The modern English language is the result of long historical formation and development. Over many centuries, as a result of various historical and cultural events, the English language has closely interacted with other languages. During this time, it enriched its vocabulary with a large number of new, borrowed words. The study of such words helps to understand the principles of the formation and functioning of the English language, to trace the history of the formation and development not only of this language, but also of the entire English people.
The vocabulary of English has been enriched throughout its history. Historical circumstances have always been stimulating the borrowing process. Each time two nations come into close contact, be it wars, invasions or conquests, certain borrowings are a natural consequence. There are also periods of peace when the process of borrowing is due to trade and cultural relations, which are more favorable for enhancing the borrowing process, for doing invasions and occupations the natural psychological reaction of the oppressed nation is to reject and condemn the language of the oppressor.
Different conditions may be explained which encourage the borrowing process. One of the reasons is to fill in a gap in the vocabulary. A vivid example of this is when Saxons borrowed a number of Latin words denoting foodstuff and vegetables as their own vocabularies lacked words for these new objects. For the reason such words as potato and tomato were borrowed by English from Spanish when these vegetables were first brought to England by Spaniards. Other reasons are also well distinguished. One word being borrowed may mean almost the same, - but not exactly. It may represent the same concept in some new aspect, enlarging groups of synonyms and therefore greatly enriching the expressive resources of the vocabulary.
Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogeneous, native words comprising only 25-30% of the total number of words in the English vocabulary. Despite that fact, they form the bulk of the most frequent words used in speech and writing.
Borrowing is an element of a foreign language (word, phrase, morpheme, phoneme) transferred from one language to another as a result of language contacts, as well as the process of transferring elements of one language to another. Words taken from other languages undergo modifications in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according the standards of the English language. Borrowings are adapted to the language system and very often they become so assimilated by it that the speakers of this language do not feel words of foreign origin, and only discover them with the help of etymological analysis.
The English vocabulary continues to be updated and replenished with new units. This replenishment of the vocabulary takes place not only with the help of borrowings of various kinds, including calques, that is, the creation of new words based on the models of another language with the help of the translation of morphemes, but also at the expense of the internal resources of the language system - word-forming processes and reinterpretation of already existing meanings.
Sometimes the borrowing is used in a wider sense. It is often extended onto the so-called calques (translation-loans) and semantic borrowings.
As a result of the dynamic development of science and technology, scientific and technical language is especially rich in neologisms. Scientists distinguish the following ways of the formation of neologisms: phonological, morphological, converted and abbreviated.
The enrichment of the English vocabulary occurs not only through borrowing, although borrowing is still one of the main and most important ways of replenishing it, but also with the help of inner lingual means, thus, proving that the language is a living system that continuously reflects all those changes in our everyday life.
Foreign borrowings have completely permeated the English language. One of the features of loanwords that entered the English language is their number, which is quite large compared to other languages. On average, borrowings make up more than sixty percent of the vocabulary, and the remaining layer of vocabulary contains originally English words and expressions.
Linguistic borrowings ensure a fairly high quality of intercultural communication. The vocabulary of the English language includes some German words, namely: borrowed from the Scandinavian and Old English languages, from Latin, French, Spanish and many other languages. The names of basic concepts, as well as almost all numerals, have their origins in the Old English language, for example: life and death, night and day, hot and cold, etc. A large number of verbs, nouns and adjectives came from Old English and Scandinavian languages. (e.g. wife, sit, bring, brother, land, happy, wrong, etc.).
However, despite the fact that there is a huge number of borrowings in the language, modal verbs, adverbs, almost all pronouns and almost all verbs, as well as nouns are original words.
Misconceptions about the problem of borrowings that existed in linguistics concern not only the exaggeration of their role in language development. The approach to this topic was one-sided and formal. Researchers were interested in the sources and dates of the borrowings for the most part, and at best, historical reasons and conditions of their appearance. These data should not be restricted to it only. Nowadays scientists are also interested in how the loan word was assimilated in the language, how it underwent to its grammatical structure and phonetic norms, how it changed its meaning, and what changes were caused by its appearance in the vocabulary of the language, which borrowed it.
It is important to pay attention not only to the source of borrowing, but also to what was added and created as a result of borrowing a word from another nation. It is necessary to approach the issue creatively and thereby create an opportunity to discover the patterns that govern the development of the vocabulary of the language, to explain the phenomena that occur in it and to discover their causes.
The modern English language has borrowed words from various languages that have retained their meaning. For example, aiki-jutsu, boutique, kelime. These words mostly have the same meaning as they had in the derived language, but some of them have taken on more meanings than they had. Thus, no new addition to the dictionary with borrowed words can pass without a trace for the vocabulary. A borrowed word takes on one or more meanings of words semantically close to it that already existed in the language before.
At the same time, there is a regrouping in the structure of the content, that is, any secondary meaning can become central and vice versa. Words that are similar in meaning to the new word are often displaced from the language. This happens because the long-term coexistence of complete synonyms in the language is impossible, so their meanings are always eliminated or delimited, or unnecessary words are pushed out of the language.
So, it should be noted that all kinds of changes in the vocabulary of languages and in the form of penetration of foreign loanwords entail semantic and stylistic changes in the words that are already in the language.
With this in mind, arises the question concerning the reasons for the penetration of foreign borrowings into the English language. The study of the reasons for the borrowing of foreign words worried the minds of many linguists. However, there were no clear boundaries denoting the main causes. The reasons for the penetration of loanwords are as follows: psychological, social, linguistic, the need for the formation of new language forms, ease of their use, etc. Among them, two main groups are distinguished: extra-linguistic and inner-linguistic.
The phenomenon of borrowing greatly affects the language, causing serious changes in it. As a result of this process, foreign elements appear in languages - words and parts of words - which, for the most part, do not clutter up the language (which, however, happens with thoughtless borrowings), but enrich the fund of its lexical and morphological possibilities. Often there are hybrid words - words, part of which is borrowed, and the other part originally exists in this language (artless -borrowed root art-, dislike - borrowed suffix -like). Words belonging to barbarisms and exoticisms, Numerous international and pseudo-international words appear.
Borrowings had a very important impact on the grammar of the English language. Due to the borrowing of the structure of + Noun, typical for the French language, to express the relationship of belonging (leg of the table), the English language lost the ending. Also, under the influence of borrowings, 2/3 of English words were displaced from the language (the Anglo-Saxon equivalents of the words face, money, war, and others). Many original words acquired a reduced stylistic shade compared to borrowings (compare the English calf, pig, cow and the corresponding words of Scandinavian origin veil, pork, beef).
These are the most obvious results of the borrowing process. But there are other, less clearly expressed, but no less significant.
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