see English language learning and teaching). It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.

One impact of the growth of English has been to reduce native linguistic diversity in many parts of the world, and its influence continues to play an important role in language attrition. Conversely the natural internal variety of English along with creoles and pidgins have the potential to produce new distinct languages from English over time.

Learning English is not that difficult if you have taken admission in the right institution. Believe me, it is fun learning and it can be learned easily. However, the time frame for learning English depends on somebody’s current level. If somebody has to start from the scratch then it might take 4-5 months if the classes are held from Monday to Friday for 2 hours. People get really scared and become hopeless after trying to learn English language by them or after taking admissions in one or two institutions. However, the fact is that one should do an intelligent search before joining any institution for learning English. There are major difference in writing English and speaking English. It’s not necessary that a person who can write fluent English can also speak English fluently. So, you have to be very cautious while joining an institute and before that you need to understand your requirement whether you’re going to learn how to write correct English or how to speak English fluently, as many of the institute are able to teach you how to write correct English and they fail when it comes to teach you how to speak English fluently.

Reading, writing, watching, listening and talking makes 100% and this is how you gain confidence and start speaking English fluently. If we’re talking about importance of English language, how could we avoid importance of personality development? If a person is fluent in English language, but if he doesn’t have knowledge about body language and etiquettes, he/she should not be able to demonstrate his/her abilities well. Hence, personality development program is also an important part to learn and you should have the proper knowledge about it. Some of the institutes offer it with no charges or as a combo pack along with spoken English. They also teach you interview techniques as a very minimal cost once you have enrolled yourself for English language course.

To sum up, I would say you should not get scared or loose confidence when it comes to English language. It is just that you should try and find an institute who has the right techniques to teach English speaking course to their students along with personality development program and interview techniques.

A language is a systematic means of communication by the use of sounds or conventional symbols. It is the code we all use to express ourselves and communicate to others. It is a communication by word of mouth. It is the mental faculty or power of vocal communication. It is a system for communicating ideas and feelings using sounds, gestures, signs or marks. Any means of communicating ideas, specifically, human speech, the expression of ideas by the voice and sounds articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth is a language. This is a system for communication. A language is the written and spoken methods of combining words to create meaning used by a particular group of people.

Language, so far as we know, is something specific to humans, that is to say it is the basic capacity that distinguishes humans from all other living beings. Language therefore remains potentially a communicative medium capable of expressing ideas and concepts as well as moods, feelings and attitudes.

A set of linguists who based their assumptions of language on psychology made claims that language is nothing but ‘habit formation’. According to them, language is learnt through use, through practice. In their view, ‘the more one is exposed to the use of language, the better one learns’.

Written languages use symbols (characters) to build words. The entire set of words is the language’s vocabulary. The ways in which the words can be meaningfully combined is defined by the language’s syntax and grammar. The actual meaning of words and combinations of words is defined by the language’s semantics.

The latest and the most advanced discoveries and inventions in science and technology are being made in the universities located in the United States of America where English language is the means of scientific discourse.

English language comes to our aid in our commercial transactions throughout the globe. English is the language of the latest business management in the world and Indian proficiency in English has brought laurels to many Indian business managers. English is a means not only for international commerce; it has become increasingly essential for inter-state commerce and communication.

A language attracts people because of the wealth of literature and knowledge enshrined in it. English poses no danger to Indian languages. The Indian languages are vibrant and are developing by the contributions of great minds using them as their vehicle of expression. English is available to us as a historical heritage in addition to our own language. We must make the best use of English to develop ourselves culturally and materially so that we can compete with the best in the world of mind and matter. English language is our window to the world.

English language is one tool to establish our viewpoint. We can learn from others experience. We can check the theories of foreigners against our experience. We can reject the untenable and accept the tenable. We can also propagate our theories among the international audience and readers.

We can make use of English to promote our worldview and spiritual heritage throughout the globe. Swami Vivekananda established the greatness of Indian view of religion at the world conference of religions in Chicago in 1893. He addressed the gathering in impressive English. Many spiritual gurus have since converted thousands of English people to our spirituality by expressing their thought and ideas in masterful English. English has thus become an effective means of promoting Indian view of life, and strengthening our cultural identity in the world.

Generally, Standard English today does not depend on accent but rather on shared educational experience, mainly of the printed language. Present-day English is an immensely varied language, having absorbed material from many other tongues. It is spoken by more than 300 million native speakers, and between 400 and 800 million foreign users. It is the official language of air transport and shipping; the leading language of science, technology, computers, and commerce; and a major medium of education, publishing, and international negotiation. For this reason, scholars frequently refer to its latest phase as World English.

Language, of course, is knowledge, and in our world today knowledge is one of the key factors in competitiveness. Brains and knowledge are what create the prosperity and growth we tend to take for granted. In an advanced industrial society in an increasingly interdependent world, the knowledge of other languages becomes indispensable. Just think of how the advent of the Internet has changed our lives. For the last few years, millions of people across the world, who share common interests, are able to communicate with each other and exchange ideas. Not only are they able to do this due to the various technological advances, but also because they share a common language.

Frankly speaking, it is highly essential to know the language for communication. In general, the most popular language is English. In this computer age, English is the only language that any one can understand. So to say, it has become as an ideal language for expressing our feelings. First, we have to learn the language and then we have to gain fluency in the language. Unless we have the fluency in English language, it would not be possible to work with the computer. If you do not know English, then you would be in need of a translator to do the job.

The presentation is the most important factor in communicating your feelings. So, naturally you must be sure while you are presenting. what you really wish to say. At any point, do not try to write or speak, beyond your capability. Even if it is a small and simple sentence, it would reach the receiver perfectly. This is our basic idea. Slowly, you can improve the standard of your language by practice. If you know to form the sentences, it is more than enough to go deep into the subject. Though this only an article about the importance of the English Language, we have to learn some of the basic points in presenting the sentences.

English is the only language that the German, the Chinese, the Japanese & Russians are keen to learn although their mother languages are developed as English. Now almost all the universities are conducting scientific studies through English medium.

The English language is used all over the globe for transaction of international trade. To all in Sri Lanka too a good knowledge of English is essential for the advancement of knowledge & to further our studies. It is almost indispensable for higher scientific and technological studies.

Nowadays, endless options are available to take courses on English as a second language, with a large number of reputable teaching centers and programs to choose from. With the introduction of the internet, there are superb alternatives to take ESL programs online.

The importance of learning English cannot be overstated in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world. For the millions of immigrants that come to the United States from non-English-speaking countries every year, learning to communicate in English is important to enter and ultimately succeed in mainstream America. Working knowledge of the English language can create many opportunities in international markets and regions.

Knowing English opens job and employment opportunities in many countries and markets. Multilateral institutions and agencies in the four United Nation cities of New York, Vienna, The Hague and Geneva recruit professionals with multilingual skills but also expect the candidates to have good English-speaking skills. The Commonwealth of Nations, made up of 50-plus countries that were former British colonies or dependencies, also offers numerous employment opportunities to those who understand and communicate in English.

Lecture 1

The historical background of the English language

The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. The figure below shows the timeline of the history of the English language. The earliest known residents of the British Isles were the Celts, who spoke Celtic languages—a separate branch of the Indo-European language family tree. Over the centuries the British Isles were invaded and conquered by various peoples, who brought their languages and customs with them as they settled in their new lives. There is now very little Celtic influence left in English. The earliest time when we can say that English was spoken was in the 5th century CE (Common Era—a politically correct term used to replace AD). In case you hadn’t made the connection, “England” <– “Engle Land” <– “Angle Land” (Land of the Angles, a people of northern old Germany). Their name lives on in the district of England named East Anglia, and also in the Anglican Church. In the present day there is still a region of Germany known as Angeln, which is likely the same area from which the original Angles came. Angeln lies in Schleswig-Holstein on the eastern side of the Jutland peninsula near the cities of Flensburg and Schleswig.

In case you hadn’t made the connection, “England” <– “Engle Land” <– “Angle Land” (Land of the Angles, a people of northern old Germany). Their name lives on in the district of England named East Anglia, and also in the Anglican Church. In the present day there is still a region of Germany known as Angeln, which is likely the same area from which the original Angles came. Angeln lies in Schleswig-Holstein on the eastern side of the Jutland peninsula near the cities of Flensburg and Schleswig.

During the 7th and 8th Centuries, Northumbria's culture and language dominated Britain. The Viking invasions of the 9th Century brought this domination to an end (along with the destruction of Mercia). Only Wessex remained as an independent kingdom. By the 10th Century, the West Saxon dialect became the official language of Britain. Written Old English is mainly known from this period. It was written in an alphabet called Runic, derived from the Scandinavian languages. The Latin Alphabet was brought over from Ireland by Christian missionaries. This has remained the writing system of English.

Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from Ungallant and their language was called Englisch - from which the words England and English are derived.

The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native English speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until around 1100.

The original Old English language was then influenced by two further waves of invasion: the first by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic language family, who conquered and colonized parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries; the second by the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman. These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree.

Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance languages (Latin-based languages). This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility, resulting in an enormous and varied vocabulary.

The languages of Germanic peoples gave rise to the English language (the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Jutes and possibly the Franks, who traded and fought with the Latin-speaking Roman Empire in the centuries-long process of the Germanic peoples' expansion into Western Europe during the Migration Period). Some Latin words for common objects entered the vocabulary of these Germanic peoples before their arrival in Britain and their subsequent formation of England.

The main source of information for the culture of the Germanic peoples (the ancestors of the English) in ancient times is Tacitus' Germania, written around 100 AD. While remaining conversant with Roman civilization and its economy, including serving in the Roman military, they retained political independence. Some Germanic troops served in Britannia under the Romans. It is unlikely that Germanic settlement in Britain was intensified (except for Frisians) until the arrival of mercenaries in the 5th century as described by Gildas. As it was, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived as Germanic pagans, independent of Roman control.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern, King of the Britons, invited the "Angle kin" (Angles allegedly led by the Germanic brothers Hengist and Horsa) to help him in conflicts with the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the southeast of Britain. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles and Jutes). The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy. However, modern scholars view the figures of Hengist and Horsa as Euhemerized deities from Anglo-Saxon paganism, who ultimately stem from the religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.[1]
In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a kind of French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th century English became dominant in Britain again, but with many French words added. This language is called Middle English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-1400), but it would still be difficult for native English speakers to understand today.

The invaders' Germanic language displaced the indigenous Brythonic languages in most of the areas of Great Britain that were later to become England. The original Celtic languages remained in parts of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall (where Cornish was spoken into the 19th century). The Germanic dialects combined to form what is now called Old English. The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf composed by an unknown poet.

Old English did not sound or look like the Standard English of today. Any native English speaker of today would find Old English unintelligible without studying it as a separate language. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English; and many non-standard dialects such as Scots and Northumbrian English have retained many features of Old English in vocabulary and pronunciation.[2] Old English was spoken until sometime in the 12th or 13th century.

Later, English was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Old Norse, spoken by the Norsemen who invaded and settled mainly in the north-east of England (see Jrvk and Danelaw). The new and the earlier settlers spoke languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more distinct.

The Germanic language of these Old English-speaking inhabitants was influenced by contact with Norse invaders, which might have been responsible for some of the morphological simplification of Old English, including the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case (with the notable exception of the pronouns). English words of Old Norse origin include anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, and many others, possibly even including the pronoun they.

The vocabulary of Old English consisted of an Anglo Saxon base with borrowed words from the Scandinavian languages (Danish and Norse) and Latin. Latin gave English words like street, kitchen, kettle, cup, cheese, wine, angel, bishop, martyr, candle. The Vikings added many Norse words: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill, anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them. Celtic words also survived mainly in place and river names (Devon, Dover, Kent, Trent, Severn, Avon, Thames).

Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world. This, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, meant that many new words and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was published.

Even after the decline of Norman, French retained the status of a formal or prestige language and had (with Norman) a significant influence on the language, which is visible in Modern English today (see English language word origins and List of English words of French origin). A tendency for Norman-derived words to have more formal connotations has continued to the present day; most modern English speakers would consider a "cordial reception" (from French) to be more formal than a "hearty welcome" (Germanic). Another example is the very unusual construction of the words for animals being separate from the words for their meat: e.g., beef and pork (from the Norman buf and porc) being the products of 'cows' and 'pigs', animals with Germanic names.

English literature started to reappear around 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, was the first English government document to be published in the English language since the Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English. By the end of that century, even the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be a living language.

Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. English was further transformed by the spread of a standardized London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardizing effect of printing. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid-late 16th century),[6] the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. In 1604, the first English dictionary was published, the Table Alphabetical.

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.

Since the 16th Century, because of the contact that the British had with many peoples from around the world, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, many words have entered the language either directly or indirectly. New words were created at an increasing rate. Shakespeare coined over 1600 words. This process has grown exponentially in the modern era.

From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).

Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA's dominance of cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology (including the Internet). But there are many other varieties of English around the world, including for example Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.

The main periods of borrowings in the English language

There are main periods of French borrowed words in the English language. The first period began from 1066, lasted till 1250. In the first period there appeared only few words. Most people used their native words and kept their mother tongue. The second period began 1250 and lasted till 1400. In the second period the structure of the English language changed, because the Norman-French language was considered as the language of Aristocracy. The language of Government and Court had changes, there the number of borrowed words was increased. The third period began from 1400. In the third period those borrowed words were used as native words, because people used to speak in mixed language.

1. The borrowed words in the Middle English language

Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer from one language to another, and no "returning" words to the source language. The words simply come to be used by a speech community that speaks a different language from the one these words originated in.

Borrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two language communities. Borrowing of words can go in both directions between the two languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry, such that more words go from one side to the other. In this case the source language community has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that makes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing language community. For example, the Germanic tribes in the first few centuries A.D. adopted numerous loanwords from Latin as they adopted new products via trade with the Romans. Few Germanic words, on the other hand, passed into Latin.

The actual process of borrowing is complex and involves many usage events (i.e. instances of use of the new word). Generally, some speakers of the borrowing language know the source language too, or at least enough of it to utilize the relevant word. They (often consciously) adopt the new word when speaking the borrowing language, because it most exactly fits the idea they are trying to express. If they are bilingual in the source language, which is often the case, they might pronounce the words the same or similar to the way they are pronounced in the source language. For example, English speakers adopted the word garage from French, at first with a pronunciation nearer to the French pronunciation than is now usually found. Presumably the very first speakers who used the word in English knew at least some French and heard the word used by French speakers, in a French-speaking context.

Those who first use the new word might use it at first only with speakers of the source language who know the word, but at some point they come to use the word with those to whom the word was not previously known. To these speakers the word may sound 'foreign'. At this stage, when most speakers do not know the word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called a foreign word. There are many foreign words and phrases used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and Fahrvergnuegen (German).

However, in time more speakers can become familiar with a new foreign word or expression. The community of users of this word can grow to the point where even people who know little or nothing of the source language understand, and even use, the novel word themselves. The new word becomes conventionalized: part of the conventional ways of speaking in the borrowing language. At this point we call it a borrowing or loanword.

Conventionalization is a gradual process in which a word progressively permeates a larger and larger speech community, becoming part of ever more people's linguistic repertoire. As part of its becoming more familiar to more people, a newly borrowed word gradually adopts sound and other characteristics of the borrowing language as speakers who do not know the source language accommodate it to their own linguistic systems. In time, people in the borrowing community do not perceive the word as a loanword at all. Generally, the longer a borrowed word has been in the language, and the more frequently it is used, the more it resembles the native words of the language.

English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap. For example, the Norse influence on English began already in the 8th century A.D. and continued strongly well after the Norman Conquest brought a large influx of Norman French to the language.

It is part of the cultural history of English speakers that they have always adopted loanwords from the languages of whatever cultures they have come in contact with. There have been few periods when borrowing became unfashionable, and there has never been a national academy in Britain, the U.S., or other English-speaking countries to attempt to restrict new loanwords, as there has been in many continental European countries.

The following list is a small sampling of the loanwords that came into English in different periods and from different languages.

If borrowings are testimonials to our (“our” being humans) “physical mobility and mental laziness” then the British would probably win the gold medal. How could a country whose original inhabitants were Celts have ceded that language to the one we currently know as English? It is because of the many times that the British Isles were invaded, obviously by outsiders, who brought their language, dialects and customs into the country. As the invaders settled in, they transformed both the written and spoken words of the English residents, who were able to adapt through the assimilation of borrowed words.

Otto Jespersen1, in his book Growth and Structure of the English Language, points out that the English language is a “chain of borrowings” that was a result of the conquests of Britain by various invaders. The foreigners brought their languages to England but were unable to completely impose their languages on the British. Instead, the foreigners’ languages were intermixed as if being thrown into a blender with the native speakers’ words. With that, these groups succeeded, to varying degrees, in influencing the evolution of written and spoken English as we now know it.

First came the Romans and with their occupation of England, introduced Latin to some, but not all, its inhabitants. While the Celts co-existed with the Romans and “continental Germans,” only a few hundred borrowed Latin words are found in Old English, which was basically a “self-sufficing” language, according to Jespersen. With the Teutonic/Germanic invasions of 450 A.D., the Celtic language was relegated to the mists of its Irish island. But the inhabitants of England needed to communicate with their new neighbors and the borrowing of words began.

The Christianization of the country in the 6th Century forced more inhabitants to adopt Latin words and phrases through the Church. Still, these borrowed Latin words were used mainly in the realm of the upper classes when “every educated Englishman spoke and wrote Latin as easily as he spoke and wrote his mother tongue,” according to James Bradstreet Greenough and George Lyman Kittredge2 in their book, Words and Their Ways in English Speech. These “educated” men (and I would think women, too) could use the borrowed words both in conversation and on the written page.

Once the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived in Britain, and with the Celts displaced, the language literally began evolving as the new-arrivals began settling in. The Celtic influence began rapidly diminishing as the so-called “superior” borrowed words began to take hold. While at first speaking their own Teutonic languages, upon establishing themselves with the native inhabitants their language gradually drifted away from their home countries and began to mesh with one another. Of course, the language from this period would be barely recognizable to most, if not all, (except for etymologists) present-day readers. Yet, while the Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought us the original English language, the foundation of English as we know it today is Germanic with a massive French influence.

The history of the English language, and its borrowings, is founded on three invasions: Teutonic; Scandinavian (Vikings); and, most importantly, by the Norman conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy in 1066. (Luckily, the Nazis never made it across the Channel.) The Teutonic and Scandinavian invasions obviously affected the native language. But it was the French-speaking Normans, led by William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conqurant), who introduced the greatest, most extensive and most permanent collection of borrowed or “loan” words, as Jespersen is fond of writing, to the English language upon their successful 1066 invasion of the island.

The Norman occupation lasted much longer than that of the Norse invasion and unlike the Scandinavians, who co-existed with the invaded, the Normans overwhelmed the English. The British status quo was tossed out as the Normans reconfigured the structures of England, from its legal system to its religions, by becoming the ruling masters of the island.

While the Normans brought their French to the British Isles, they, too, were also operating in a sense with borrowed words. If, as Greenough and Kittredge point out, French is simply Latin in a “corrupt form” then the conquered British inhabitants would have had to absorb two borrowed languages — French and Latin. And the question for them, if they chose to ask it, is from which genesis the written or spoken words the Normans brought to the shores came from — Latin or French.

The invading Normans also introduced a sort of language class warfare to the Britons. If a foreign language is thrust upon the conquered, one would think that it would spread from top to bottom through all strata of the inhabitants. The “losing” language would thus disappear. Yet, that did not happen after the Normans’ arrival. The conquered nobles adopted the French model, but the peasants retained the Germanic tongue, setting up both a class and a linguistic divide that would remain until their languages, and borrowed words, blended into Middle English.

But morphing French words and phrases into the English language does not mean there was a certain borrowing snobbery. Writers, such as Chaucer, or diplomats, the royalty, high-ranking members of the military and businessmen who were familiar with French culture (and given the closeness of European borders, easily attainable), readily adopted and adapted words borrowed from the French into the English language. In many cases, the borrowing was not cavalier, but was a necessity to communicate.

The Norman Conquest forced the creation of an entirely new way of English life, influencing the language of its law, religion, medicine and arts. Since the French/Latin-speakers were the dominant power, the Britons had to borrow words in order to simply communicate with their new masters who “ousted” some of the local vernacular. These “newcomers” may have rid some of the centuries-old English synonyms, but they became ingrained because of their ties to the originals. The Anglo-Saxon king and queen survived the French influence, but with the Normans along came such titles as duke and duchess. Well, Britons would have to be able to understand what either of these two terms meant and, thus, they would assimilate these borrowed words into, if not every day use, their sometime use.

According to Jespersen, many British adopted borrowed French words not only to communicate, but because they felt it was the “fashion” to imitate their “betters.” Again, while some might perceive this as a form of snobbery, many of us do strive to improve our language skills. While saying someone tried to overthrow a government is basic and to the point, using coup d’etat as the phrase is instantly recognizable to many readers and, almost, puts more of a sense of urgency to the event. You could say a woman is stylish, which I am sure she would appreciate, but substituting the borrowed chic usually makes more of an impact. Obviously, our knowledge of borrowed words not only expands our vocabulary but enables us to converse with one another.

While it is understandable that the Britons would borrow words that did not exist in their native language, such as majesty and mayor, it is somewhat mystifying why they would replace their swin with the French porc. That is unless you consider how the English farmers and French aristocrats dealt with livestock. With these two related words, the Germanic swin is more down-to-earth while the French porc was considered more refined. Swin evolved into the present-day swine, which is what English peasants would have been raising, while the porc or pork would have been what the upper-class French would eat. It is “animal versus food” and, again, the borrowings would elevate the perceived social standing of the English man or woman who used the French word. And as Greenough and Kittredge illustrate, sometimes the foreign word, such as divide, becomes more popular than the inhabitants’ cleave. Also, one word can crowd out another, with the native being the one shunted aside as in what happened to the local ey which was replaced by the Scandinavian egg.

The French language-influence on the English presented them with more abstract words than what the Britons might have considered to be their clear and concrete definitions of their native words. The English child as opposed to the borrowed French infant, or the English freedom compared to the French liberty are examples.

The amazing thing about the transformation and evolution of the English language is the extent to how receptive the country’s inhabitants were to outside languages, particularly French and Latin. It is almost as if an invader could plant a language seed and the Britons would cultivate it. But unlike the French who most likely would stay with that one language plant, the English (perhaps because of their love of gardening) seemed intent on growing as many synonymous words as possible. And, continuing with this somewhat silly gardening analogy, Jespersen points out that many times “the English soil has proved more fertilizing than the French soil” for transplanted words. Why offer one native word, as the French seem to enjoy, when you can convert a multitude of borrowed words and multiply them into synonymous bits of language as the English seem wont to do? Or, as the University of Minnesota’s professor and author of Word Origins and How We Know Them, Dr. Anatoly Liberman3 asks in his lecture, A Coat of Many Colors, is it “better to have two nostrils or one?” With a multitude of similar words, the English at least, seem to have embraced the “two nostrils” theory, sometimes using both the native and the borrowed words side-by-side.

This borrowing has also helped inflate the size of English dictionaries. The voluminous English dictionaries, as compared to French, German or Dutch dictionaries for example, can credit their size to the borrowings of foreign words the British adopted. If the English were originally concerned that their native language was not up to snuff with the French or Latin tongues, the Britons’ borrowings might give new meaning to “size matters.”

While I have mainly focused on the Norman Conquest and the seismic language shift 1066 created in the linguistic world, there were others that might have been subsequently involved in English-word borrowings — if they had arrived in time. Among them are Spanish and Italian, but as Greenough and Kittredge point out, while their influence upon English literature has “been very great, but upon (English) vocabulary these languages have had no appreciable effect.” That is because the Normans made the goal first and the English had basically borrowed all the words and phrases they needed.

England’s emergence as a superpower brought it, in a sense, border expansion because of colonialism. This also introduced its people to sights they had never seen and for which they would need descriptive words. The Britons could only borrow them as there was no native term to express what they encountered.

There were no such things as boomerangs or kangaroos in England, so when the Britons came upon them instead of creating entirely new words to define them, the easier alternative was to borrow the Australian words. Elephants, leopards and panthers also were not native to England and, again, these animal names would have to be borrowed for Britons to describe them to one another. Even the tomato, unknown in the country until its introduction from the New World, would have to be named. Borrowing from the Spanish tomate, the British settled on tomato.

While these examples were new words to the English and diversified their vocabulary, they did not affect the “structure” of their speech. Instead, they were “simply the adoption of names for particular things,” according to Greenough and Kittredge.

The Renaissance brought a multitude of classical words, particularly from France and Italy, increasing the Latin influence on language in England. But Italy, along with Spain, contributed few borrowed words because the English language was nearly completely formed by this age. The new words and phrases enriched the British language, but Jespersen believes at somewhat of a cost. Because of the various invasions, the English had, over time, begun to “shrink from consciously coining new words out of native material.” That concept brings us full circle back to the “physical mobility and mental laziness” aspect of borrowing words.

These, in a sense, exotic words now easily roll off the tongues of English-speaking people. We all know what a kindergarten, from the German, means. Most would know what a baguette or croissant, from the French, also mean. And, staying with baked goods, the Yiddish bagel (originally beygl) is certainly well known to many English-speaking people, particularly New Yorkers.

But do all foreign or exotic words lend themselves to borrowing and become ingrained in the English language? In The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, author Jack Lynch4 brings up the Arabic jihad and questions whether it is an English word yet. Before September 11, 2001, I doubt many English speakers had heard of the word. By September 12, I believe that jihad was as familiar a phrase to us as the word bread.

Lieberman, in one of his lectures, illustrated the borrowed words sputnik and perestroika. At various points in time these borrowed words were all the rage. While I was too young to comprehend sputnik when it was launched, throughout my early school years I learned its significance. Yet, I doubt that any person in high school today would understand the word or fathom how quickly it was borrowed into the English language.

The same fate awaited perestroika. About six years after it was proposed in the Soviet Union, the word filled inches of newspaper copy in the mid 1980s. But I would be amazed to find any mention of Gorbachev’s initiative for today’s English-speaking newspaper readers. If borrowed words are a “result of language contact in a certain place at a certain time,” as Lieberman phrases it in Word Origins, then these two Russian words fit the bill perfectly. But these etymons probably have little “staying power,” particularly since neither really forms ties with other words. So, like the many borrowed words from the past that failed to live on, these two are also probably consigned to the linguistic junk heap, at least for English readers.

In wrapping up, the borrowing of words illustrates that when two languages compete for domination over one another, adaptability and adoptability are key ingredients. The Celts did not understand this and their language was marginalized. The Germanic-speakers faced the same fate when confronted with the Norman Conquest, but many of the higher-educated Britons saw the (Gallic) writing on the wall and chose to borrow the necessary words and phrases to communicate in a changed environment. By, out of necessity, opting to borrow from their foreign rulers, the English language evolved into the most extensive and prolific on the planet.

