On Influence of Foreign Words on English

1、on influence of foreign words on english1. introduction english has a large number of foreign words from other languages. according to statistics, about three-fifths of the twenty thousand common words in english are foreign words. this is inseparable from the historical conditions of the developmen

2、t of english. the historical development of the english language shows that english is a heavy borrower. while many words enter english as slang, not all do. some words are adopted from other languages; some are mixtures of existing words (portmanteau words), and some are new coinages made of roots

3、from dead languages. no matter the origin, though, words seldom, if ever are immediately accepted into the english language. the paper illustrates how the english language borrows words from other languages and how foreign languages affect the english language in pronunciation, word-formation, seman

4、tics and grammar.2. main ways that foreign words influence the english languagelanguage is rarely self-sufficient, and the mutual borrowing between languages is a universal phenomenon, english absorbed a large number of foreign words from old english to mediaeval english to modern english. in partic

5、ular the late 16th century early 17th century, the spread of the renaissance in england promoted the development of english language greatly. the absorption of foreign words greatly enriched the vocabulary of english. a large number of loan words from latin, greek, italian, french and other language

6、s integrated into english, which make up for the lack of english vocabulary. it also witnessed the interaction of culture, politics and economy between the european countries. the main way that foreign words influence the english language is borrowing. it includes direct borrowing and indirect borro

7、wing.2.1 direct borrowing direct borrowing refers to the spelling and meaning of foreign words borrowed into english at the same time, that is to say some words entered the english language without distortion. such as, climax, index, major, minor, memorandum etc. (陸谷孫, 1993:45) are all directly from

8、 the latin. the words that directly from italian words are: design, stanza, violin, volcano, etc. at tach (diplomatic missions commissioner), chargd affairs (agency), caf, coup d ta (coup) (katamba, 1993:45) are all directly from french words.2.2 indirect borrowing indirect borrowing takes place whe

9、n a certain word is passed on from the source language to another, and then from that language is handed over to another and from this one maybe even to another. this process may go hand in hand with the development that the word, each time it is passed on from one language to another, is adjusted p

10、honological/orthographical to make it fit to the phonological system of the recipient language (katamba, 1993:45) the turkish words kahveh has been passed on to arabic as kahva, from there the dutch borrowed it as koffie and finally it was taken over by the english in the form coffee. in english the

11、re exists the term howitzer (light gun). it entered the language from dutch and they had borrowed it from the czech original houfnice which means “catapult” (katamba, 1993:64)to complicate matters even further, there is another distinction between the kinds of borrowings, i.e. the distinction betwee

12、n loanwords and loanshifts. most of the examples discussed above are loanwords. that means, they have imported from another language, either directly or indirectly, and might have undergone phonological/orthographical changes.loanshifts on the other side are formed in a quite different way. here the

13、 borrowing is done by translating the vocabulary item or rather its meaning into the receiving language. such a loanshift is the german word ubermensch which has been translated into english as superman. moreover, the term loanword itself is a loan translation from the german lehnwort (katamba, 1993

14、:194).3. influence of foreign words on english language the foreign words have great influence on english vocabulary, it also can cause a number of other english language changes. this shows mainly in the following four aspects.3.1influence on pronunciation as the result of borrowing of a large numb

15、er of french words, english absorbed two consonants that have no originally: v and f. in old english, there is no strict distinction between the f and v; v is phonemic variant of f. when the f exists in the suffix or prefix it was pronounced as f, while between two vowels it was pronounced v. later,

16、 because the words borrowed from the french pronounced v at the beginning of words (such as weel), v became a separate phoneme.3.2 influence on word-formation it is common to borrow the affix from other languages to form the words in english. for example, english noun suffix - ation and - ment, the

17、prefix sub - and re - come from the rumantsch. suffix - nik from russian means “be related to ”, “characterize .”, or “the person who love doing ”such as, citynik. and anti- comes from greek; de- is from latin, such as defog etc. (王鋼, 1988:46). in addition, the spelling of some words in modern engli

18、sh reserved the mark of french. for some words that begin with ch- in central french, they are usually changed to the words begin with c-, such as car, caitiff, carpenter, carry and so on.3.3influence on semantics since the introduction of a large number of foreign words, some foreign words and orig

19、inal words of native english coincided. on the one hand, one word may be homophonic or isomorphic, but the semantic of it is quite different. for example, fair means charming and cute in native english, but the same word borrowed from latin refers to regular market. on the other hand, a large number

20、 of words are synonymous. that is to say you can use two or more than two kinds of language to expresses the same conception. for example, english may use might to express strength, while power is used in french. english use know to expresses understand, while french use perceive(侯維瑞,1988:25). gener

21、ally speaking, the native english is the most colloquial because it is simple and approachable. french words are more solemn and elegant, and latin words are more written. for example, people usually say“i went down the high street to the north” at the casual situation. but this sentence would be co

22、nverted to“i proceeded down the high street in the northerly direction” in court or other formal situation.3.4influence on grammarin general, grammar is the most stable factor of the three elements of language. in order to maintain the stability of the language, grammar is not susceptible to the for

23、eign words. but nothing is static; there is no exception for grammar. such as here and hem in old english, they were both replaced by danish word their and them. they are used as personal pronouns and have been used for a long time. due to the impact of foreign words in english, the sentence structu

24、re of english has changed dramatically. the sentence ranged from short to long, from simple to complex. phrases, such as, to the which, for the which, wherefore etc., (楊自儉, 李瑞華, 1990:27) are often used to introduce a new clause. besides, a lot of conjunctions are from french. such as, that is to say

25、 comes from the french cest a dire, as to be from auregart de, and therefore is from the modern french dont. in addition, the popularity of latin has also had a non-negligible impact on english. the structure of the following sentence is basically the style of latin. who when he was returned unto hi

26、s camp, his soldiers came in great companies unto him, and were very sorry, that he mistrusted he was not able with them alone to overcome his enemies ,but would tut his person in danger to gore fetch them that were absent ,putting no trust in them that were present. (goldsworthy.2006:68) .this is a

27、 pretty well circumference sentence that reflects the characteristics of the latin. it is a subordinate clauses sentence that the clause was placed before the principal clause and it is very different from the parallelism of the couplet. the circumference sentence was regarded by the 19th century scholar of english grammar