English Language Borrowings: A Story of Cultures in Contact - Prof. Martínez-Dueñas, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga English Language Borrowings: A Story of Cultures in Contact - Prof. Martínez-Dueñas y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! According to Baugh the English history is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1500 years. Political, economic, and social forces influence a language. In this text we can find many words that originally come from other languages. This phenomenon is called borrowing. English has borrowed words from French such as “authority”> early 13c, OF. Auctorité; “enforcement”> late 15c, OF. Enforcement; “accord” > late 13c, OF. Acord; “visa” > French through Modern Latin, Charta visa; “misnister” > OF. Menistre; “licence” > OF. Licence; “legal” > 15c. Modern French, legal; “chancellor” > 12c. OF. Chancelier; French was spoken in the high British society as a symbol of prestige. Due to the Roman Christianizing of Britain many Latin words were added into English vocabulary such as “sponsor” > 1650s, L. sponsor; “educate” > 15c. L. educates; “rapid” > 1630s, L. rapidus; “immigrate” > 1620s, L. immigratum. As a result of the Germanic tribes invasion, we have many words from Old English such as “either” > OE. Aegter; “british” > OE. Bryttisc; “business” > OE. Bisigness (Northumbrian dialect); “half” > halb (Mercian dialect), healf (western saxon); “give” > OE. Giefan (Western Saxon dialect); “woman” > OE. Wimman: alteration of wif + man; “hundred” >OE Hundrath; “weekend” > OE. Wice from Proto Germanic *wikon + “end”> OE. Ende from proto Germanic * andja; widespread > wide OE. Wid from Proto Germanic *widas + spread > OE. Spraedam, form Proto Germanic *spraindijanam ; “have” > OE. Habban, from Proto Germanic *haben. Also there are words in English vocabulary from Celts such as “exeter”> from the river name Exe (the water) + OE ceaster (Roman town). Also from Greek language as they are “technology” > Gr. Teknologia and “crisis” > 15c. Gr. Krisis. Languages are in constant process of change, as we have seen. New words are added in languages and words which already exist change their meaning or form. There have also been phonetic changes. For instance, the word “hundred” has been modified by switching “k” and “h”. Originally it was “kundred” (voiceless stops) but later it turned into “hundred” (voiceless fricative). Inflections in nouns, verbs and adjectives are common in the oldest classical languages within Indo- European family of languages. English has simplified inflections into the possessive case form (genitive case). Thus, we can find sentences such as “the Britain´s status” or “The agency ´s decision” in the text. In respect to the gender case, normally in Roman languages, learners have to study the gender of each word, if they are masculine or feminine. The distinction in gender is very important because it is going to affect to the pronoun and determines the form of inflections and the agreement of adjectives. In English it disappeared and the gender of nouns is known in the dictionary instantly, being some of them neuter. For instance Spanish language has two types of articles (el, la) according to feminine or masculine. In English you just have “the” and you have to keep on reading to know if it refers to a masculine or a feminine, or the gender is implicit in the noun that follows the article. Maria Adela Naranjo Saja.