1. Germanic period

Latin

The forms given in this section are the Old English ones. The original Latin source word is given in parentheses where significantly different. Some Latin words were themselves originally borrowed from Greek. It can be deduced that these borrowings date from the time before the Angles and Saxons left the continent for England, because of very similar forms found in the other old Germanic languages (Old High German, Old Saxon, etc.). The source words are generally attested in Latin texts, in the large body of Latin writings that were preserved through the ages.ancor 'anchor'

butere 'butter' (L < Gr. butyros)

cealc 'chalk'

ceas 'cheese' (caseum)

cetel 'kettle'

cycene 'kitchen'

cirice 'church' (ecclesia < Gr. ecclesia)

disc 'dish' (discus)

mil 'mile' (milia [passuum] 'a thousand paces')

piper 'pepper'

pund 'pound' (pondo 'a weight')

sacc 'sack' (saccus)

sicol 'sickle'

straet 'street' ([via] strata 'straight way' or stone-paved road)

weall 'wall' (vallum)

win 'wine' (vinum < Gr. oinos)

II. Old English Period (600-1100)

Latinapostol 'apostle' (apostolus < Gr. apostolos)

casere 'caesar, emperor'

ceaster 'city' (castra 'camp')

cest 'chest' (cista 'box')

circul 'circle'

cometa 'comet' (cometa < Greek)

maegester 'master' (magister)

martir 'martyr'

paper 'paper' (papyrus, from Gr.)

tigle 'tile' (tegula)

Celticbrocc 'badger'

cumb 'combe, valley'

(few ordinary words, but thousands of place and river names: London, Carlisle,

Devon, Dover, Cornwall, Thames, Avon...)

1. Middle English Period (1100-1500)

Scandinavian

Most of these first appeared in the written language in Middle English; but many were no doubt borrowed earlier, during the period of the Danelaw (9th-10th centuries).

anger, blight, by-law, cake, call, clumsy, doze, egg, fellow, gear, get, give, hale, hit, husband, kick, kill, kilt, kindle, law, low, lump, rag, raise, root, scathe, scorch, score, scowl, scrape, scrub, seat, skill, skin, skirt, sky, sly, take, they, them, their, thrall, thrust, ugly, want, window, wing

Place name suffixes: -by, -Thorpe, -gate

French

Law and government—attorney, bailiff, chancellor, chattel, country, court, crime, defendent, evidence, government, jail, judge, jury, larceny, noble, parliament, plaintiff, plea, prison, revenue, state, tax, verdict

Church—abbot, chaplain, chapter, clergy, friar, prayer, preach, priest, religion, sacrament, saint, sermon

Nobility—baron, baroness; count, countess; duke, duchess; marquis, marquess; prince, princess; viscount, viscountess; noble, royal (contrast native words: king, queen, earl, lord, lady, knight, kingly, queenly)

Military—army, artillery, battle, captain, company, corporal, defense,enemy,marine, navy, sergeant, soldier, volunteer

Cooking—beef, boil, broil, butcher, dine, fry, mutton, pork, poultry, roast, salmon, stew, veal

Culture and luxury goods—art, bracelet, claret, clarinet, dance, diamond, fashion, fur, jewel, oboe, painting, pendant, satin, ruby, sculpture

Other—adventure, change, charge, chart, courage, devout, dignity, enamor, feign, fruit, letter, literature, magic, male, female, mirror, pilgrimage, proud, question, regard, special

Also Middle English French loans: a huge number of words in age, -ance/-ence, -ant/-ent, -ity, -ment, -tion, con-, de-, and pre- .

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a given word came from French or whether it was taken straight from Latin. Words for which this difficulty occurs are those in which there were no special sound and/or spelling changes of the sort that distinguished French from Latin

IV. Early Modern English Period (1500-1650)

The effects of the renaissance begin to be seriously felt in England. We see the beginnings of a huge influx of Latin and Greek words, many of them learned words imported by scholars well versed in those languages. But many are borrowings from other languages, as words from European high culture begin to make their presence felt and the first words come in from the earliest period of colonial expansion.

Latin

agile, abdomen, anatomy, area, capsule, compensate, dexterity, discus, disc/disk, excavate, expensive, fictitious, gradual, habitual, insane, janitor, meditate, notorious, orbit, peninsula, physician, superintendent, ultimate, vindicate

Greek (many of these via Latin)

anonymous, atmosphere, autograph, catastrophe, climax, comedy, critic, data, ectasy, history, ostracize, parasite, pneumonia, skeleton, tonic, tragedy

Greek bound morphemes: -ism, -ize

Arabic

via Spanish—alcove, algebra, zenith, algorithm, almanac, azimuth, alchemy, admiral

via other Romance languages—amber, cipher, orange, saffron, sugar, zero, coffee.

1. The borrowed words in the Modern English language

Early Modern English Period (1500-1650). The effects of the renaissance begin to be seriously felt in England. We see the beginnings of a huge influx of Latin and Greek words, many of them learned words imported by scholars well versed in those languages. But many are borrowings from other languages, as words from European high culture begin to make their presence felt and the first words come in from the earliest period of colonial expansion.

French

French continues to be the largest single source of new words outside of very specialized vocabulary domains (scientific/technical vocabulary, still dominated by classical borrowings).

High culture—ballet, bouillabaise, cabernet, cachet, chaise longue, champagne, chic, cognac, corsage, faux pas, nom de plume, quiche, rouge, roulet, sachet, salon, saloon, sang froid, savoir faire

War and Military—bastion, brigade, battalion, cavalry, grenade, infantry, pallisade, rebuff, bayonet

Other—bigot, chassis, clique, denim, garage, grotesque, jean(s), niche, shock

French Canadian—chowder

Louisiana French (Cajun)—jambalaya

Spanish

armada, adobe, alligator, alpaca, armadillo, barricade, bravado, cannibal, canyon, coyote, desperado, embargo, enchilada, guitar, marijuana, mesa, mosquito, mustang, ranch, taco, tornado, tortilla, vigilante

Italian

alto, arsenal, balcony, broccoli, cameo, casino, cupola, duo, fresco, fugue, gazette (via French), ghetto, gondola, grotto, macaroni, madrigal, motto, piano, opera, pantaloons, prima donna, regatta, sequin, soprano, opera, stanza, stucco, studio, tempo, torso, umbrella, viola, violin

from Italian American immigrants—cappuccino, espresso, linguini, mafioso, pasta, pizza, ravioli, spaghetti, spumante, zabaglione, zucchini

Dutch, Flemish

Shipping, naval terms—avast, boom, bow, bowsprit, buoy, commodore, cruise, dock, freight, keel, keelhaul, leak, pump, reef, scoop, scour, skipper, sloop, smuggle, splice, tackle, yawl, yacht

Cloth industry—bale, cambric, duck (fabric), fuller's earth, mart, nap (of cloth), selvage, spool, stripe

Art—easel, etching, landscape, sketch

War—beleaguer, holster, freebooter, furlough, onslaught

Food and drink—booze, brandy(wine), coleslaw, cookie, cranberry, crullers, gin, hops, stockfish, waffle

Other—bugger (orig. French), crap, curl, dollar, scum, split (orig. nautical term), uproar

German

bum, dunk, feldspar, quartz, hex, lager, knackwurst, liverwurst, loafer, noodle, poodle, dachshund, pretzel, pinochle, pumpernickel, sauerkraut, schnitzel, zwieback, (beer)stein, lederhosen, dirndl

20th century German loanwords—blitzkrieg, zeppelin, strafe, U-boat, delicatessen, hamburger, frankfurter, wiener, hausfrau, kindergarten, Oktoberfest, schuss, wunderkind, bundt (cake), spritz (cookies), (apple) strudel

Yiddish (most are 20th century borrowings)

bagel, Chanukkah (Hanukkah), chutzpah, dreidel, kibbitzer, kosher, lox, pastrami (orig. from Romanian), schlep, spiel, schlepp, schlemiel, schlimazel, gefilte fish, goy, klutz, knish, matzoh, oy vey, schmuck, schnook,

Scandinavian

fjord, maelstrom, ombudsman, ski, slalom, smorgasbord

Russian

apparatchik, borscht, czar/tsar, glasnost, icon, perestroika, vodka

Words from other parts of the world

Sanskrit

avatar, karma, mahatma, swastika, yoga

Hindi

bandanna, bangle, bungalow, chintz, cot, cummerbund, dungaree, juggernaut, jungle, loot, maharaja, nabob, pajamas, punch (the drink), shampoo, thug, kedgeree, jamboree

Dravidian

curry, mango, teak, pariah

Persian (Farsi)

check, checkmate, chess

Arabic

bedouin, emir, jakir, gazelle, giraffe, harem, hashish, lute, minaret, Mosque, myrrh, salaam, sirocco, sultan, vizier, bazaar, caravan

African languages

banana (via Portuguese), banjo, boogie-woogie, chigger, goober, gorilla, gumbo, jazz, jitterbug, jitters, juke(box), voodoo, yam, zebra, zombie

American Indian languages

avocado, cacao, cannibal, canoe, chipmunk, chocolate, chili, hammock, hominy, hurricane, maize, moccasin, moose, papoose, pecan, possum, potato, skunk, squaw, succotash, squash, tamale (via Spanish), teepee, terrapin, tobacco, toboggan, tomahawk, tomato, wigwam, woodchuck

(plus thousands of place names, including Ottawa, Toronto, Saskatchewan and the names of more than half the

states of the U.S., including Michigan, Texas, Nebraska, Illinois)

Chinese

chop suey, chow mein, dim sum, ketchup, tea, ginseng, kowtow, litchee

Japanese

geisha, hara kiri, judo, jujitsu, kamikaze, karaoke, kimono, samurai, soy, sumo, sushi, tsunami

Pacific Islands

bamboo, gingham, rattan, taboo, tattoo, ukulele, boondocks

Australia

boomerang, budgerigar, didgeridoo, kangaroo (and many more in Australian English)

Modern English began around the 16th Century and, like all languages, is still changing. One change occurred when the suffix of some verb forms became s (loveth, loves; hath, has). Auxiliary verbs also changed (he is risen, he has risen).

Norman French is the 11th century language of France and England. It is an Indo-European language.

In 1066, the Norman king, William the Conqueror, invaded England. Many Norman French words entered the language after this. In general, the Normans were the nobility, while the native English were their servants. The names of domestic animals and their meats show this relationship. The animal name is English ("cow", "sheep", "pig") while the names of the meats derived from these animals is French ("beef", "mutton", "pork").

Language belongs to each of us. Everyone uses words. What is there in a language that makes people so curious? The answer is that there is almost nothing in our life that is not touched by language. We all speak and we all listen so we are all interested in the origin of words, in how they appear and die. Nowadays 750 million people all over the world use English. It has become the language of the planet.

Most of words are the same, but there are some differences. For example in Middle English ynogh is enough in modern English; longe is long; agoon is ago and so on, but they are a little bit similar in writing, so it is not very difficult to understand them.

Though the number of French loans in the modern period is relatively minor in comparison to Middle English, the contribution is most important. The French Loans were primarily borrowed to provide richness to the language. Whilst it was arguable during the Restoration whether the loans were corrupting or enriching the language, today there is no doubt or disputable grounds to argue that the loans did nothing but enrich the English language.

The borrowing of vocabulary is rapprochement of nations on the ground of economic, political and cultural connections. The bright example of it can be numerous French borrowings to English language.

Attempts to continue borrowings in 20th century did not have special success because language became more independent.

In my opinion we managed to study the problems of French borrowings in the English language. We understood possible ways of penetrating French words in the English language, we have seen difference ways of difference types of borrowings.

In spite of arrival of the words from different languages into the English vocabulary, the English Language did not suffer from large flow of foreign elements.

On the contrary its vocabulary has been enriched due to the taken foreign elements.

Native Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogenous. It consists of two layers - the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words In fact native words comprise only 30% of the total number of words in the English vocabulary. The native words have a wider range of lexical and grammatical valiancy, they are highly polysemantic and productive in forming word clusters and set expressions.

Borrowings-the term is used to denote the process of adopting words from other languages and also the result of this process. Borrowed words or loanwords are words taken from another language and modified according to the patterns of the receiving language. In many cases a borrowed word especially one borrowed long ago is practically indistinguishable from a native word without a thorough etymological analysis.

Source of borrowings. - is appliede to the lang from which particular words were taken into Engl. Original borrowings. - the term is applied to the language the word may be traced to. Assimilation - the process of the changing of the adopted words. A. of thr borrowings includes changes in: sound form; morphological strct; grammar charact-s; usage.

Completely assimilated borrowings - are the words which have undergone all types of Assimilation. They are active in word formation. Partially assim-d b. - the words which lack one of the types of A. They are subdivided into: borrow. not ass-d grammatically (nouns borrowed from Latin or Greek); borrow. not ass-d phonetically (contain peculiarities in stress, not standard for English); barbarisms - words from other lang. , used by English people in conversations or writing, but not assimilated in any way.

Why are words borrowed? Wars, conquests; trade, international and cultural relations; to fill the gap in vocabulary; words, which express some particular notion; enrichment of word groups (syn., ant…).

The fact that for many of the above words Germanic equivalents already existed in English and continued to exist led to a stylistic splitting of the vocabulary of English. Thus a word like work is a Germanic word and the normal everyday word whereas labour is a Romance loanword which is regarded as being on a higher level, cf. ‘I have some work to do now’, ‘The value of labour in our society’. In other cases the Romance loanword has come to have a slightly different meaning to the Germanic base word, cf. ask and demand where the latter (Romance) word has the implication of insisting on something.

Among the various types of changes which took place in the period in which Middle English borrowed from French through direct contact, are those which led to a mixing of Germanic and Romance elements. Thus one has cases of assimilation in which an English word was created on the basis of a similar sounding French word. Here one has an instance of the French form complementing the English one. For example, the English verb choose obtained a noun choice on the basis of a borrowing of French choix.

In some cases one can no longer decide whether the Germanic or the Romance form of a word has survived into Modern English. Thus in the case of the adjective rich one cannot tell whether it is a continuation of the Old English rice or the later French borrowing riche. However, one can in many cases see a contamination of the morphology of words due to French borrowing. With the previous adjective one can see the Romance suffix in the noun formed from it: richess as opposed to Old English richdom with the Romance ending -ess.

The form of a word may have been changed without its meaning having been affected. With the Old English word iegland / iland (cf. German Eiland) one arrives at the later spelling island under the influence of French isle. Note that the s here is unetymological, i.e. was never pronounced in English. Some French loanwords were influenced by changes later than Middle English. This is for example the case with Old French viage which was borrowed into Middle English but where the later French form voyage was borrowed into English and adapted in its pronunciation. The same is true of the Middle English noun flaute which was changed under the influence of later French flute.

The form of many French loanwords can be used to date borrowing. As mentioned above there are two strands of French influence, an early Anglo-Norman one and a later Central French one. These can be identified phonologically as can be seen in the word pairs catch and chase or cattle and chattels (from captiare and capitale in Latin respectively). In the first word one sees Middle English cacchen which was borrowed from North French cachier as the retention of the /k/ before /a/ was a feature of Norman French.

After 1250 the influence of Central French was predominant in England. In this variety of French the original /k/ retained in Norman French was shifted to /t/ which is reflected in the writing where c was changed to ch. Thus we have the Central French verb chacier being borrowed into Middle English as chacen, Modern English chase. Note that the later borrowing did not replace the earlier one in keeping with the principle that if two variant forms come to be distinguished semantically their continuing existence in the language is as good as guaranteed. Not so with a number of other Norman French borrowings which were replaced by the later Central French ones: calice, carite, cancel; chalice, charite, chancel.

The Central French /t/ underwent the further change to // in the course of the post-Middle English period and later loans reflect this. Thus we have change and chief as Middle English loans from Central French with /t/ but words like chef and champagne with // are of a later origin.

Similar differences in pronunciation can be used to date other loanwords from French. For example the relationship of /d/ and // shows the relative chronology of borrowing. The older loans such as siege, judge, age show the affricate /d/ whereas newer loans from the Early Modern English period have the simple fricative typical of Modern French as in rouge /ru:/; with the word garage there still exist two alternative pronunciations /grd/ and /gr:/.

One can also recognise later borrowings by the vowel quality when the stress is found on the final syllable: memoir (cf. the earlier loan memory), liqueur (cf. the earlier form liquor).

England’s emergence as a superpower brought it, in a sense, border expansion because of colonialism. This also introduced its people to sights they had never seen and for which they would need descriptive words. The Britons could only borrow them as there was no native term to express what they encountered.

There were no such things as boomerangs or kangaroos in England, so when the Britons came upon them instead of creating entirely new words to define them, the easier alternative was to borrow the Australian words. Elephants, leopards and panthers also were not native to England and, again, these animal names would have to be borrowed for Britons to describe them to one another. Even the tomato, unknown in the country until its introduction from the New World, would have to be named. Borrowing from the Spanish tomate, the British settled on tomato.

While these examples were new words to the English and diversified their vocabulary, they did not affect the “structure” of their speech. Instead, they were “simply the adoption of names for particular things,” according to Greenough and Kittredge.

The Renaissance brought a multitude of classical words, particularly from France and Italy, increasing the Latin influence on language in England. But Italy, along with Spain, contributed few borrowed words because the English language was nearly completely formed by this age. The new words and phrases enriched the British language, but Jespersen believes at somewhat of a cost. Because of the various invasions, the English had, over time, begun to “shrink from consciously coining new words out of native material.” That concept brings us full circle back to the “physical mobility and mental laziness” aspect of borrowing words.

These, in a sense, exotic words now easily roll off the tongues of English-speaking people. We all know what a kindergarten, from the German, means. Most would know what a baguette or croissant, from the French, also mean. And, staying with baked goods, the Yiddish bagel (originally beygl) is certainly well known to many English-speaking people, particularly New Yorkers.

But do all foreign or exotic words lend themselves to borrowing and become ingrained in the English language? In The Lexicographer’s Dilemma, author Jack Lynch brings up the Arabic jihad and questions whether it is an English word yet. Before September 11, 2001, I doubt many English speakers had heard of the word. By September 12, I believe that jihad was as familiar a phrase to us as the word bread.

Liberman, in one of his lectures, illustrated the borrowed words sputnik and perestroika. At various points in time these borrowed words were all the rage. While I was too young to comprehend sputnik when it was launched, throughout my early school years I learned its significance. Yet, I doubt that any person in high school today would understand the word or fathom how quickly it was borrowed into the English language.

The same fate awaited perestroika. About six years after it was proposed in the Soviet Union, the word filled inches of newspaper copy in the mid 1980s. But I would be amazed to find any mention of Gorbachev’s initiative for today’s English-speaking newspaper readers. If borrowed words are a “result of language contact in a certain place at a certain time,” as Liberman phrases it in Word Origins, then these two Russian words fit the bill perfectly. But these etymons probably have little “staying power,” particularly since neither really forms ties with other words. So, like the many borrowed words from the past that failed to live on, these two are also probably consigned to the linguistic junk heap, at least for English readers.

In wrapping up, the borrowing of words illustrates that when two languages compete for domination over one another, adaptability and adoptability are key ingredients. The Celts did not understand this and their language was marginalized. The Germanic-speakers faced the same fate when confronted with the Norman Conquest, but many of the higher-educated Britons saw the (Gallic) writing on the wall and chose to borrow the necessary words and phrases to communicate in a changed environment. By, out of necessity, opting to borrow from their foreign rulers, the English language evolved into the most extensive and prolific on the planet.

Celtic borrowings When the Anglo-Saxons took control of Britain, the original Celts moved to the northern and western fringes of the island – which is why the only places where Celtic languages are spoken in Britain today are in the west (Welsh in Wales) and north (Scottish Gaelic in the Scottish Highlands). Celtic speakers seem to have been kept separate from the Anglo-Saxon speakers. Those who remained in other parts of Britain must have merged in with the Anglo-Saxons. The end result is a surprising small number – only a handful – of Celtic borrowings. Some of them are dialectal such as cumb (deep valley) or loch (lake). Reminders of Britain’s Celtic past are mainly in the form of Celtic-based placenames including river names such as Avon, ‘river’, Don, Exe, Severn and Thames. Town names include Dover, ‘water’, Eccles, ‘church’, Kent, Leeds, London and York.

More recently, though, Celtic words were also introduced into English from Irish Gaelic – bog, brogue, blarney, clan, slogan, whisky.

Scandinavian borrowings.

The Scandinavian influence on Britain can be thought of in terms of three episodes.

Firstly, we can think of the period 750–1016 when the Vikings (Scandinavians) began attacking the northern and eastern shores of Britain and settling in those parts of Britain. There was a state of enmity between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, so unsurprisingly, not many Scandinavian borrowings took place; these include husbonda (husband) and lagu (law).

Secondly, we can consider the period 1016–1050, where the conditions were more or less similar to the earlier period, only that King Alfred the Great had succeeded in uniting the Anglo-Saxons through actively promoting the English language (among other things). There were more borrowings, including cnif (knife) and diegan (die).

Finally, we have the period 1050–1480. The French-speaking Normans took over Britain in 1066, and both the English and Scandinavians were given the same fate and were subdued by the Normans. Naturally, the English and the Scandinavians come together and interact with each other more closely. Therefore, a massive influence of the Scandinavian languages on English, in both grammar and vocabulary.

Unless you are a specialist, it is very difficult to pick out Scandinavian loan-words in English. This is because they seem to have the same quality and texture as Anglo-Saxon words. They are ordinary, everyday words, and quite often monosyllabic and include grammatical words (like the verb are (to be), or the pronouns their, them and they and some of the commonest words in English today like bag, dirt, fog, knife, flat, low, odd, ugly, want, trust, get, give, take, raise, smile and though. A good number of sc- or sk- words today are of Scandinavian origin (scathe, scorch, score, scowl, scrape, scrub, skill, skin, skirt, sky). Scandinavian loan-words are therefore more usefully considered as core items. Why is this so?

1. The English and Scandinavian belong to the same Germanic racial, cultural and linguistic stock originally and their language, therefore, shared common grammatical features and words. But changes had occurred in the languages during the couple of centuries of separation of the two sets of people.
2. The Scandinavians came to settle, rather than conquer or pillage. They lived alongside the Anglo-Saxons on more or less equal terms.
3. Under the Norman French, particularly, the two different groups fashioned a common life together as subjects.

Under these conditions:

(a) the English word sometimes displaced the cognate Scandinavian word: fish instead of fisk; goat instead of gayte;

(b) the Scandinavian word sometimes displaces the cognate English word: egg instead of ey, sister instead of sweoster;

(c) both might remain, but with somewhat different meanings: dike-ditch, hale-whole, raise-rise, sick-ill, skill-craft, skirt-shirt;

(d) the English word might remain, but takes on the Scandinavian meaning dream (originally ‘joy’, ‘mirth’, ‘music’, ‘revelry’); and

(e) the English words that were becoming obsolete might be given a new lease of life, eg dale and barn.

Latin borrowings

Latin, being the language of the Roman Empire, had already influenced the language of the Germanic tribes even before they set foot in Britain. Latin loanwords reflected the superior material culture of the Roman Empire, which had spread across Europe: street, wall, candle, chalk, inch, pound, port, camp.

The native Celts had also learnt some Latin, and some of these were borrowed by the Anglo-Saxons in Britain: sign, pearl, anchor, oil , chest, pear, lettuce.

Latin was also the language of Christianity, and St Augustine arrived in Britain in AD 597 to christianise the nation. Terms in religion were borrowed: pope, bishop, monk, nun, cleric, demon, disciple, mass, priest, shrine. Christianity also brought with it learning: circul, not (note), paper, scol (school), epistol.

Many Latin borrowings came in in the early MnE period. Sometimes, it is difficult to say whether the loan-words were direct borrowings from Latin or had come in through French (because, after all, Latin was also the language of learning among the French). One great motivation for the borrowings was the change in social order, where scientific and philosophical empiricism was beginning to be valued. Many of the new words are academic in nature therefore: affidavit, apparatus, caveat, corpuscle, compendium, equilibrium, equinox, formula, inertia, incubate, momentum, molecule, pendulum, premium, stimulus, subtract, vaccinate, vacuum. This resulted in the distinction between learned and popular vocabulary in English.

Greek borrowings

Greek was also a language of learning, and Latin itself borrowed words from Greek. Indeed the Latin alphabet is an adaptation of the Greek alphabet.

Many of the Greek loan-words were through other languages: through French – agony, aristocracy, enthusiasm, metaphor; through Latin – ambrosia, nectar, phenomenon, rhapsody. There were some general vocabulary items like fantasy, cathedral, charismatic, idiosyncrasy as well as more technical vocabulary like anatomy, barometer, microscope, homoeopathy.

During the Renaissance and after, there were modern coinages from Greek elements (rather than borrowings). For example, photo- yielded photograph, photogenic, photolysis and photokinesis; bio- yielded biology, biogenesis, biometry, bioscope; tele- yielded telephone, telepathy, telegraphic, telescopic. Other Greek elements used to coin new words include crypto-, hydro-, hyper-, hypo-, neo- and stereo-.

Other borrowings

As a result of empire and trade contacts, the lexicon of English continued to acquire terms from other languages including the following:

1. American: racoon, coyote, prairie, wigwam
2. Australian: wallaby, kangaroo, boomerang
3. Arabic: saffron, sequin, tamarind, alchemy, zenith
4. Persian: naphtha, jasmine, chess, lilac
5. Japanese: samurai, kimono
6. Other Asian regions: avatar, yoga, stupa, karma, curry, bangle, chop, catamaran, mandarin, ketchup, kowtow

For users of English in England, America, the rest of Europe, etc., these settle around periphery, not as learned words but as exotica.  

CHAPTER 2

THE FUNCTIONING OF FRENCH BORROWINGS IN THE FIELD OF FASHION, FOOD, CLOTHES

2.1 Functioning of French borrowings in Middle English

Borrowing as means of replenishing the vocabulary of present-day English is of much greater importance and is comparatively active only in the field of scientific terminology and social-political terminology as many terms are often made up of borrowed morphemes, mostly morphemes from classical languages.

The influence which English exerted on our language is seen in all aspects of life, social, political and hardly any walk of live was unaffected by it. The first point to be emphasized is that here we are not dealing with completely new ideas introduced from a different type of civilization and culture, but rather the imposing by a dominant race of their own terms for ideas which were already familiar to the subject race. Such a state of affairs obviously means that there will arise pairs of words the native and the foreign term for the same idea and a struggle for survival between the two, so that one of the words was eventually lost from the language, or survived only with some differentiation of meaning.

Borrowed words have been called «The milestones of philology» – said O. Jespersen – because they permit us (show us) to fix appreciatively the dates of linguistic changes. They show us the course of civilization and give us information of the nations». The well-known linguist Shuchard said «No language is entirely pure», that all the languages are mixed. Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes of factors; linguistic and extra-linguistic.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original stock. An English native word is a word which belongs to Anglo-Saxon origin. To the native words we include words from Common Germanic language and from Indo-European stock.

