External means of enriching vocabulary (Old English borrowings). Celtic borrowings

Borrowings into a language are a result of contacts with other nations. The Germanic tribes had but few contacts with other nations at the beginning of A.D., consequently the number of borrowed words in Old English was not great. The main borrowings that we can single out in Old English were Latin and Celtic borrowings.

— Latin borrowings

The first Latin borrowings entered the language before the Gerrnanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians invaded the British Isles, at the time when they still lived on the continent. Due to trade relations with their southern powerful neighbour — the Roman empire — Germanic tribes learned a number of products that had been unknown to then, and, consequently, their names. So the first stratum of borrowings are mainly words connected with trade. Many of them are preserved in Modern English, such as:

pound, inch, pepper, cheese, wine, apple, pear, plum, etc.

The second stratum of words was composed of loan Latin words that the Germanic tribes borrowed already on British soil from the romanized Celts, whom they had conquered in the 5th century. Those were words connected with building and architecture:

tile, street, wall, mill, etc.

They denoted objects which the Germanic invaders encountered on the British Isles.

The third stratum of Latin loan words was composed of words borrowed after the introduction of the Christian religion. They are generally of a religious nature, such as the present-day words: bishop, devil, a po stle, monk.

As Latin was the language of learning at the time, there also entered the language some words that were not directly connected with religion, such as: master, school, palm, lion, tiger, plant, astronomy, etc.

The Celtic language left very few traces in the English language, because the Germanic conquerors partly exterminated the local population, partly drove them away to the less fertile mountaineous parts of the country, where they were not within reach of the invaders. The Celtic-speaking people who remained on the territory occupied by the Germanic tribes were slaves, and even those were not very numerous. It is small wonder therefore that the number of Celtic loan words was limited. Among the few borrowed words we can mention:

down (the downs дюны of Dover), binn (bin - basket).

Some Celtic roots are preserved in geographical names, such as:

kil (church — Kilbrook), ball (house — Ballantrae), esk (water — river Esk).

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11