Borrowings from Contemporary Languages in New English

The foreign influence on the English vocabulary in the age of the Renaissance and in the succeeding centuries was not restricted to Latin and Greek. The influx of French words continued and reached new peaks in the late 15th and in the late 17th c.

French borrowings of the later periods mainly pertain to diplomatic relations, social life, art and fashions. French remained the international language of diplomacy for several hundred years; Paris led the fashion in dress, food and in social life and to a certain extent in art and literature; finally, the political events in France in the 18th—19th c. were of world-wide significance. All these external conditions are reflected in French loans. Examples of diplomatic terms are attaché, communiqué, dossier; the words ball, beau, cortege, cafe, coquette, hotel, picnic, restaurant refer to social life; ballet, ensemble, essay, genre pertain to art; military terms are brigade, corps, manoeuvre, marine, police, reconnaissance; fashions in dress and food are illustrated by words like blouse, chemise, corsage, cravat, champagne, menu, soup. Words of miscellaneous character are: comrade, detail, entrance, essay, machine, moustache, progress, ticket.

As seen from the lists, later French borrowings differ widely from the loan-words adopted in ME. Most of them have not been completely assimilated and have retained a foreign appearance to the present day — note their spellings, the sounds and the position of the stress. Words like genre and restaurant have nasalised vowels and a French spelling: police, fatigue, marine receive the stress on the last syllable and are pronounced with long [i:] indicated by the letter i like French words; the digraph ch stands for [∫] in machine, in beau the letters eau have also retained the sound value of the French prototype [o:].

In addition to the three main sources — Greek, Latin and French, English speakers of the NE period borrowed freely from many other languages. It has been estimated that even in the 17th c. the English vocabulary contained words derived from no less than fifty foreign tongues. We shall mention only the most important ones.

The main contributors to the vocabulary were Italian, Dutch, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian. A number of words were adopted from languages of other countries and continents, which came into contact with English: Persian, Chinese, Hungarian, Turkish, Malayan, Polynesian, the native languages of India and America.

Next to French, Latin and Scandinavian, English owes the greatest number of foreign words to Italian, though many of them, like Latin loan-words, entered the English language through French. A few early borrowings pertain to commercial and military affairs while the vast majority of words are related to art, music and literature, which is a natural consequence of the fact that Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance movement and of the revival of interest in art.

In the 14th c. English imported the Italian words ducato, million, florin (from the name of Florence, where the coin was minted), pistol, cartridge, alarm (probably borrowed from French but traced to Italian all^’ arme ‘all to arms’). Italian words relating to art are well known to speakers of all European languages. Examples of musical terms adopted in English are: aria, bass, cello (genetically, a diminutive suffix in violoncello), concerto, duet, finale, piano, solo, sonata, soprano, tenor, violin.

The Italian loan-words balcony, cameo, corridor, cupola, design, fresco, gallery, granite, parapet, pedestal, studio reveal the priority of the Italians in certain spheres of culture. The loans replica, sonnet, stanza indicate new concepts in literature.

As seen from the examples, some loan-words retained their Italian appearance, others were Gallicised (i.e. assumed a French shape); probably they had entered the English language through French, e.g. artisan, campaign, intrigue. Many words in general use do not differ from English words either in sounds or spelling and cannot be distinguished from native words without a special study: barrack, cash, canteen, escort, gallop, laundry, manage, medal, pants, pilot; these borrowings were probably imported at an earlier date and have lost their foreign flavour.

Borrowings from Spanish came as a result of contacts with Spain in the military, commercial and political fields, due to the rivalry of England and Spain in foreign trade and colonial expansion. This is apparent from the nature of Spanish borrowings in English made in the 16th and 17th c, e.g.: armada, barricade, cannibal, cargo, embargo, escapade. Many loan-words indicated new objects and concepts encountered in the colonies: banana, canoe, chocolate, cocoa, colibri, maize, mosquito, Negro, potato, ranch, tobacco, tomato.

Borrowings from Germanic languages are of special interest as English is a Germanic language too. The influence of Scandinavian in Early ME has certainly remained unsurpassed and the unique conditions of close language contacts were never repeated. By the 15th— 16th c. the Germanic languages had driven far apart; their linguistic affinities were disguised by the changes of the intervening periods. Therefore loan-words from related Germanic tongues were no less foreign to English speakers than those from other linguistic groups. Yet their sound form was somewhat closer to English and their assimilation progressed rapidly. Dutch words and some of the German words do not differ in appearance from native English words.

Dutch made abundant contribution to English, particularly in the 15th and 16th c, when commercial relations between England and the Netherlands were at their peak. Dutch artisans came to England to practise their trade, and sell their goods. They specialised in wool weaving and brewing, which is reflected in the Dutch loan-words: pack, scour, spool, stripe (terms of weaving); hops, tub, scum. Extensive borrowing is found in nautical terminology: bowline, buoy, cruise, deck, dock, freight, keel, skipper. The flourishing of art in the Netherlands accounts for some Dutch loan-words relating to art: easel, landscape, sketch.

Loan-words from German reflect the scientific and cultural achievements of Germany at different dates of the New period. Mineralogical terms are connected with the employment of German specialists in the English mining industry, e.g.: cobalt, nickel, zinc. The advance of philosophy in the 18th and 19th c. accounts for philosophical terms, e.g.: transcendental, dynamics (going back to classical roots). Some borrowings do not belong to a particular semantic sphere and can only be classified as miscellaneous: kindergarten, hall, stroll, plunder, poodle, waltz.

The most peculiar feature of German influence on the English vocabulary in the 18th and 19th c. is the creation of translation-loans on German models from native English components (sometimes also from foreign roots, borrowed and assimilated before). Whenever compound German nouns, in their alien sound form and morphological structure, were hard to reproduce, translation-loans came in handy in rendering their meaning and creating new terms: English swan-song is a literal translation of German Schwanenlied; home-sickness comes from Heimweh, standpoint from Standpunkt; environment was the rendering of Umge-bung (proposed by Th. Carlyle), superman was naturalised by B. Shaw as a translation of Nietzsche's Übermensch; world outlook and class struggle correspond to Weltanschauung and Klassenkampf; masterpiece consists of two Romance elements reproducing German Meisterstűck.

(Recent German borrowings in English, connected with World War II and other political events, are: blitz, bunker, fǘhrer, Gestapo, nazi.)

The earliest Russian loan-words entered the English language as far back as the 16th c, when the English trade company (the Moskovy Company) established the first trade relations with Russia. English borrowings adopted from the 16th till the 19th c. indicate articles of trade and specific features of life in Russia, observed by the English: astrakhan, beluga, boyar, copeck, intelligentsia, muzhik, rouble, samovar, troika, tsar, verst, vodka.

The loan-words adopted after 1917 reflect the new social relations and political institutions in the USSR: bolshevik, Komsomol, Soviet. Some of the new words are translation-loans: collective farm, Five-Year-Plan, wall newspaper. In the recent decades many technical terms came from Russian, indicating the achievements in different branches of science: sputnik, cosmonaut (in preference of the American astronaut), synchrophasotron.