A borrowed word, a loan word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the language.

For example, in its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages mainly Latin, French and Old Norse. The great influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who nudged rather easily with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors. Who brought with them a lot of new nations of a higher social system developed feudalism it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century.

It must be pointed out that while the general historical reasons for borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of through the purely linguistic reasons for borrowings are still open to investigation. The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence.

Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes or factors: linguistic and extra-linguistic. Economic, cultural, industrial, political relations of speakers of the language with other countries refer to extra-linguistic factors.

For example, due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse of the Scandinavian tribes was the language of the conquerors. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system, developed feudalism. It was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school. The same is in Uzbek language. Due to the expansion of Islam religion, Arabic was used for centuries in Central Asia as the language of science and religion1. For about two centuries Russian language hold a dominant position in the nations of former Soviet Union. It was priority to know Russian and it was a language of communication and friendship. These factors are extra-linguistic ones.

The absence of equivalent words in the language to express new subjects or a phenomena makes people to borrow words. E.g. the words football, volleyball, pitchman in Uzbek; to economize the linguistic means, i.e. to use a foreign word instead of a long native expressions and others are called linguistic causes.

Borrowings enter the language in two ways through oral speech (by immediate contact between the people) and through written speech by indirect contact through books) Words borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adopter. Written borrowings are often rather long and they are unknown to many people, speaking the language.

The number of borrowings on Old English was meager. In the Middle English period there was an influx of loans. It is often contended, that since the Norman conquest borrowing has been the chief factor in the enrichment of the English vocabulary and as a result there was a sharp decline in the productivity and role of word-formation. Historical evidence, however, testifies to the fact that throughout its entire history, even in the periods of the mightiest influxes of borrowings, other processes no less intense, were in operation – word – formation and semantic development, which involved both native and borrowed elements. If the estimation of the role of borrowings is based on the study of words recorded in the dictionary, it is easy to overestimate the effect of the foreign words, as the number of native words is extremely small compared with the number of borrowings recorded. The only true way to estimate the relation of the native to the borrowed element is to consider the two as actually used in speech. If one counts every word used, including repetitions, in some reading matter, the proportion of native to borrowed words will be quite different. On such a count, every writer uses considerable more native words than borrowings. Shakespeare, for example has 90%, Milton 81%, Tennyson 88%. This shows how important is the comparatively small nucleus of native words. Different borrowing are marked by different frequency value. Those well established in the vocabulary may be as frequent in speech as native words, whereas other occur very rarely. The great number of borrowings in English left some imprint upon the language. The first effect of foreign influence is observed in the volume of its vocabulary. Due to its history the English language, more than any other modern language, has absorbed foreign elements in its vocabulary. But the adoption of foreign words must not be understood as were quantities change. Any importation into the lexical system brings about semantic and stylistic changes in the words of this language and changes in its synonymic groups.

It has been mentioned that when borrowed words were identical in meaning with those already in English the adopted word very often displaced the native word. In most cases, however, the borrowed words and synonymous native words (or words borrowed earlier) remained in the language, becoming more or less differentiated in meaning and use. As a result the number of synonymic groups in English greatly increased. The synonymic groups became voluminous and acquired many words rarely used. This brought about a rise in the percentage of stylistic synonyms.

Abundant borrowing intensified the difference between the word stock of the literary national language and dialects as well as between British English and American English. On the one hand a number of words were borrowed into the literary national language which are not to be found in the dialects. In a number of cases the dialects have preserved some Anglo-Saxon words which were replaced by borrowings in the literary language. On the other hand, a number of words were borrowed into dialects are not used throughout the country.

In spite of the numerous outside linguistic influences and the etymological heterogeneity of its vocabulary the English language is still, in essential characteristics a Germanic language. It has retained a ground work of Germanic words and grammar. A comparative study of the nature and role of native and borrowed words show that borrowing has never been the chief means of replenishing the English vocabulary. Word-formation and semantic development were throughout the entire history of the English language much more productive than borrowing. Besides most native words are marked by a higher frequency value. The great number of borrowings bringing with them new phonon-morphological types, new phonetic morphological and semantic features left its imprint upon the English language. On the other hand under the influence of the borrowed element words already existing in the English changed to some extent their semantic structure, collectability, frequency and word forming ability. Borrowing also considerably enlarged the English vocabulary and brought about some changes in English synonymic groups, in the distribution of the English vocabulary through sphere of application and in the lexical divergence between the two variants of the literary national language and its dialects.

English has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap. For example, the Norse influence on English began already in the 8th century A.D. and continued strongly well after the Norman Conquest brought a large influx of Norman French to the language.

An important imprint that the Normans left in England is their language. The language they brought with them when they disembarked on the English shore was Anglo-Norman, a dialect of French. Thanks to the exclusively Norman aristocracy that spread on the British Isle, Anglo-Norman was spoken and preserved for four centuries.

During the first decades of the settlement of the Normans in England, Anglo-Norman and English coexisted nearly without influencing each other. As Anglo-Norman had been introduced and was spoken by the nobility, it had a much higher prestige than English, which was only spoken by members of the lower classes. This difference of prestige determined the use of both languages: Anglo-Norman as a highly esteemed language was used in all written documents (alongside with Latin) and had the status of a language of court and administration. By contrast, English was mainly used in oral communication, and only by the lower classes.

As the Anglo-Norman nobility and the English population rarely mixed, language contact was at first too weak to initiate a real language change. But within fifty years, both ethnic groups began to intermingle. Norman soldiers who had been brought to England stayed there and married English women, and the English got accustomed to their rulers and reluctance to accept them faded. In this context, bilingualism became increasingly common. English servants had to speak the language of their Norman lords, children of bicultural marriages naturally spoke both languages.

This established a close contact between both languages, a condition under which language change could take place. This language change consisted mainly of English achieving a mixed vocabulary through borrowing Anglo-Norman words. In the period from 1066 to approximately 1120, when language contact was not intense yet, only 900 Anglo-Norman words entered the English vocabulary. When the English population began to intermingle with the Normans, a lot more loan words were borrowed into the English language: About 10,000 Anglo-Norman and Central-French words were taken over into the English language before the 15th century.

The areas covered by these loan words were those in which the Anglo-Normans exerted influence, such as religion, government, law, army, fashion, learning, culture, social life, art, cuisine and medicine. Some examples of former loan-words that are still in use today are religion, abbey, government, crown, duke, army, peace, battle, justice, crime, dress, fur, dinner, feast, taste, pain, stomach, pulse, painting, music, palace, mansion, poet, title, paper, pen, study, etc. In addition to isolated loan words, whole Anglo-Norman expressions were introduced into the English language. Some of those can still be found today: plenty of, because of, in vain etc.

As already said, Anglo-Norman and Central-French words penetrated the English language up to the 15th century. Considering that the Anglo-Norman language was only spoken by a minimal fraction of the English population, this may seem a very long time, and one may wonder how the Normans managed to protect and preserve their language in an all-English environment for several centuries. The prestige of this language is mainly responsible for this situation.

The members of the aristocracy simply did not want to learn English. Even the English kings did not speak English, the language of their subjects, fluently until the 13th century. Another reason were frequent immigration waves from France. Travelling from Britain to the continent and back was also common, as much among the nobility that often owned lands in Normandy, as among merchants who bought goods on the continent.

When the English crown lost Normandy in the 13th century, a decline of the Anglo-Norman language was, however, inevitable. In families of Norman origin, and even in the aristocracy, Anglo-Norman was not always the children’s mother tongue any more. It had to be taught to them as a foreign language. Some manuals for teaching French from this time are still preserved and serve as a proof of this development. Furthermore, in the course of the 13th century, Central-French was increasingly regarded as the language of education and of culture. Anglo-Norman in contrast was merely considered a funny French dialect. As the former maintenance of Anglo-Norman had been due to its high prestige, its decline must have been very rapid when it lost it. Some Anglo-Norman loan words were replaced by more prestigious Central French ones. As shown in the following table, the Anglo-Norman and Central French words were quite similar:

The history of the English language, and its borrowings, is founded on three invasions: Teutonic; Scandinavian (Vikings); and, most importantly, by the Norman conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy in 1066. (Luckily, the Nazis never made it across the Channel.) The Teutonic and Scandinavian invasions obviously affected the native language. But it was the French-speaking Normans, led by William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conqurant), who introduced the greatest, most extensive and most permanent collection of borrowed or “loan” words, as Jespersen is fond of writing, to the English language upon their successful 1066 invasion of the island.

The Norman occupation lasted much longer than that of the Norse invasion and unlike the Scandinavians, who co-existed with the invaded, the Normans overwhelmed the English. The British status quo was tossed out as the Normans reconfigured the structures of England, from its legal system to its religions, by becoming the ruling masters of the island.

While the Normans brought their French to the British Isles, they, too, were also operating in a sense with borrowed words. If, as Greenough and Kittredge point out, French is simply Latin in a “corrupt form” then the conquered British inhabitants would have had to absorb two borrowed languages — French and Latin. And the question for them, if they chose to ask it, is from which genesis the written or spoken words the Normans brought to the shores came from — Latin or French.

The invading Normans also introduced a sort of language class warfare to the Britons. If a foreign language is thrust upon the conquered, one would think that it would spread from top to bottom through all strata of the inhabitants. The “losing” language would thus disappear. Yet, that did not happen after the Normans’ arrival. The conquered nobles adopted the French model, but the peasants retained the Germanic tongue, setting up both a class and a linguistic divide that would remain until their languages, and borrowed words, blended into Middle English.

But morphing French words and phrases into the English language does not mean there was a certain borrowing snobbery. Writers, such as Chaucer, or diplomats, the royalty, high-ranking members of the military and businessmen who were familiar with French culture (and given the closeness of European borders, easily attainable), readily adopted and adapted words borrowed from the French into the English language. In many cases, the borrowing was not cavalier, but was a necessity to communicate.

The Norman Conquest forced the creation of an entirely new way of English life, influencing the language of its law, religion, medicine and arts. Since the French/Latin-speakers were the dominant power, the Britons had to borrow words in order to simply communicate with their new masters who “ousted” some of the local vernacular. These “newcomers” may have rid some of the centuries-old English synonyms, but they became ingrained because of their ties to the originals. The Anglo-Saxon king and queen survived the French influence, but with the Normans along came such titles as duke and duchess. Well, Britons would have to be able to understand what either of these two terms meant and, thus, they would assimilate these borrowed words into, if not every day use, their sometime use.

According to Jespersen, many British adopted borrowed French words not only to communicate, but because they felt it was the “fashion” to imitate their “betters.” Again, while some might perceive this as a form of snobbery, many of us do strive to improve our language skills. While saying someone tried to overthrow a government is basic and to the point, using coup d’etat as the phrase is instantly recognizable to many readers and, almost, puts more of a sense of urgency to the event. You could say a woman is stylish, which I am sure she would appreciate, but substituting the borrowed chic usually makes more of an impact. Obviously, our knowledge of borrowed words not only expands our vocabulary but enables us to converse with one another.

While it is understandable that the Britons would borrow words that did not exist in their native language, such as majesty and mayor, it is somewhat mystifying why they would replace their swin with the French porc. That is unless you consider how the English farmers and French aristocrats dealt with livestock. With these two related words, the Germanic swin is more down-to-earth while the French porc was considered more refined. Swin evolved into the present-day swine, which is what English peasants would have been raising, while the porc or pork would have been what the upper-class French would eat. It is “animal versus food” and, again, the borrowings would elevate the perceived social standing of the English man or woman who used the French word. And as Greenough and Kittredge illustrate, sometimes the foreign word, such as divide, becomes more popular than the inhabitants’ cleave. Also, one word can crowd out another, with the native being the one shunted aside as in what happened to the local ey which was replaced by the Scandinavian egg.

The French language-influence on the English presented them with more abstract words than what the Britons might have considered to be their clear and concrete definitions of their native words. The English child as opposed to the borrowed French infant, or the English freedom compared to the French liberty are examples.

The amazing thing about the transformation and evolution of the English language is the extent to how receptive the country’s inhabitants were to outside languages, particularly French and Latin. It is almost as if an invader could plant a language seed and the Britons would cultivate it. But unlike the French who most likely would stay with that one language plant, the English (perhaps because of their love of gardening) seemed intent on growing as many synonymous words as possible. And, continuing with this somewhat silly gardening analogy, Jespersen points out that many times “the English soil has proved more fertilizing than the French soil” for transplanted words. Why offer one native word, as the French seem to enjoy, when you can convert a multitude of borrowed words and multiply them into synonymous bits of language as the English seem wont to do? Or, as the University of Minnesota’s professor and author of Word Origins and How We Know Them, Dr. Anatoly Liberman3 asks in his lecture, A Coat of Many Colors, is it “better to have two nostrils or one?” With a multitude of similar words, the English at least, seem to have embraced the “two nostrils” theory, sometimes using both the native and the borrowed words side-by-side

This borrowing has also helped inflate the size of English dictionaries. The voluminous English dictionaries, as compared to French, German or Dutch dictionaries for example, can credit their size to the borrowings of foreign words the British adopted. If the English were originally concerned that their native language was not up to snuff with the French or Latin tongues, the Britons’ borrowings might give new meaning to “size matters.”

While I have mainly focused on the Norman Conquest and the seismic language shift 1066 created in the linguistic world, there were others that might have been subsequently involved in English-word borrowings — if they had arrived in time. Among them are Spanish and Italian, but as Greenough and Kittredge point out, while their influence upon English literature has “been very great, but upon (English) vocabulary these languages have had no appreciable effect.” That is because the Normans made the goal first and the English had basically borrowed all the words and phrases they needed.

