Borrowed words, their assimilation

The English language is unique in its etymology: it has always welcomed borrowings, and their source, their scope and etymology depend on the specific conditions of the language's development, such as the Roman invasion, the introduction of Christianity, the Danish and Norman conquests, the British colonial expansion, technical revolution, the 1 st and II nd World Wars which caused numerous changes in its vocabulary.

It is necessary to distinguish between the "source of borrowing" and "origin of borrowing", the language from which, the word is taken and the language to which it may be traced, (tabula ——> la table ——> a table).

Translation and semantic loans (кальки) are words and word-combinations formed from the native elements according to foreign patterns: Ubermensch (superman), Heimweh (homesickness), Meisterstuck (masterpiece).

We cannot deny the mixed character of the English vocabularyand the great importance of borrowed elements in the language‘ s development but we must not ignore its power to build new words and various semantic changes.

Words immediately change their manners as soon as they leave their mother tongue Partial and total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the receiving language and its semantic system is called its assimilation. The following factors govern the degree of assimilation of loan words 1) oral or written character of a borrowed word; 2) importance of a borrowed word for communication; 3) length of the period of its usage.

According to the degree of assimilation we distinguish: 1) completely assimilated loan words; 2) partially assimilated loan words; 3) unassimilated loan words or barbarisms.

Completely assimilated words following all the standards of English belong to the earliest Latin borrowings: wall. wine, cup, mile, pen; Scandinavian loan words: give, take, get, gift, fellow, call; French loan words, face, table, chair. Their phonetic characteristics do not reveal their borrowed elements and they build native grammatical paradigm:

Sc. Laws, eggs, gates, L. acted, corrected.

Partially assimilated words, may be not assimilated semantically, such as Domino, minaret, shah, toreador, valenki, pelmeni

Words not assimilated grammatically retain their original grammatical forms: bacillus — bacilli, phenomenon-phenomena, crisis-crises

Words not completely assimilated phonetically were borrowed after XVII ^th century: machine, bourgeois, protege, beige, boulevard, fiance

Graphically unassimilated words are mainly of the French origin restaurant, corps, bouquet, cliche, ballet. Sometimes the spelling is not stable.

Barbarisms are not assimilated in any way and do not possess the corresponding English equivalents. Mostly they are of Romanic origin: ciao (It), coup d'Etat (Fr.), vita brevis est (L), Wehrmacht (German), fuhrer (German), hors d'oevre, bons vivant, au revoir (Fr) Unassimilated French words are called Gallicisms: in a "Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases in Current English" (1977) there are about 2239 Gallicisms. Their French peculiarities are preserved, they are singled out either graphically or through italics Gallicisms do not form any new thematic groups, they are widely used in the language of press and fiction and everyday speech by educated Englishmen who study French at schools and universities

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07