B) French borrowings

A) Latin borrowings

I. Romanic borrowings in the English vocabulary

From which they were borrowed

Classification of borrowings according to the language

Among words of Romanic origin borrowed from Latin during the period when the British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire, there are such words as: street, port, wall etc. Many Latin and Greek words came into English during the Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century. At this time the Latin alphabet was borrowed which ousted the Runic alphabet. These borrowings are usually called classical borrowings. Here belong Latin words: alter, cross, dean, and Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem.
Latin and Greek borrowings appeared in English during the Middle English period due to the Great Revival of Learning. These are mostly scientific words because Latin was the language of science at the time. These words were not used as frequently as the words of the Old English period, therefore some of them were partly assimilated grammatically, e.g. formula - formulae. Here also belong such words as: memorandum, minimum, maximum, veto etc.

Classical borrowings continue to appear in Modern English as well. Mostly they are words formed with the help of Latin and Greek morphemes. There are quite a lot of them in medicine (appendicitis, aspirin), in chemistry (acid, valency, alkali), in technique (engine, antenna, biplane, airdrome), in politics (socialism, militarism), names of sciences (zoology, physics). In philology most of terms are of Greek origin (homonym, archaism, lexicography).

Norman-French borrowings had come into English at different times. The most important historical event which has left a lasting mark on the composition of the English lexicon is the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066. In that year, William, Duke of Normandy, attacked and defeated the English army at Hastings on the south coast of England. He was then crowned king of England, replacing the Saxon line. By the end of the eleventh century the positions of influence, prestige, and learning in England were occupied by Norman nobility, churchmen, and clerics. The exact number of new settlers following the Conquest is unknown.

The key to understanding the enormous effect of the Norman Conquest on the vocabulary is in the political and social standing of the conquerors. William of Normandy lived on as a king of England for twenty years after his conquest. During that time members of the Saxon aristocracy were executed or driven away from their castles and their lands. Their property was now in the possession of Norman barons who had come with William or had followed him thereafter. This led to a new correlation between social standing and language: the peasants working in the fields or doing manual jobs around the noblemen s estates were speakers of English, and the overlords spoke French. In terms of sheer numbers, the speakers of English were unquestionably the dominant group: they constituted between 90-98 percent of a total population of approximately 1,500. 000.

The numerical and social discrepancies between speakers of French and speakers of English worked against the development of wide-spread bilingualism. Nevertheless, the linguistic barriers between the two groups were not impenetrable. The conquerors had to communicate with the conquered. The majority of population spoke English natively, but many people must have learned enough French to fulfill requests and obey orders from their French overlords. A smattering of French would have been sufficient for some French words to gain access to English; that was enough of opening to allow the initial trickle to become a flood.

The flooding of the English vocabulary with Norman-French words began in the 13-th century and reached very large proportions in the century that followed.

Norman-French loans in the English vocabulary may be subdivided into two main groups: 1) early loans – 12 – 15^th centuries; 2) later loans – beginning from the 16^th century.

Early French loans were thoroughly naturalized in English and made to conform to the rules of English pronunciation. The early borrowings from French were simple short words as distinguished from later introductions. This will be seen from an examination of the number of common monosyllabic words derived from early French, e.g. age, air, arm, bolt, brace, breeze, brush, cage, calm, cape, car, case, cause, cease, cell, chain, chance, chase, chief, chaise, claim, clear, close, corpse, course, court, crime, cry etc. All these words have become an integral part of the language, being as truly a part of common speech as words native by origin. They have been so assimilated in sound and inflection as to be recognized as foreign only to the eye of a philologist.

Examples of the naturalization of French words in English may be given in numbers. A few of them will suffice for illustration: a) words stressed in French on the final syllable are now stressed in English on the first syllable, e.g. capital, danger, final, mercy, probable, etc.; b) words with the long [i:] sound diphtongized into [ai], e.g. design, fine, line, lion, price; c) the long [u:] written ou has become [au], e.g. spouse.

