Студопедия

КАТЕГОРИИ:


Архитектура-(3434)Астрономия-(809)Биология-(7483)Биотехнологии-(1457)Военное дело-(14632)Высокие технологии-(1363)География-(913)Геология-(1438)Государство-(451)Демография-(1065)Дом-(47672)Журналистика и СМИ-(912)Изобретательство-(14524)Иностранные языки-(4268)Информатика-(17799)Искусство-(1338)История-(13644)Компьютеры-(11121)Косметика-(55)Кулинария-(373)Культура-(8427)Лингвистика-(374)Литература-(1642)Маркетинг-(23702)Математика-(16968)Машиностроение-(1700)Медицина-(12668)Менеджмент-(24684)Механика-(15423)Науковедение-(506)Образование-(11852)Охрана труда-(3308)Педагогика-(5571)Полиграфия-(1312)Политика-(7869)Право-(5454)Приборостроение-(1369)Программирование-(2801)Производство-(97182)Промышленность-(8706)Психология-(18388)Религия-(3217)Связь-(10668)Сельское хозяйство-(299)Социология-(6455)Спорт-(42831)Строительство-(4793)Торговля-(5050)Транспорт-(2929)Туризм-(1568)Физика-(3942)Философия-(17015)Финансы-(26596)Химия-(22929)Экология-(12095)Экономика-(9961)Электроника-(8441)Электротехника-(4623)Энергетика-(12629)Юриспруденция-(1492)Ядерная техника-(1748)

A) Scandinavian borrowings

II. Germanic borrowings in the English Language

One of the major influences on the early vocabulary and grammar of English comes from its North Germanic neighbours. From the 8th century until the 11th century, the Anglo-Saxons were subjected to a series of attacks and invasions by Scandinavian seafarers. One can think of these invasions as the second German onslaught on Britain, only this time the invaders and the invaded were closely related, linguistically speaking. The Scandinavians (also known as Vikings) spoke Old Norse, the precursor of Danish and Norwegian in the North Germanic subgroup. The earliest written texts in Old Norse do not appear until the 11-th century. Judging from the written records, there was probably a considerable degree of mutual intelligibility between English and the language of the Vikings. During the Anglo-Saxon period, a very significant part of the northeast Midlands of England had to be surrended to the Viking invaders. In 878 the English king Alfred (871-99) signed a treaty establishing the Danelaw, or Danish area, an independently administered Danish territory to the northeast of a boundary stretching approximately from London to Chester. Although the territory changed hands again in the next century, the Vikings raids continued unabated and culminated in complete usurpation of the English throne by Danish kings between 1014 and 1042.

Reconstructions of Viking customs and way of travel suggest that many of the seafarers arrived in England without womenfolk. Intermarriages must have been common as more and more of the invaders became settlers and inhabitants of what they came to see as their own country. These social and historical circumstances would have been very favorable for the transfer of vocabulary from Scandinavian to Old English. The first linguistic link between Viking and Anglo-Saxons is found in the large number of Scandinavian place names in the northern and eastern parts of England, as many as 1,400. These are place names ending in –by “settlement” (Carnaby, Ellerby, Rugby, Thirtleby), -thorpe “hamlet” (Barleythorpe, Grimsthorpe, Hamthorpe, Hilderthorpe, Low Claythorpe, Fridaythorpe), -thwaite “clearing” (Hampsthwaite, Hunderthwaite, Husthwaite). Demographically, it is hard to reconstruct reliably the extent to which the Scandinavian invasions, victories and settlements swelled the ranks of the Anglo-Saxon population. However, there are more than 750 Scandinavian name-forms in records concerning medieval Yorkshire and Lincolnshire alone, the best known of which is the ending –son, as in Henryson, Jackson, Robertson. Judging by the density of Scandinavian place names and the considerable rate of survival of –son names, we can assume that the newcomers represented a large and vigorous minority. There were probably as many Scandinavian speakers as English speakers living in the Danelaw. As the lexicon is the language layer most responsive to socio-political and cultural changes in the history of a nation, it is easy to see why English borrowed almost 1,000 words from Scandinavian between the 8th and the 11th centuries.

Unlike the adoption of Latin vocabulary, which was initiated and promoted primarily by a small subsection of the population, the learned priests, monks, and scribes, the adoption of Scandinavian words did not involve special education or writing skills. It occurred naturally in the mixed households, in the fields, and in the marketplaces, among people at comparable levels of cultural development. In addition to the propitious social conditions, the borrowing of words was facilitated by the linguistic closeness of Scandinavian and Old English. It is not surprising that loanwords that came into English during this period are not easily recognizable as foreign, nor are they marked as belonging to a special more literate or more elevated level of usage.