England’s emergence as a superpower brought it, in a sense, border expansion because of colonialism. This also introduced its people to sights they had never seen and for which they would need descriptive words. The Britons could only borrow them as there was no native term to express what they encountered.

There were no such things as boomerangs or kangaroos in England, so when the Britons came upon them instead of creating entirely new words to define them, the easier alternative was to borrow the Australian words. Elephants, leopards and panthers also were not native to England and, again, these animal names would have to be borrowed for Britons to describe them to one another. Even the tomato, unknown in the country until its introduction from the New World, would have to be named. Borrowing from the Spanish tomate, the British settled on tomato.

Heavy borrowing from French occurred in two phases:

1. 1066-1250. About 900 words were borrowed during this phase, with most of them showing the effects of Anglo-Norman phonology. Examples from this source are:

Social: baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel, juggler, largess.

Literary: story, rime, lay, douzepers.

Church: The largest number of words were borrowed for use in religious services since the French-speaking Normans took control of the church in England.

1. 1250-1400. The heaviest borrowing from French occurred in this period because after about 1250 there were more French speakers who began speaking English--remember the loss of Normandy in 1204. The words borrowed during this phase are found in many areas.

Government and Administrative: govern, government, administer, crown, state, empire, royal, majesty, treaty, statute, parliament, tax, rebel, traitor, treason, exile, chancellor, treasurer, major, noble, peer, prince, princess, duke, squire, page (but not king, queen, lord, lady, earl), peasant, slave, servant, vassal.

Ecclesiastical: religion, theology, sermon, confession, clergy, clergy, cardinal, friar, crucifix, miter, censer lectern, abbey, convent, creator, savior, virgin, faith, heresy, schism, solemn, divine, devout, preach, pray, adore, confess.

Law: justice, equity, plaintiff, judge, advacate, attorney, petition, inquest, felon, evidence, sue, accuse arrest, blame, libel, slander, felony, adultery, property, estate, heir, executor.

Military--Army and Navy: (Much of the fighting during this time was done in France. Many now-obsolete words for pieces of armor, etc., were borrowed at this time.) army, navy, peace, enemy, arms, battle, spy, combat, siege, defence, ambush, soldier, guard, mail, buckler, banner, lance, besiege, defend, array.

Clothing: habit, gown, robe, garment, attire, cape, coat, collar, petticoat, train, lace, embroidery, pleat, buckle, button, tassel, plume, satin, taffeta, fur, sable, blue, brown, vermilion, russet, tawny, jewel, ornament, broach, ivory, turquoise, topaz, garnet, ruby, pearl, diamond.

Food: feast, repast, collation, mess, appetite, tart, sole, perch, sturgeon, sardine, venison, beef, veal, mutton, port, bacon, toast, cream, sugar, salad, raisin, jelly, spice, clove, thyme.

Social: curtain, couch, lamp, wardrobe, screen, closet, leisure, dance, carol, lute, melody.

Hunting: rein, curry, trot, stable, harness, mastiff, spaniel, stallion, pheasant, quail, heron, joust, tournament, pavilion.

Art, Learning, Medicine: painting, sculpture, music, beauty, color, image, cathedral, palace, mansion, chamber, ceiling, porch, column, poet, prose, romance, paper, pen, volume, chapter, study, logic, geometry, grammar, noun, gender, physician, malady, pain, gout, plague, pulse, remedy, poison.

Common words and expressions include nouns--age, air, city, cheer, honor, joy; adjectives--chaste, courageous, coy, cruel, poor, nice, pure; verbs--advance, advise, carry, cry, desire; phrases--draw near, make believe, hand to hand, by heart, without fail (These are loan-translations).

Many of the above words differ from Modern French in form and pronunciation because of phonological changes such as the following:

1. French /s/ was lost before other consonants in the 12th century, so OF feste became MF fte (MnE feast). Cf. forest--fort, hostel--htel, beast--bte.
2. In the 13th century the French `j' came to be pronounced `zh', and `ch' became `sh'. Early borrowings (i.e., before the 13th century) thus have the `ch' and `j' pronunciations: charge, change, chamber, chase, chair, chimney; just, jewel, journey, majesty, gentle. Later borrowings (i.e., after the 13th century) have the `zh' and `sh' pronunciations: chamois, chaperon, chiffon, chevron, jabot (last trim on the front of a dress), rouge.
3. The Anglo-Norman dialect was also different from the dialect of Paris, which was Central French: AN retained the initial ca-, which became cha-, chie- in CF, e.g.: MnE caitiff, not CF chaitif. English contains words borrowed from both dialects at different times, e.g.:
4. cattle < AN catel catch < AN cachier
5. chattel < CF chatel chase < CF chacier (MF chasser)
6. CF also showed an early dislike of w-, but the northern dialects did not, e.g.: warden from AN and guardian from CF. CF also dropped the /w/ in qu- (i.e., AN /kw/, CF /k/), so MnE has quarter, quality, question, etc., pronounced /kw-/. (cf. MF qualit, etc.)

Vowels also show some differences. For example, AN retained the ei diphthong, but in the 12th century it became oi in CF, so:

MnE leal < AN leial MnE loyal < CF

MnE real < AN reial MnE royal < CF

Some 10,000 French words were borrowed into Middle English, and about 75% (7500) of these words are still in use. These words were quickly assimilated into English; i.e., English suffixes, etc., were freely added to the borrowed French words; e.g., gentle, borrowed in 1225, is found compounded with an English word, gentlewoman, in 1230.

This heavy borrowing from French had several effects on English:

1. Native words were replaced:

OE aeele -- F. noble
OE aeeling -- F. nobleman
OE here -- F. army
OE campa -- F. warrior
OE sibb -- F. peace

1. English and French words were retained with a differentiation in meaning:

hearty--cordial
ox--beef
sheep--mutton
swine--pork
calf--veal
house--mansion

1. The Old English word-forming powers were reduced, with less use of prefixes and suffixes and fewer compounds.

Latin Borrowings. In a sense the French words were Latin borrowings since French developed from Vulgar Latin--as did all the Romance languages. The borrowings that came directly from Latin tended to be more learned in character--e.g., allegory, index, magnify, mechanical, private, secular, zenith. Aureate terms--direct borrowings from Latin--were a stylistic affectation of the 15th century Scottish Chaucerians such as James I, Henryson, and Dunbar. Some of these words have been dropped from English (or never really made it in) while others have survived, e.g., diurnal (daily or daytime), tenebrous (dark), laureate, mediation, oriental, prolixity.

It has been pointed out that as a result of Middle English borrowing from French and Latin, Modern English has synonyms on three levels: popular (English), literary (French), and learned (Latin), as in rise--mount--ascend; ask--question--interrogate; fire--flame--conflagration; holy--sacred--consecrated.

After this there is little or no direct influence of French on English but the language remained fashionable and the practice of borrowing words from the continental language continued well into the 15th century. The Central French period (during which influence from the region around Paris dominated) can be taken to cease gradually with the introduction of printing at the end of the 15th century and the general resurgence in interest and status of English.

Map №1

The difference between Anglo-Norman and Central French loans in English is to be seen in famous pairs of words like catch and chase, both of which go back originally to Latin captiare, which itself furnished English with the later loan ‘capture’. The main differences between Anglo-Norman and Central French are outline in the tables below.

Anglo-Norman	Central French
/k/	/t/
cattle /k-/	chattels /t/
pocket /-k-/	poach /t/
/t/	/s/
catch /-t/	chase /-s/
launch /-nt/	lance /-ns/
pinch /-nt/	pincers /-ns-/

The borrowing of words in the Middle English period is related to changes with French itself. For instance an /s/ before /t/ was lost in French but many loans in English were made before this took place, hence one has estate but tat, forest but fort in Modern French. In the case of hostel and hotel, the /s/ in the first word shows that it is an older borrowing from the same root, cf. Modern French htel (the accented vowel in the French examples here indicates that previously an /s/ followed the vowel).

In the course of time the difference between the two strands of French — Norman and Central — became more and more diffuse. Certainly there is no question nowadays of speakers being able intuitively to distinguish between the two.

As a generalization one can say that the French loans are to be found on higher stylistic levels in English. With the later Central French borrowings this is obvious given the sectors of society where the loans occurred (see next section). The general split is between colloquial native words and more formal Romance terms and can be seen clearly in word pairs like forgive and pardon. Other examples are begin : commence; hearty : cordial; happiness : felicity; help : aid; hide : conceal; meal : repast (only literary nowadays).

But for later English the etymological source of words is irrelevant and any two words can form a pair distinguished on a colloquial — formal axis as one can see in notice : perceive, both of Romance origin or even in the pair present : gift where in fact the Romance term is by far and away the more common in spoken English.

Semantic differentiation has frequently developed which may have neutralized any previous distinction in register: wedding : marriage, ask : demand.

The areas of the English lexicon in which the influence of French was to be felt reflect the spheres of life in which the French predominated in the early Middle English period. The following lists are intended to give a brief impression of the richness of the this Romance influence on the Germanic stock of English vocabulary.

Geography: country; coast; river; valley; lake; mountain; frontier; border; city; hamlet; village; estate Noble titles: emperor; duke; duchess; duchy; prince; count; countess; baron; squire; noble(man/woman); gentle(man/woman); dame; damsel

Terms referring to sections of the community: peasantry; people; subjects; burgesses; nobility; gentry; knighthood; chivalry;

Terms for administration and administrators: sovereign; crown; sceptre; ruler; power; policy; government; administration; court; office; chancery; treasury; parliament; counsel; administrator; governor; ambassador; wardon; mayor; charter; seal; accord; agreement; covenant; treaty; alliance; curfew; duty; reign; civil; empire; nation; tyrant; oppression

Legal terms: justice; privilege; statute; ordinance; judge; chief; crime; fraud; trespass; transgression; accusation; coroner; plaintif; defendant; client; claimant; executor; notary; process; appeal; bail; evidence; decree; divorce; exile; heir; heritage; prison; jail; dungeon; arrest; plead; punish; banish; treason; release

Military terms: peace; war; armour; artillery; fortress; host; army; warrior; archer; soldier; chief; captain; admiral; enemy; conqueror; victor; robber; expedition; resistance; banner; battle; besiege; destroy

Ecclesiastical terms: charity; chastity; chaplain; abbot; abbess; dean; friar; confessor; person/parson; preacher; evangelist; saint; fraternity; chapel; Closter; abbey; faith; bible; chapter; commandment; divine; service; prayer; sermon; absolution; procession; parish; baptize; praise; glorify

Terms for emotional states: ease; disease; joy; delight; felicity; grief; despair; distress; courage; folly; passion; desire; jealousy; ambition; arrogance; despite; disdain; malice; envy; avarice; certainty; doubt; enjoy; despise; furious

Trades and crafts: barber; butcher; carpenter; carrier; draper; forester; fruiterer; grocer; mason; mercer; merchant; Spicer; painter; tailor; victualler; apprentice; surgeon; physician; bargain; fair; merchandise; price; money; coin; dozen; double; measure; gallon; bushel; purchase; profit; pay; usury; debt; prosperity; barrel; bottle; basket; vessel

Clothing and ornamentation: blouse; chemise; cloak; coat; frock; garment; gown; robe; veil; cotton; fur; boot; ornament; brooch; jewel; pearl; button; scissors; brush; mirror; towel; carpet; curtain; blanket; couch; cushion; table; chair; fashion

Food and cooking: boil; fry; roast; mince; dine; dinner; supper; appetite; flour; grease; sugar; spice; vinegar; bacon; victuals; lard, pork; beef; mutton; veal; venison; sausage; sauce; gravy; jelly; salad; juice; cabbage; cream; biscuit; fritter; cider; cucumber; onion

Assorted loanwords: age; aid; affair; action; air; baggage; beauty; branch; cage; cable; cattle; chance; change; choice; company; consent; coward; couple; cry; cure; damage; danger; delay; demand; departure; difference; difficulty; error; example; exception; exercise; experience; face; fate; favour; fence; fool; force; foreign; fountain; guide; honour; labour; leisure; marriage; piece; pencil; possession; question; language; wages able; ancient; brief; certain; clear; considerable; cruel; different; difficult; easy; familiar; famous; favourable; feeble; faint; fine; general; gentle; glorious; poor; safe; sure achieve; arrive; appear; approve; approach; assemble; assist; attend; advertise; affirm; await; blame; catch; cancel; carry; cease; chase; cry; change; consent; consider; count; cover; demand; deny; depart; deserve; discover; disturb; finish; employ; encourage; enjoy; enter; excuse; escape; increase; examine; force; fail; form; grieve; marry; refuse; perish; suffer; paint; perform; propose; save; touch; travel; tremble

The fact that for many of the above words Germanic equivalents already existed in English and continued to exist led to a stylistic splitting of the vocabulary of English. Thus a word like work is a Germanic word and the normal everyday word whereas labour is a Romance loanword which is regarded as being on a higher level, cf. ‘I have some work to do now’, ‘The value of labour in our society’. In other cases the Romance loanword has come to have a slightly different meaning to the Germanic base word, cf. ask and demand where the latter (Romance) word has the implication of insisting on something.

Among the various types of changes which took place in the period in which Middle English borrowed from French through direct contact, are those which led to a mixing of Germanic and Romance elements. Thus one has cases of assimilation in which an English word was created on the basis of a similar sounding French word. Here one has an instance of the French form complementing the English one. For example, the English verb choose obtained a noun choice on the basis of a borrowing of French choix.

In some cases one can no longer decide whether the Germanic or the Romance form of a word has survived into Modern English. Thus in the case of the adjective rich one cannot tell whether it is a continuation of the Old English rice or the later French borrowing riche. However, one can in many cases see a contamination of the morphology of words due to French borrowing. With the previous adjective one can see the Romance suffix in the noun formed from it: richess as opposed to Old English richdom with the Romance ending -ess.

The form of a word may have been changed without its meaning having been affected. With the Old English word iegland / iland (cf. German Eiland) one arrives at the later spelling island under the influence of French isle. Note that the s here is unetymological, i.e. was never pronounced in English. Some French loanwords were influenced by changes later than Middle English. This is for example the case with Old French viage which was borrowed into Middle English but where the later French form voyage was borrowed into English and adapted in its pronunciation. The same is true of the Middle English noun flaute which was changed under the influence of later French flute.

The form of many French loanwords can be used to date borrowing. As mentioned above there are two strands of French influence, an early Anglo-Norman one and a later Central French one. These can be identified phonologically as can be seen in the word pairs catch and chase or cattle and chattels (from captiare and capital in Latin respectively). In the first word one sees Middle English cacchen which was borrowed from North French cachier as the retention of the /k/ before /a/ was a feature of Norman French.
After 1250 the influence of Central French was predominant in England. In this variety of French the original /k/ retained in Norman French was shifted to /t/ which is reflected in the writing where c was changed to ch. Thus we have the Central French verb chacier being borrowed into Middle English as chacen, Modern English chase. Note that the later borrowing did not replace the earlier one in keeping with the principle that if two variant forms come to be distinguished semantically their continuing existence in the language is as good as guaranteed. Not so with a number of other Norman French borrowings which were replaced by the later Central French ones: calice, carite, cancel; chalice, charite, chancel.

The Central French /t/ underwent the further change to // in the course of the post-Middle English period and later loans reflect this. Thus we have change and chief as Middle English loans from Central French with /t/ but words like chef and champagne with // are of a later origin.

Similar differences in pronunciation can be used to date other loanwords from French. For example the relationship of /d/ and // shows the relative chronology of borrowing. The older loans such as siege, judge, age show the affricate /d/ whereas newer loans from the Early Modern English period have the simple fricative typical of Modern French as in rouge /ru:/; with the word garage there still exist two alternative pronunciations /grd/ and /gr:/.

One can also recognize later borrowings by the vowel quality when the stress is found on the final syllable: memoir (cf. the earlier loan memory), liqueur (cf. the earlier form liquor).

The orthography of Modern English reflects in a fairly exact manner the pronunciation of Late Middle English. In some respects it can be seen to have adopted practices of French spelling which, while justified in the latter language, were superfluous in English. A case in point is the orthographic treatment of Middle English /u:/. In Old English this vowel was represented simply as u as in OE hus ‘house’. In the course of the Middle English period it came to be written as ‘house’. This spelling is based on the use of the digraph ou to represent the vowel /u/ in French. In the latter language the simple u grapheme stood for a phonetic /y/, cf. Modern French vu /vy/ ‘seen’ and fou /fu/ ‘mad’. In English, however, the digraph ou was not necessary because /y/ had been unrounded in the Early Middle English period (with the exception of the West Midlands area), cf. OE ymel (ME thimble) ‘thimble’. It was nonetheless used so that by Late Middle English the /u:/ of Old English had come to be written with ou (OE /y/ being written simply as i), cf. out, now (the latter with the variant ow at the end of a word). Later loanwords in English do not have the spelling ou for the /u:/ vowel, irrespective of their origin. Thus one has, for example, chute from later French and acute from Latin, both with u for /u:/.

Other instances of Frence influence on English spelling are: h > gh, , > th, > a, cw > qu, i > j (partly), u > v at the beginning, u in the middle of a word, sc > sh [], c > ch [t], cg, gg > dg [d].

French scribal practice is behind the spelling -ough which in Middle English indicated the pronunciation /-u:x/ or /-oux/. Because of later phonetic developments this spelling came to be one of the most notorious cases of incongruence between pronunciation and orthography in Modern English as it can represent at least seven different sound sequences as seen from the following random set: plough /-au/, cough /-f/, although /-/, hiccough /-p/, thorough /-/ (unstressed), through /-u:/, rough /-f/.

Another feature of French spelling which affected Old English words was the use of final -e. This was added to English words to show that the vowel of the previous syllable was long, as in ice (from OE is). This ‘discontinuous sequence’ is used very much in Modern English to keep original short and long vowels apart graphically, e.g. pan and pane, ban and bane. Note that due to the Great Vowel Shift (which only affected long vowels) the difference is nowadays one of vowel quality and not just quantity. The major changes involved in this shift are given in the following table.

2.2 Functioning of French borrowings in Modern English

Modern English began around the 16th Century and, like all languages, is still changing. One change occurred when the suffix of some verb forms became s (loveth, loves; hath, has). Auxiliary verbs also changed (he is risen, he has risen).
Norman French is the 11th century language of France and England. It is an Indo-European language.

In 1066, the Norman king, William the Conqueror, invaded England. Many Norman French words entered the language after this. In general, the Normans were the nobility, while the native English were their servants. The names of domestic animals and their meats show this relationship. The animal name is English ("cow", "sheep", "pig") while the names of the meats derived from these animals is French ("beef", "mutton", "pork").

Many words have been borrowed from Norman French. These can be grouped into several types:
legal terms ("adultery", "slander"),
military words ("surrender", "occupy"),
names of meats ("bacon", "venison"),
words from the royal court ("chivalry", "majesty").
the non-metric unit of volume (the "gallon") is Norman French.

There are many other words.The Normans introduced the QU spelling for words containing KW ("question").

There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings:

1. a) words relating to government : administer, empire, state, government;
2. b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle;
3. c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, inquest, sentence, barrister;
4. d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace, pleat, embroidery;
5. e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl ;
6. 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:

1. a) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatorie, brochure, nuance, piruette, vaudeville;
2. b) words relating to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manouvre;
3. c) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;
4. d) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

Other reasons for the reassertion of English are:

1. the Normans in England belonged to the Capetian dynasty spoke Norman French; this became non-prestigious in France as the variety spoken by the Angevian dynasty in France, Parisian French, became the prestige variety; because Norman French was seen as socially inferior, it was less difficult to abandon it in favour of English;
2. subsequently, England became at war with France in the Hundred Years War (1337–1453).

French borrowings

Word	Meaning	Notes
accuse		One of many legal words from Norman French.
adultery
archer		One of several military words from Norman French.
arson		Crime of deliberate burning.
assault
asset	enough
bacon		Cured pig's meat. One of many names for meats from Norman French.
bail	to take charge	Security for a prisoner's appearance.
bailiff	carrier	Officer who executes writs.
beef		Meat of ox or cow.
butcher	seller of goat flesh	A dealer in meat.
button
chivalry	horseman	One of many words used in royal life from Norman French.
comfort	strengthen
courtesy
cricket		A ball game played in the UK, Caribbean, parts of Africa and Asia, Australia, New Zealand.
crime	judgment
curfew	cover fire	Period to be off the streets.
custard		Baked mixture of eggs and milk.
defeat
dungeon		Underground prison.
duty
eagle		Large bird of divy.
elope	run away
embezzle	ravage
enemy	non friend
error
evidence
exchequer		A national treasury.
fashion	make
felony		A serious crime.
fraud
gallon	jug	A unit of liquid volume (= 4.546 Ч 10-3 m3 in UK; = 3.785 Ч 10-3 m3 in USA)
goblin
gourd
grammar	art of letters
grease	fat
grief
grocer		Food dealer. Originally "one who deals in the gross".
gutter	drop	Track for water.
haddock		A type of fish.
havoc
hogmanay		Now a Scottish festival at New Year.
honour
injury	wrong	Wrongful action or damage.
jettison	throw overboard
joy
judge	right speaking
jury	swear
justice
larceny		The crime of theft.
lavender		Perfumed shrub.
launch	hurl
lease	leave
leisure	allowed	Free time.
lever	to raise
liable	may be bound
libel	little book
liberty	free
liquorices	sweet root	Originally from a Greek root, "glico riza".
mackerel		A type of fish.
majesty
mangle
manor	remain
marriage
matrimony		From the same root as "matriarch" (mother).
mayhem
mutton		Meat of sheep.
noble
noun	name
nurse	nourish
occupy	seize
odour	smell
parliament	speaking	Ruling council in countries like UK.
pedigree	crane's foot	From "pe de gru". Because bird's feet marks resemble a family tree.
penthouse
perjury		False statement under oath.
pinch		As in "grip tightly".
platter	big plate
pleasure
pocket	small bag
pork		The meat of the pig.
prison	lay hold of
profound	deep
purloin	put away
purveyor		Supplier of food.
push
quarter		The Normans introduced the QU spelling for the KW sound.
question
quiet
quiver		The arrow case.
rape	take by force
reason
rebuke		Originally "to cut down wood".
rebut
recover
remedy	to heal
renown	to make famous
rent		The same root as "render".
repeal
reprieve	send back
reprisal
retail	piece cut off
reward
river
robe
royal
rummage
salary	salt	Soldiers used to be paid with salt.
salmon		A type of fish.
scavenger	tax collector
scullery	maker of dishes
search
sermon
sewer		Originally a channel to carry off overflow from a fishpond.
share
shop	cobbler's stall
sir		From "sire".
slander
soil
sovereign
spawn
spy
squirrel	little shadow tail
stubble	grain stalks
subsidy	support
suitor
surname		Family name.
surplus
surrender
survey
survive	over live
syllable
tally	mark on a stick	Tally sticks were used to record financial transactions.
tax	to charge
toil	stir
treason
treaty
uncle
usher	door keeper
valley
veal
veil
venison	to hunt	Deer meat
vicar	assistant
vice
view
virgin
vulture		Large bird of divy.
wafer
waive
warden		Same root as "guardian".
wicket	gate	Wooden sticks used in the game of cricket.
wreck

Norman French is the native language of the nobility.

Probably not a great deal of bilingualism
Small numbers of French loans enter English: legal, administrative and military terms.
French is the cultivated, divstige language.
There is a diagnostic situation, with French the high-divstige, English the low-divstige variety.

Norman French has lost its status, and Parisian French as the divferred norm.

Large numbers of French loans enter English.

English becomes the dominant language, but French remains dominant in literature and at the court.

Increasing evidence of imperfect knowledge of French.

Norman French chronology

·1334-1453 The Hundred Years' War with France.
·1348-9 The Black Death.30% mortality. Labour shortage, wage rises, increasing importance of the English-speaking classes
·1386 English accepted in the courts ('Statute of Pleading')
·Two major English poets at the end of the 14th century:
Gower writes mostly in French (but composes one long work Confessio amantis, in English)
·Chaucer writes almost entirely in English.
·Evidence of private letters:
·1350: French is the rule.
·After 1400: English becomes common.
·After 1450: English is the rule.
·Use of English in schools.

The influence of French on English in the early modern period
Influence on English phrasing
Aside from borrowing and word formation, French considerably influenced English phrasing. The loan translations range from polite turns of speech, such as at your service, do me the favour, to engage somebody in a quarrel, to make (later: pay) a visit, to idiomatic phrases like by occasion, in detail, in favour of, in the last resort, in particular, to the contrary.

ME pronounciation
The English language of the middle ages is different from the modern one. Here are two extracts from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to compare:

From the General Prologue Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;

Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne, And smale fowles maken melodye That sleepen al the night with open yл - (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages) - Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;

And specially from every shires ende Of Engelond to Canterbury they wende, The holy blisful martyr for to seeke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.

