Criteria and assimilation of borrowings

Most of the words adjust themselves to their new environment and get adapted to the norms of the recipient language. They undergo certain changes which gradually erase their foreign features, and, finally, they are assimilated. Sometimes the process of assimilation develops to the point when the foreign origin of a word is quite unrecognisable. It is difficult to believe now that such words as dinner, cat, take, cup are not English by origin. Others, though well assimilated, still bear traces of their foreign background. Distance and development, for instance, are identified as borrowings by their French suffixes, skin and sky by the Scandinavian initial sk, police and regime by the French stress on the last syllable.

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors:

a)from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier,

b)in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker,

c)how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated,

d)how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is.

Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into:

1)completely assimilated are not felt as foreign words in the language,

- completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, e.g. correct -corrected

- completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e.g. gate- gates

2)non-assimilated (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc

3)partly assimilated are subdivided into the following groups:

- borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed, e.g. sari, sombrero, taiga, kvass etc.

-borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc.

- borrowings non-assimilated phonetically.

Phonetic assimilation comprising changes in sound-form and stress is perhaps the most conspicuous.

Sounds that were alien to the English language were fitted into its scheme of sounds, e.g. [e] and [ε] in recent French borrowings → [ei] communiqué, chaussée, café).

Substitution of native sounds for foreign ones usually takes place in the very act of borrowing. But some words retain their foreign pronunciation for a long time before the unfamiliar sounds are replaced by similar native sounds.

In words that were added to English from foreign sources, especially from French or Latin, the accent was gradually transferred to the first syllable. Thus words like honour, reason were accented on the same principle as the native father, mother.

Grammatical Assimilation. usually as soon as words from other languages were introduced into English they lost their former grammatical categories and paradigms and acquired hew grammatical categories and paradigms by analogy with other English words

спутник, sputnik (‘s)

However, there are some words in Modern English that have for centuries retained their foreign inflexions. Thus a considerable group of borrowed nouns, all of them terms or literary words adopted in the 16th century or later, have preserved their original plural inflexion to this day, e.g. phenomenon – phenomena; addendum – addenda; parenthesis – parentheses

Lexical Assimilation. When a word is taken over into another language, its semantic structure as a rule undergoes great changes.

Polysemantic words are usually adopted only in one or two of their meanings. Thus the word timbre that had a number of meanings in French was borrowed into English as a musical term only.

International Words. Translator’s false friends. Culturally oriented words. Popular (false) etymology

International words – words of identical origin occurring in several languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowing from one ultimate source.

It is often the case that a word is borrowed by several languages, and not just by one. Such words usually convey concepts which are significant in the field of communication.

Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most names of sciences are international, e. g. philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, linguistics, lexicology. There are also numerous terms of art in this group: music, theatre, drama, tragedy, comedy, artist, primadonna.

It is quite natural that political terms frequently occur in the international group of borrowings: politics, policy, revolution, progress, democracy, communism, anti-militarism.

The English language also contributed a considerable number of international words to world languages. Among them the sports terms occupy a prominent position: football, volley-ball, baseball, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, etc.

Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries often transport their names too and, being simultaneously imported to many countries, become international: coffee, cocoa, chocolate, coca-cola, banana, mango, avocado, grapefruit.

It is important to note that international words are mainly borrowings. The outward similarity of such words as the E. son, the Germ. Sohn and the R. сын should not lead one to the quite false conclusion that they are international words. They represent the Indo-Euroреаn group of the native element in each respective language and are cognates, i. e. words of the same etymological root, and not borrowings.

International words should not be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock. This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference between such words as control:: контроль; general:: генерал; industry:: индустрия or magazine:: магазин, etc. usually called ‘ translator’s false friends ’. False friends - words that have the same or similar form in two or more languages but different meanings in each.
Popular (folk) etymology - false modification of an unknown word according to the known pattern without considering its true origin. The words like gillyflower or sparrow-grass are not actually compounds at all, they are cases of false-etymology, an attempt to find motivation for a borrowed word: gillyflower from OFr giroflé, crayfish (small lobster-like fresh-water crustacean, a spiny lobster) from OFr crevice, and sparrow-grass from Latin asparagus.

May-day (sometimes capitalised May Day) is an international radio signal used as a call for help from a ship or plane, and it has nothing to do with the name of the month, but is a distortion of the French m'aidez ‘help me’ and so is not a compound at all.

Что делать, если нет взаимности? А теперь спустимся с небес на землю. Приземлились? Продолжаем разговор...

ЧТО ПРОИСХОДИТ, КОГДА МЫ ССОРИМСЯ Не понимая различий, существующих между мужчинами и женщинами, очень легко довести дело до ссоры...

Конфликты в семейной жизни. Как это изменить? Редкий брак и взаимоотношения существуют без конфликтов и напряженности. Через это проходят все...

Что вызывает тренды на фондовых и товарных рынках Объяснение теории грузового поезда Первые 17 лет моих рыночных исследований сводились к попыткам вычис­лить, когда этот...

Не нашли то, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском гугл на сайте: