Borrowings from Celtic

Foreign Element in the Old English Vocabulary

Although borrowed words constituted only a small portion of the OE vocabulary ─ all in all about six hundred words, ─ they are of great interest for linguistic and historical study. The borrowings reflect the contacts of English with other tongues resulting from diverse political, economic, social and cultural events in the early periods of British history. OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin.

There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary, for there must have been little intermixture between the Germanic settlers and the Celtic in Britain. Though in some parts of the island the Celts population was not exterminated during the WG invasion, linguistic evidence of Celtic influence is meager. Obviously there was little that the newcomers could learn from the subjugated Celts. Abun­dant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources (Celtic dūn meant 'hill'). Various Celtic designations of ‘river’ and ‘water’ were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Exe, Esk, Usk, Avon, Evan go back to Celtic amhuin ‘river’, uisge ‘water’; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Some elements frequently occurring in Celtic place-names can help to identify them: -comb ‘deep valley’ in Batcombe, Duncombe, Winchcombe; -torr ‘high rock’ in Torr, Torcross; -llan ‘church’ in Llandaff, Llanelly; -pill ‘creek’ in Pylle, Huntspill. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, make a compound place-name; e.g.

Celtic plus Latin Celtic plus Germanic

Man-chester York-shire

Win-chester Corn-wall¹

Glou-cester Salis-bury

Wor-cester Lich-field

Devon-port Devon-shire

Lan-caster Canter-bury

¹ It means ‘Cornubian Welsh’; the name Wealhas (Wales, Welsh) was a com­mon noun, meaning 'strangers'; it was given by the newcomers to the unfamiliar Celtic tribes.

Outside of place-names Celtic borrowings in OE were very few: no more than a dozen. Examples of common nouns are: OE binn (NE bin ‘crib’), cradol (NE cradle), bratt ‘cloak’, dun (NE dun ‘dark coloured’), dūn ‘hill’, cross (NE cross), probably through Celtic from the L crux. A few words must have entered OE from Celtic due to the activities of Irish missionaries in spreading Christianity, e.g. OE ancor ‘hermit’, dry ‘magician’, cursian (NE curse). In later ages some of the Celtic borrowings have died out or have survived only in dialects, e.g. loch dial, ‘lake’, coomb dial. ‘valley’.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11