The Wife of Baths Prologue and Tale from The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, performed by Elizabeth Salter, from Geoffrey Chaucer: The Wife of Prologue and Tale (Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521635306) (p) 1976, 1998 Cambridge University Press. All Rights Reserved. /© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Other domains that became enriched with French loanwords include:

1. Government: parliament, chancellor, government, country, crown
2. Finance: treasure, wage, poverty
3. Law: attorney, plaintiff, larceny, fraud, jury, verdict
4. War: battle, army, castle, tower, siege, banner
5. Religion: miracle, charity, saint, pardon
6. Morality: virtue, vice, gentle, patience, courage, mercy, courtesy, pity
7. Recreation: falcon, covert, scent, chase, quarry
8. Art, fashion, etc.: apparel, costume, gown, art, beauty, colour, image, design, cushion, tapestry
9. Cuisine: stew, grill, roast, . . . (compare these with AS-based terms like bake), bacon, mutton, pork, veal, venison (compare these with AS-based terms like boar, calf, cow, deer, ox, sheep, swine)
10. Household Relationships: uncle, aunt, nephew, cousin (form from OE: father, mother, brother and from Scandinavian sister)
11. The domination of the French language in England came to an end in the source of the 14th c. The victory of English was predetermined and prepared for by previous events and historical conditions. Little by little the Normans and English drew together and intermingled. In the 14th c. Anglo-Norman was a dead language; it appeared as corrupt French to those who had access to the French of Paris through books, education or direct contacts. The number of people who Knew French had fallen; Anglo-Norman and French literary compositions had lost their audience and had to be translated into English.
12. Towards the end of the 14th c. the English language had taken the place of French as the language of literature and administration. English was once more the dominant speech of all social classes in all regions. It had ousted French since it had always remained the mother tongue and the only spoken language of the bulk of the population.
13. It may be interesting to mention some facts showing how the transition came about. In 1362 Edward 3 gave his consent to an act of Parliament ordaining that English be used in the law courts, sine ‘French has become much unknown in the realm’. This reform, however, was not carried out for years to come: French, as well as Latin, continued to be used by lawyers alongside English until the 16th c. Yet many legal documents which have survived from the late 14th and 15th c. are written in English: wills, municipal acts, petitions. In 1363, for the first tome in history, Parliament was opened by the King’s chancellor with an address in English. In 1399 King Henry 4 used English in his official speech when accepting the throne. In 1404 English diplomats refused to conduct negotiations with France in French, claiming that the language was unknown to them. All these events testify to the recognition of English as the state language.
14. Howly and inevitably English regained supremey in the field of education. As early as 1349 it was ruled that English should be used at school in teaching Latin, but it was not until 1385 that the practice became general, and even the universities began to conduct their curricula in English. By the 15th c. the ability to speak French had come to be regarded as a special accomplishment, and French like Latin, was learnt as a foreign language. At the end of the 15th c. William Caxton, the first English printer, observed: ‘the most quantity of the people understand not Latin nor French here in this noble realm of England’.
15. One might have expected that the triumph of English would lead to weakening of the French influence upon English. In reality, however, the impact of French became more apparent. As seen from the surviving written texts, French loan-words multiplied at the very time when English became a medium of general communication. The large-scale influx of French loads can be attributed to several causes. It is probably that many French words had been in current use for quite a long time before they were first recorded. As it was aforementioned records in Early M.E. were scare and came mostly from the Northern and Western regions, which were least affected by French influence. Later M.N. texts were produced in London and in the neighboring areas, with a mixed and largely bilingual population. In numerous translation from French – which became necessary when the French language was going out of use-many loan-words were employed for the sake of greater precision, for want of a suitable native equivalent or due to the translator’s inefficiency. It is also important that in the course of the 14th c. the local dialects were brought into closer contact; they intermixed and influenced one another: therefore the infiltration of French borrowings into all the local and social varieties of English progressed more rapidly.
16. As with other foreign influences, the impact of French is to be found, first and foremost, in the vocabulary. The layers and the semantic spheres of the French borrowings reflect the relations between the Norman rulers and the English population, the dominance of the French language in literature and the contacts with French culture. The prevalence of French as the language of writing led to numerous changes in English spelling.
17. The dialect division which evolved in Early M.E. was on the whole preserved in later periods. In the 14th and 15th c. the same grouping of dialects was present: the Southern group. Including Kentish and the South-Western dialects, the Midland group with its minute subdivision and the Northern group. And yet the relations among them were changing. The extension of trade beyond the conjines of local boundaries, the growth of towns with a mixed population favored the intermixture and amalgamation of the regional dialects. More intensive inter-influence of the dialects, among other facts is attested by the penetration of Scandinavian loan-words into the West-Midland and Southern dialects from the North and by the spread of French borrowings in the reverse direction. The most important went in changing linguistic situation was the rise of the London dialect as the prevalent written form of language.
18. The history of the London dialect reveals the sources of the literary language in Late M.E. and also the main source and basis of the Literary Standard, both in its written and spoken forms.
19. The Early M.E. records made in London-beginning with the Proclamation of 1258 – show that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon; in terms of the M.E. division, it belonged to the South-Western dialect group. Later records indicate that the speech of London was becoming more mixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing over the Southern features. The most likely explanation for the change if the dialect type and for the mixed character of London English lies in the history of the London population.
20. In the 12th and 13th c. the inhabitants of London came from the south-western district. In the middle of the 14th c. London was practically depopulated during the ‘Black Death’ (1348) and later outbreaks of bubonic plague. It has bun estimated that about one third of the population of Britain died in the epidemies, the highest proportion of deaths occurring in London. The depopulation was speedily made good and in 1377 London had over 35.000 inhabitants.
21. Most of the new arrivals came from the East Midlands: Norfolk, Suffolk, and other populous and wealthy counties of Malieval England, although not bordering immediately on the capital. As a result the speech of Londoners was brought much closer to the East Midland dialect. The official and literary papers produced in London in the late 14th c. display obvious East Midland in features. The London dialect became more Anglian than Saxon in character.
22. This mixed dialect of London, which had extended to the two universities (in Oxford and Cambridge) ousted French from official spheres and from the sphere of writing.
23. The flourishing of literature, which marks the seconds half of the 14th c., apart from its cultural significance, testifies, to the complete rustablishment of English as the language of writing. Some authors wrote in their local dialect from outside London, but most of them used the London dialect or forms of the language combining London and provincial traits. Towards the end of the century the London dialect had become the principal type of language used in literature a sort of literary ‘pattern’ to be imitated by provincial authors.
24. The literary text of the late 14th c. preserved in numerous manuscripts, belong to a variety of genres. Translation continued, but original composition were produced in abundance; party was more prolific than prose. This period of literary florescence is known as the ‘age of Chaucer’; the greatest name in English literature before Shakespeare other writers are referred to as ‘Chaucer’s contemporaries’).
25. One of the prominent authors of the time was John de Trevisa of Cornwall. In 1387 he completed the translation of seven books on world history - ‘Polychronicon’ by R. Higden – from Latin into the South-Western dialect of English. Among other information it contains some curious remarks about languages used in English: ‘ Trevisa:…gentle men have now left to teach (i.e. ‘stopped teaching’) their children French. …Higden: It sums a great wonder how Englishmen and their own language and tongue is so diverse in sound in this one island and the language of Normandy coming from another land has one manner of sound among all men that speak it right in England…men of the East with men of the West, as it were under the same pared of heaven, award more in the sound of their speech than men if the North with men of the South.
26. Of Greatest linguistic consequence was the activity of John Wyclif (1324-1384), the forerunner of the English Reformation. His most important contribution to English prose was his (and his pupils’) translation of the Bible completed in 1384. He also wrote pamphlet protesting against the corruption of the Church. Wyelif’s Bible was copied in manuscript and read by many people all over the country. Written in the London dialect, it played an important role in spreading this form of English.
27. The chief poets of the time, besides Chaucer, were John Gower, William Langland and, probably, the unknown author of ‘Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight’).
28. The remarkable poem of William Langland ‘The Vision Coneerning Piers the Plowman’ was written in a dialect combining West Midland and London features; it has survived in three versions, from 1362 to 1390; it is an allegory and a satire attacking the vises and weaknesses of various social classes and sympathizing with the wretchedness of the poor. It is presented as a series of visions appearing to the poet in his dreams. He susdiverse people and personifications of vices and virtues and explains the way to salvation, which is to serve Truth by work and love. The poem is written in the old alliterative verse and shows no touch of Anglo-Norman influence.
29. John Gover, Chaucer’s friend and an outstanding poet of the time, was born in Kent, but there are not many Kentisins in his London dialect. His first poems were written in Anglo-Norman and in Latin. His longest poem ‘Vox Clamantis’ (’the Voice of the Crying in the Wilderness’) is in Latin; it deals with Watiyler’s rebellion and condemns all roans of Society for the sins which brought about the terrible revolt. His last long poem I is in English: Confession Amantis (‘The Lover’s Confession), a composition of 40000 acto-syllabis . It contains a vast collection of stories drawn from various sources and arranged to illustrate the seven deadly sins. John Gower told his tales easily and vividly and for long was almost as popular as Chaucer.
30. There was one more poet whose name is unknown. Four poems found in a single manuscript of the 14th c. – ‘Peasl’, ‘Patience’, ‘Cleanness’, and ‘Sir Gawaineand the Green Knight’ – have been attributed to the same author. Incidentally, the latter poet belongs to the popular Arthurian cycle of Knightly romances, though the episodes narrated as well as the form are entirely original. The poems are a blending of collaborate alliteration, in line with the OE tradition, and new rhymed verse, with a variety of difficult rhyme schemes.
31. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) was by far the most outstanding figure of the time. A hundred years later William Caxon, the first English printer, called him ‘the worshipful father and fist founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our language. ‘In many books on the history of English literature and the history of English Chaucer is described as the founder of the literary language.
32. His carried works more of less imitative if other authors – Latin, French or Italian – though they bear abundant evidence of his skill. He never wrote in any other language than English. The culmination of Chaucer ‘s work as a poet ; his great unfinished collection of stories ‘The Canterbury Tales’.
33. Chaucer wrote in a dialect which in the main coincided with that used in documents produced in London shortly before his time and for a long time after. Although he did not really create the literary language, as a poet of outstanding talent he made better use if it than contemporaries and set up 2 pattern to be followed in the 15th c. His poems were copied so many times that over sixty manuscripts of ‘The Cantervary Tales’ have survived to this day. No books were among the first to be printed, a hundred years after their Compositon.
34. Chauser’s literary language, based in the mixed (lavgely East Midland) London dialect is known as classical M.E. In the 15th and 16th c. it became the basis of the national literary English language.
35. The 15th c. could produce nothing worthy to rank with Chaucer. The two prominent poets, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, were chicfly translators and imitators. The style of Caucer’s successors is believed to have drawn farther away from everyday speech; it was highly effected in character, abounding in abstact words and strongly influenced by Latin rhetoric (it is termed ‘aureate language’).
36. Whereas in English literature the decline after Chaucer is apparent, the literature of Scotland forms a Northern dialect of English flourished from the 13th until the 16th c. ‘The Bruce’ , written by John Barbour between 1373 and 1378 is a national epic, which describes the real history of Rolert Bruce a hero and military chief who defeated the army of Edward 2 at Bannockburn in 1314 and secured the independence of Scotland. This poem was followed by others, composed by prominent 15th c. poets: e.g. ‘Wallace’ attributed to Henry the Minstel; ‘ Kind’s Quhair’ (King’s Book’) by King James of Scotland.

Conclusion

Language belongs to each of us. Everyone uses words. What is there in a language that makes people so curious? The answer is that there is almost nothing in our life that is not touched by language. We all speak and we all listen so we are all interested in the origin of words, in how they appear and die. Nowadays 750 million people all over the world use English. 300 million people are native speakers, 300 million people use English as the second language, another speakers learn English as foreign language. It has become the language of the planet. People use English everywhere, it is the first wide spread language in the world after Chinese.

The origin of the English language began from old times. The Germanic tribes took the language to the country. It was considered as Anglo-Frisian dialect, and depended on the West Germanic languages family. The first English speakers were Anglo-Saxons. But their language was in another way, and it was called the Old English language. One of the dialects of Old English was Late West Saxon, which dominated and similar with today`s one. When we read extract of the work which was written in Old English we understand the main idea of the work. We also meet words which we can`t understand. During the development of the English language we note loan words from foreign languages, they are borrowed words. We meet words of every time, because the language was influenced by several people in the periods of its development. The process of its development divided into three periods: Old English, Middle English and Modern English. And also borrowed words completed in periods.

Most of words are the same, but there are some differences. For example in Middle English ynogh is enough in modern English; longe is long; agoon is ago and so on, but they are a little bit similar in writing, so it is not very difficult to understand them.

There also the language is full of borrowed words from other languages. These loan words take the main role in each language. Like this, English is completed with loan words from French, Latin, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, from other Asian and African languages. French borrowed words are the main of them.

The beginning of the borrowed words from French began after the influence of Normans. After the death of William the Conqueror people needed a new head from abroad. Norman inhabitants settled to the country and slowly influenced to the language. During the reign of Normans there appeared a mass of French borrowed words.

The borrowing consist of three main periods: the first period lasted 1066-1250, the second period lasted 1250-1400, the last period contained from 1400. In the first period there appeared only few words, because the Conqueror allowed common people to use their native language. There were three languages spoken in the country. French was used in the Court and Government. Latin was learned in churches, people who wanted to learn science learned Latin. Only common people used English. But later they began to speak in the mixed language, because the Norman language was considered as the language of Aristocracy, and people who didn`t know the language was considered as non-educated man.

Though the number of French loans in the modern period is relatively minor in comparison to Middle English, the contribution is most important. The French Loans were primarily borrowed to provide richness to the language. Whilst it was arguable during the Restoration whether the loans were corrupting or enriching the language, today there is no doubt or disputable grounds to argue that the loans did nothing but enrich the English language.

They also divided into periods by their entrance. These periods are the same with the periods of own the English language.

The borrowing of vocabulary is rapprochement of nations on the ground of economic, political and cultural connections. The bright example of it can be numerous French borrowings to English language. They play important role in the English language. Nowadays people use English to communicate with foreigners, to learn science, to visit another countries, to make career, to develop own business, to do international relationship, etc.

Attempts to continue borrowings in 20th century did not have special success because language became more independent.

In my opinion we managed to study the problems of French borrowings in the English language. We understood possible ways of penetrating French words in the English language, we have seen different ways of difference types of borrowings.
In spite of arrival of the words from different languages into the English vocabulary, the English Language did not suffer from large flow of foreign elements.
On the contrary its vocabulary has been enriched due to the taken foreign elements.

Biblography

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28. New Webster’s Dictionary, 1998.

29. Clark, 2009.

30. Chambers, 1998.

31. a b http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=aeroplane&searchmode=none

32. Oxford English Dictionary, airplane, draft revision March 2008; airplane is labeled "chiefly North American"

33. British National Corpus. Retrieved 1 April 2008.

34. Merriam-Webster online, aerodrome. Retrieved 1 April 2008.

35. Oxford English Dictionary, airdrome.

36. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aeroplane

37. History & Etymology of Aluminium

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46. a b c Webster's Third, p. 24a.

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50. www.bestreferat.ru

51. www.nigma.ru

EVOLUTION AND FUNCTIONING OF FRENCH BORROWINGS IN THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN THE FIELD OF FASHION, FOOD, CLOTHES