International words. Etymological structure of English vocabulary

ETYMOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY

Etymology as a branch of linguistics. Some basic assumptions

Etymology is a branch of linguistics investigating the origin and development of separate words and morphemes.

The vocabulary in comparison with grammar and phonetic system is the most changeable and flexible part of any language. It is in the constant process of changing: some words are ousted by others, some words develop new meanings, the words that were formerly frequently used drop out of usage, new words appear.

The vocabulary is the product of several epochs and its development is closely connected with the history of people. English vocabulary at present is one of the richest in the world. According to its origin it can be divided into two large parts: native words and borrowed words.

The native element in the vocabulary of English comprises words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles in the 5-th century A.D. by the Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Here also belong words that were coined later on the basis of these Anglo-Saxon words by means of various processes operative in English.

The borrowed element consists of words taken over from other languages and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, grammatical paradigm and meaning according to the standards of English.

Speaking of borrowed words in the language we should distinguish between the terms “source of borrowing” and “origin of borrowing”. The first term is applied to the language from which the loan word was taken into English. The second refers to the language to which the word may be traced.

If we take the word paper as an example, we shall find out that it was borrowed from French. In its turn, the French word papier was borrowed from Latin. Before that the Latin word papyrus had come to Latin from Greek, where it had the form papyros. So, defining its etymology, we should say that the English noun paper is a French borrowing of Greek origin. In the same way the English noun table is a French borrowing of Latin origin, the noun school is a Latin borrowing of Greek origin.

Native words in English

All native words in English can be subdivided in three main groups: Indo-European, Common Germanic and English proper.

2.1. By the Indo-European group of words we understand words containing roots common to all Indo-European languages (Slavonic, Romanic, Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, Iranian, and some others).

Cf.: brother – Bruder (German) – broder (Sweedish) – frater (Latin) – брат

Words of Indo-European origin in English include words denoting elementary notions without which no human communication would be possible. We may present them as belonging to the following semantic groups:

1) terms of kinship – father, mother, son, daughter, bother;

2) parts of the human body: arm, ear, eye, foot, heart, lip, nose;

3) names of animals, birds and plants: bull, cow, swine, goose, wolf, cat, crow, tree, birch, corn;

4) words denoting some important phenomena of nature: sun, moon, star, wind, water, wood, hill, stone;

5) times of day: day, night;

6) numerals from 1 to a 100;

7) adjectives denoting concrete physical properties: hard, quick, slow, red, new;

8) some most frequently used verbs: be, stand, sit, come, eat, know.

2.2. By the Germanic group of words we understand words having parallels in all the Germanic languages (English, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, Sweedish, Danish and others).

This group comprises nouns denoting:

1) seasons: summer, winter, spring;

2) natural phenomena: storm, rain, ice, frost;

3) human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench;

4) parts of the human body: hand, ankle, head, finger, bone;

5) animals and plants: bear, fox, calf, oak, fir, grass;

6) some adjectives: broad, dead, dear, grey, blue, green, white, little, soft, thick, high, old, good;

7) some verbs: bake, burn, buy, drink, give, hear, keep, learn, make, rise, say, speak, see, send, sing, shoot.

Together with words of Indo-European origin these Germanic words form the bulk of the most frequent elements used in any style of speech. They constitute no less than 80 % of the 500 most frequent words listed by E.L.Thorndike and I.Lorge in “The Teacher’s Word-Book of 30,000 Words” (N.Y., 1944).

2.3. The English Proper group consists of words which appeared on the British soil after the 5^th century A.D. and which have no cognates in other languages. Britain before that time was inhabited by different Celtic tribes which in the 1^st century B.C. were conquered by Roman troops which stayed on the British Isles till the beginning of the 5^th century. So, if we go back as far as that, we can say that no England existed at that time. Most of Europe was occupied by the Roman Empire. Britain was also part of the Roman Empire up to the beginning of the 5^th century when Roman troops were called away to defend Rome. Then, in the year 449, the Germanic tribe of Jutes, joined later by Saxons and Angles, began to invade the British Isles and establish their settlements there. It was the beginning of the future English nation and its language.