So, the unprecedented enrichment of the lexicon through borrowing altered the etymological composition of English after the conquest. Data on the exact number of words borrowed from French is difficult to obtain, but according to one estimate the number of French words adopted during the Middle English period was slightly over 10,000. Of these, about 75 percent have survived and are still used in present-day English.

The French dominance is particularly felt in the vocabulary of law. Most words pertaining to law are of French origin, e.g. accuse, attorney, court, defendant, fee, felony, guile, heritage, judge, justice, justify, penalty, plaintiff, privilege, session, suit, advocate, inquest, sentence, barrister etc.

It was also natural that many of the terms relating to military matters should be adopted from the language of the conquerors, as, for instance, army, arms, admiral, assault, armor, banner, battle, dart, dragon, ensign, guard, lance, mail, navy, sergeant, soldier, troops, vessel, victory, war etc.

There is a predominance of French words in the vocabulary of cookery, which is shown by a great many words, such as: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew, to boil, to fry, dainty, jelly, pasty, pastry, sauce, sausage, soup, toast etc.

We shall find a very large number of French words denoting different objects that make life enjoyable, e.g. comfort, flower, fruit, pleasure, feast, leisure, delight, ease etc.

Among French borrowings there are also such semantic groups of words: a) words denoting family relations: parent, cousin, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece; b) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, lace, pleat, embroidery; c) words belonging to jewelry: topaz, emerald, pearl; d) words relating to state government: administer, empire, state, government, realm, people, nation, crown, power, authority, parliament, council; e) words connected with the church: blame, lesson, pray, service, tempt etc.

From the fifteenth century the importance of French loans decreased, while English turned increasingly towards Latin and Greek for new learned words. Scholarly and everyday words continued to be borrowed from French in the sixteenth century: fragrant, elegance, baton, accent, adverb, amplitude, cassock, chamois, demolish, pounce, admire, avenue etc.

It should be stressed that words continued to be borrowed from French into English after 1650, too, mainly through French literature, but they were not as numerous and many of them are not completely assimilated. There are the following semantic groups of these borrowings:

1) words relating to literature and music: belle-lettres, conservatoire, brochure, nuance, pirouette, vaudeville;

2) words belonging to military affairs: corps, echelon, fuselage, manoeuvre;

3) words relating to buildings and furniture: entresol, chateau, bureau;

4) words relating to food and cooking: ragout, cuisine.

We should also mention the 18-th century installment to the vocabulary of literature, e.g. novelist, publisher, magazine, editor etc.

Recent borrowings from French are of course frequent enough, and often these words carry an unequivocally French appearance; and their number is far less than the number of borrowings directly from Latin.

French endings to English words: -able: drinkable, fishable, breakable; -ess: shepherdess; -ry: husbandry, -age: husbandage etc.

In many cases words borrowed from the French language have more derivatives in English than in French. For instance, mutin has only two derivatives in French (mutiner, mutinerie) while in Modern English there are four well-known derivatives of mutiny, namely: mutineer, mutinous, mutinously, mutinousness.

The following phonetic peculiarities are indicative of later adoptions from French: a) keeping the accent on the last syllable, e.g. cravat, finance, finesse, supreme etc.; b) ch pronounced as [ ]: avalanche, chandelier, chaperon, chaise, charade, chauffeur, charlatan, chic, douche, machine; c) g before e and i pronounced as [ ]: beige, massage, prestige, regime, rouge etc.; d) ou pronounced as [u], e.g. coup, rouge, sou; e) eau pronounced as [ou]: beau, chateau, bureau etc.; f) final consonant p, s, t not pronounced, as in: coup, debris, ragout, trait, ballet, debut.

To sum it up, we can come to the conclusion that French borrowings which had come to the English language at different times constitute the largest group of borrowings. French loans in the English vocabulary may be subdivided into two main groups: 1) early loans – 12–15^th centuries; 2) later loans – beginning from the 16^th century. It should be added that early loans are known as Norman French borrowings, because they were borrowed from Norman French (also known as Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman), which was one of the provincial dialects of the French language. But later loans are known as Parisian borrowings, because they were borrowed from the Parisian dialect of the French language.

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