Scandinavian borrowings in English from the period between the 9th and the 12th centuries are common words such as bag, call, cast, die, fellow, knife, hit, root, skin, sky, ill, unit, wrong, the prepositions till and fro (as in “to and fro”), and the pronouns they, them, their. There is probably Scandinavian influence on the pronoun she, the verb form are, and the quantifiers both and same. In some regional varieties of English today Scandinavian words exist side by side with the more familiar word from the Standard language: garth vs. yard, kirk vs. church, nay vs. no, trigg vs. true. Since the Vikings spoke a Germanic language, sharing words with Old English, but pronouncing them differently, we find that one and the same word has two pronunciations, Scandinavian and Old English, has evolved into a pair of historically related words which are now two separate lexical items. Such pairs in present and English are dike vs. ditch, scrub vs. shrub, skirt vs. shirt.

 

b) German borrowings

English has borrowed many words from German. Some of those words have become a natural part of everyday English vocabulary (angst, kindergarten, sauerkraut), while others are primarily intellectual, literary, scientific (waldsterben, zeitgeist), or used in special areas, such as gestalt in psychology, or loess in geology. Some of these German words are used in English because there is no true English equivalent: gemütlich, schadenfreude.

There are some 800 words borrowed from German into English. Some of them have classical roots, e.g. in some geological terms, such as: cobalt, bismuth, zink, quarts, gneiss, wolfram. There were also words denoting objects used in everyday life which were borrowed from German: iceberg, lobby, rucksack etc.

In the period of the Second World War the following words were borrowed: Luftwaffe, SS-man, Bundeswehr, gestapo, gas chamber and many others.

The other borrowings from German are: dunk, feldspar, hex, lager, liverwurst, noodle, poodle, dachshund, pretzel, pumpernickel, schnitzel, zwieback etc.

Among the 20th century German loanwords we can mention: blitzkrieg, zeppelin, strafe, delicatessen, hamburger, frankfurter, wiener, hausfrau, kindergarten, Oktoberfest, wunderkind, spritz, strudel, Volkswagen etc.

German borrowings can be divided into three main groups, plus a separate group of German-related words borrowed into American English via Yiddish.

The three groups are:

1) Pennsylvania Dutch words, that were usually first recorded before the middle of the 19th century, and generally apply to food and way of life.

2) Mainstream German borrowings, that were generally first recorded between 1850 and 1915 or so. They often relate to education and way of life. It is important to notice that they include interjections, verbs, and complete expressions. What does this indicate? Deep cultural interpenetration rather than casual or hostile contact.

3) The third group of German borrowings contains those terms from the two World Wars that are related to war and military strategy. There are also ethnic insults.

Many of these expressions were also borrowed by the British and the French languages.

c) Dutch borrowings

Holland and England have had constant interrelations for many centuries and more than 2000 Holland borrowings were borrowed into English. Most of them are nautical terms and were mainly borrowed in the 14-th century, such as: freight, skipper, pump, keel, dock, reef, deck, leak and many others. Some of them were borrowed into Russian as well, e.g. фрахт, шкипер, киль, док, риф.

In general Dutch borrowings in English may be divided into the following semantic groups: 1) Shipping and nautical terms: boom, buoy, commodore, cruise, keelhaul, sloop, yacht, smuggle; 2) Art: easel, etching, landscape, sketch; 3) War: beleaguer, holster, freebooter, onslaught. 4) Food and drink: booze, brandy, coleslaw, cookie, waffle; 6) Other: bluff, bully, boss, derrick, dollar, drill, dike, frolic, grime, hunk, kink, runt, scum, slim, snap, spook, stoop.

There are many different ways through which Dutch words have entered the English language. Some of the more common ways include:

1) Through trade and seafaring;

2) Via the New Netherlands settlements in North America;

3) Due to contact between Dutch / Afrikaans speakers with English speakers in South Africa;

4) French words of Dutch / Flemish origin have been adopted into English.

In a survey by Joseph M. Williams in “Origins of the English Language” it is estimated that about 1 % of English words are of Dutch origin.

 

<== предыдущая лекция | следующая лекция ==>
D) Spanish and Portuguese borrowings | B) Ukrainian borrowings
Поделиться с друзьями:


Дата добавления: 2014-01-11; Просмотров: 4747; Нарушение авторских прав?; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!


Нам важно ваше мнение! Был ли полезен опубликованный материал? Да | Нет



studopedia.su - Студопедия (2013 - 2024) год. Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав! Последнее добавление




Генерация страницы за: 0.017 сек.