So, words considered to be English Proper, are purely English coinages having no cognates in other languages. Thus, in Old English there were such compound nouns as hlāford, hlāf-diğe, wīfman, d æ ğes-eağe which gave Modern English words lord, lady, woman, and daisy. Also to English Proper belong the words bird, boy, girl, always.

The history of some of these words is rather interesting: hlāford in Old English meant “keeper of bread”, nowadays lord means “a nobleman of high rank”, girl (in Old English gerle, girle) first meant “a male child”, then “a child of either sex”, then “a female child”, now the meaning is very wide and the word can be used to denote women of all ages (cf. Sally was a good old girl).

Borrowed words in English

The larger part of English vocabulary consists of loan words. Borrowing is one of the ways of enriching the vocabulary. Words can be borrowed through all kinds of contacts between nations: wars, invasions, occupation, cultural and trade relations between countries. It is natural, therefore, in discussing the problem of loan words in any language to give a survey of certain historical facts from the life of the people speaking that language.

3.1. Latin borrowings

The earliest borrowings came into English from Latin. In the 1^st century B.C. the Germanic tribes lived in Central Europe, they spoke numerous Germanic languages which contained Indo-European and Common Germanic elements. As most of Europe was occupied by the Roman Empire at that time The Germanic tribes came into constant contacts with the Romans. There were both military conflicts and trade relations. The Germanic tribes were primitive cattle-breeders who knew next to nothing about land cultivation. The only products known to them were meat and milk. So, from the more civilized Romans they learnt how to make butter and cheese. Since there were no words to name the new foodstuffs in their tribal languages they had to use Latin words for them. The Latin names of some fruits and vegetables new to the Germanic tribes also entered their vocabulary: cherry, pear, plum, pea, pepper, peach, beet. The very word plant is also of Latin origin. Other Latin borrowings of this period are: cup, dish, mill, kitchen, wine, mule, pound, inch, mile, kettle.

As Britain was also part of the Roman Empire at that time, such words as street (strata via), wall (vallum), camp (campus), port (portus), chester (as in Manchester) (castra) remaine in the language.

Historically, all Latin loan words in English can be divided into 3 layers. The borrowings described above belong to the first layer.

The second stream of Latin borrowings came into English with the Christianization of the British Isles in the 7^th century A.D. The language of the Christian church was Latin and, naturally, the second layer of Latin borrowings consists mostly of different religious terms: pope, bishop, monk, nun, priest, altar, devil, creed, angel, psalm, candle, hymn, apostle, disciple. The priests were educated people who began to establish church schools and the words school, master, verse, scholar, chalk came into the language. Of words other than religious and educational terms we may name such as lion, copper, marble, gem, palm-tree, cap, spade, fork (вилы).

The third layer of Latin borrowings refers to the epoch of Renaissance (in England it came in the 16^th century, later than in Italy). This period was marked by the prospering of art, science and culture in all European countries. There also came a revival of interest in ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome. The words that came into English during this period differ greatly from earlier Latin borrowings. Now the borrowing was done from literature and scientific works that were written in Latin and the loan words, in contrast to the previous two layers, were mostly abstract in meaning and many of them were scientific terms. There were many verbs and adjectives among them and comparatively few nouns: introduce, execute, collect, decorate, senior, solar, triangular, evident, cordial, obvious, union, relation, etc. The words of the first and second layers were mostly nouns and the borrowing was from oral everyday communication, not from written sources.

3.2. Celtic borrowings

When the Germanic tribes migrated to Britain in the 5^th century A.D. they confronted Celts and waged merciless wars with them. As a result of this the Celts were defeated and they retreated to Scotland, Cornwall, Wales and the peninsula of Brittany, which now belongs to France. The language of Celts dropped out of usage, only some words penetrated into Old English: binn (MnE bin “a receptacle for corn”, рус. ларь), dūn (MnE down “a hill”), dunn (MnE dun “grayish-brownish colour”).

The words cradle “a bed for an infant”, bannock “a round flat loaf” (рус. пресная лепёшка), glen “a narrow valley”, bard “a minstrel, a poet”, druid “a member of the priesthood among the Celts”, loch “lake” (used in Scottish dialects) and some geographical names (Kent, Dover, the rivers Esk and Avon) are also of Celtic origin.

The name of the British capital London originates from the Celtic compound noun Llyndūn meaning “a fortress on the hill over the river” (Celtic llyn, “a river” + dūn, “a fortified hill”).

3.3. Scandinavian borrowings

The period between the 8^th and the 11^th centuries was marked by several invasions of Scandinavian Vikings who founded extensive settlements in the North and North-East of Britain. In the course of nearly 300 years half of England was overrun by the invaders. Naturally, Scandinavian ways and people left an important mark on the land. As both the languages belonged to the Germanic group and were closely related the process of borrowing went very easily.

The borrowings were simple words of everyday use. The borrowed nouns are: sky, law, husband, skin, wing, anger, egg, window, fellow, gate, seat; adjectives: low, ill, ugly, weak, loose, odd, wrong, happy; verbs: cast, die, hit, lift, call, take, want. Some pronouns were borrowed: they, them, their (instead of OE hie, him, hiera), both and same and one preposition – till.

Some of the Scandinavian borrowings can be distinguished by the initial sound cluster [sk]: sky, skill, skin, skirt, ski, skull. Another distinctive feature is the sound [g] before front vowels: give, get.

Borrowing from Scandinavian continued till the middle of the 11^th century when another invasion took place in the history of English people.

3.4. French borrowings

This time the whole of the country was conquered by the Normans. After winning in the year of 1066 the battle of Hastings and defeating the English troops the duke of Normandy William, who later came to be called William the Conqueror, became King of England.

The Norman Conquest influenced the life of English people and their language more than any other event in their history. For more than two centuries England became a bilingual country. Norman French gradually began to be used in all governmental offices, in the court, in the church, in the army, at school. Much of the literature was written in French, translated from French, or strongly influenced by French models. All the key positions in government were held by the Normans and those Anglo-Saxon lords who stayed alive after the conquest had to adjust themselves to the French ways of life if they wanted to remain part of the ruling class.

English came to be used only in the speech of poor townsfolk, craftsmen and peasants. But, nevertheless, the poor people formed the majority of the population and in the 13^th and 14^th centuries the practice of English was re-established and French began to be gradually ousted from schools, courts of justice, governmental institutions and everyday communication. But the English language was replenished by a great number of French words.

All French borrowings of the Norman dialect can be arranged according to several semantic groups:

1) administrative words: state, government, parliament, chancellor, council, power, country, county, nation, people;

2) legal terms: court, judge, justice, jury, crime, prison, to accuse, to plead, damage, fraud, slander, attorney, solicitor;

3) military terms: army, war, soldier, officer, enemy, battle, peace, regiment, retreat, victory, defence, sergeant, lieutenant, captain,general;

4) educational terms: pupil, lesson, library, science, pen, pencil;

5) titles and words denoting some feudal relations: duke, duchess, baron, baroness, count, countess, prince, princess, sir, madam, peasant, servant, manor;

6) religious terms: religion, clergy, parish, prayer, sermon, abbey, saint, vice, virtue, parson, chapel;

7) art and crafts: art, colour, ornament, temple, palace, chamber, architecture, literature, prose, story, volume, chapter, poet, choir, design, tower, arch, aisle, butcher, carpenter, tailor, painter;

8) medical terms: medicine, malady, poison, diet;

9) terms of kinship: aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin;

10) numerous words denoting objects and notions of everyday life: table, chair, plate, saucer, money, market, leisure, pleasure, journey, dinner, supper, dress, costume, luxury, comfort, jewels, river, autumn, large, clear, to use, to turn, to catch, to cry, to cover, to boil, to fry, to dance and lots of others.

Norman French ceased to be used in Britain in the second half of the 14^th century, though already in the 13^th century it was only an official language used in governmental institutions but not in everyday communication.

Borrowings from French of the later period, after the 14^th century, came already from another dialect – Parisian French. Especially numerous was the flow of French borrowings in the second half of the 17^th, first half of the 18^th centuries. Unlike Norman French words, Parisian French borrowings were the result of cultural ties, political and trade relations. The characteristic feature of loan words of this period is the preservation of French spelling, pronunciation, stress on the final syllable: memoir, bourgeois, camouflage, regime, police, mirage, bomb, marine, ballet, corps, grotesque, machine, technique, campaign, routine, etc.

3.5. Greek borrowings

Words from Latin, Scandinavian and French constitute the bulk of all borrowed words in English. However, borrowings from other languages also form an important part of present-day English vocabulary.

In Old English period there were very few words that came into English from Greek. Such was the word church which became known already to the Germanic tribes before their invasion of Britain. Most Greek words came into English through Latin and French: abbot, bishop, apostle, monk, priest, school, idea, fancy, catalogue, chronicle.

It was only in the Renaissance period that borrowing was directly from Greek: lexicon, myth, petal, sympathy, atom, philosophy, physics. But even here some of the words came through classical Latin (gymnastics, drama, athlete) and French (astronomy, geography, geometry, theatre, tragedy, idiom, dialect).

Nowadays the influence of Greek is felt in the sphere of special terminology because of the frequent use of Greek morphemes: telephone, telegraph, television, aerodrome, aerodynamic, aerogram, photograph, phonograph, etc.

3.6. Italian borrowings

Borrowing from Italian started in the 15^th-16^th centuries. Italy at that time was a country with high culture which influenced not only England but the whole of Europe. The vocabularies of many languages reflect this influence because many words became international, i.e. they are met in most world languages.

All Italian borrowings can be arranged into several semantic groups:

1) terms of house-building and architecture: balcony, fresco, studio, corridor, cornice, mezzanine, stucco, loggia, colonnade;

2) military terms: colonel, alarm, cartridge, cavalry, infantry, pistol, squadron;

3) words dealing with finance: bank, bankrupt;

4) names of food: pizza, cappuccino, macaroni, spaghetti;

5) words referring to no particular semantic group: casino, volcano, lagoon, revolt, risk, monkey, bandit, mafia, mafioso (pl. mafiosi), umbrella, influenza, incognito, to manage, to isolate.

Especially numerous are Italian borrowings referring to the sphere of music:

a) names of musical instruments: (violon) cello, piano, violin;

b) singing voices: bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, soprano;

c) musical compositions: sonata, opera, aria;

d) other musical terms: solo, duet, concert, libretto, tempo, bel canto.

In the first half of the 20^th century with the emergence in Italy and Germany of a new form of dictatorship the Italian words fascist and fascism came to be used in many languages including English.

3.7. Spanish borrowings

One of the richest European countries in the 16^th century was Spain. The discovery in 1492 by Christopher Columbus of a new continent started the colonization of the so-called New World. The colonizers came to see new lands with new animals and plants. They exploited the newly colonized territories and brought back with them new foodstuffs such as potato, tomato, cocoa, chocolate, banana. The names of these foodstuffs came through Spanish into many languages.

There were contacts of two kinds between England and Spain: trade relations at first, military conflicts later since the two countries had to fight for supremacy in world markets. All this enriched the vocabulary of English with Spanish borrowings.

We can single out the following semantic groups among them:

1) trading terms – cargo, embargo, contraband;

2) foodstuffs and other products – in addition to what was mentioned above we may name also tobacco, cigar, cork, quinine;

3) natural phenomena and names of animals and plants – hurricane, tornado, canyon, savannah, pampas, mosquito, coyote, armadillo, cockroach, maize;

4) military terms: armada, guerrilla;

5) miscellanea – bravado, canoe, matador, mulatto, Negro, ranch, renegade, junta, corral, lasso, comrade, macho, cafeteria.

3.8. German borrowings

Loan words from German can be arranged into the following semantic groups:

1) names of minerals – quartz, cobalt, wolfram, nephrite, zinc;

2) philosophical terms – objective, subjective, determinism, transcendental;

3) miscellanea – poodle, iceberg, zigzag, waltz, plunder, kindergarten, swindler, carouse.

3.9. Russian borrowings

The first Russian borrowing came into English in the 14th century. It was the word sable. Closer links between the English and the Russian peoples were established later – in the 16th century. In this century the words rouble, Cossack, boyar and tsar were taken into English. In the following two centuries more Russian words penetrated into English: troika, astrakhan, copeck, ukase, duma, verst, steppe, vodka, samovar, kvass, droshky, shuba, beluga, sterlet, arshin, knout, tundra, moujik.

The October Revolution and the emergence of the socialist state caused new borrowings from Russian: Soviet, Bolshevik, Komsomol, kolkhoz, sovkhoz, commissar, artel, sputnik, perestroika, glasnost. These borrowings are also known under the term “Sovietisms”.

3.10. Dutch borrowings

The first Dutch borrowings appeared in English in the 13th century. But borrowing on a larger scale began in the 15-17th centuries. Among Dutch loan words we may point out:

1) words dealing with ships and navigation – skipper, deck, yacht, reef, buoy, dock, cruise;

2) words dealing with art – easel, landscape, sketch, to etch;

3) military terms – bulwark, drill, onslaught, knapsack;

4) miscellanea – luck, groove, brandy, boss, slim, wagon, uproar, to smuggle, to loiter.

The influence of borrowings on the lexical system of English

The fact that up to 70 % of English vocabulary consists of borrowed words and only about 30 % of native words may be misleading. Though borrowings play an important role in the vocabulary of English, still the English language remains essentially Germanic. It is so, firstly, because its grammatical structure wasn’t influenced by the foreign element; secondly, the basic stock of the vocabulary is native by origin: prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs of time and place, auxiliary and modal verbs, adjectives with suppletive forms, many nouns denoting objects of everyday life are native words. In fact, it is only in the dictionary that borrowed words prevail. In actual speech the proportion of native to borrowed words is quite different. It also becomes evident if we analyze the language of some written texts. Shakespeare, for example, is said to have used in his works up to 90 % of native words and only 10 % of borrowed words.

On the other hand, there is no denying that English has benefited from the adoption of so many foreign words. The most obvious advantage is the wealth of synonyms which has been created by borrowing words from other languages in cases when English had its own words expressing the same notions. Thus in Modern English we have such pairs of words as: to ask – to question (F), to rise – to mount (F), teaching – instruction (L), brotherly – fraternal (L), happiness – felicity (It), etc.

Speaking of borrowings in the language, it will be helpful for the student of English to know certain structural features indicating that this or that word is a borrowing. Thus, the initial position of the sounds [v] and [ğ] is a sign that the word is not native: vacuum (L), valley (F), vanilla (Sp), genre (F), gendarme (F). The letters j, x and z in initial position and such combinations as ph, kh, eau in the root show the foreign origin of the word: philosophy (Greek), khaki (Indian), beau (F), journey (F), zinc (Ger.).

Some affixes also mark certain words as foreign: prefixes – ab normal, anti -aircraft, counter -attack, de mobilize, dis miss, ex- minister, inter national, non sense, post -war, pre -war, re form, sub division, super man, trans continental, ultra- modern, vice -president, etc.; suffixes – advoc ate, marri age, librar ian, appear ance, stud ent, godd ess, amaze ment, revolu tion, pover ty, cult ure, social ism, commun ist, fashion able, necess ary, joy ous, organ ize, etc.

The pronunciation of some letters and combinations of letters depends on the etymology of the word. The letter x, for example, is pronounced [ks] in native words (six), [gz] in words of Latin origin (example) and [z] in words coming from Greek (xylophone). The combination ch is pronounced [tſ] in native words and early borrowings (child, cheese), [ſ] – in late French borrowings (parachute) and [k] in words of Greek origin (epoch, echo, chemistry).

Assimilation of borrowings

After being borrowed loan words do not remain the same. Most of them adjust themselves to their new environment and get adapted to the standards of the language that receives them. This process of adaptation of borrowings to phonetic, graphic, morphological and semantic laws of the recipient language is termed assimilation.

In the process of assimilation the loan words undergo three types of changes. 5.1. First, phonetic adaptation – words are modified to the pronunciation norms of the accepting language. Sounds alien to English have to be fitted into its system of sounds. For example, the long [e] in French borrowings is rendered in English with the help of a diphthong [ei] – café, fiancé.

Certain sounds and sound combinations of borrowed words never occur in initial position in English. This is why in English they are replaced by other sounds or sound combinations in pronunciation though the spelling is retained. For example, a word from Greek xylophone is pronounced with [z] at the beginning, not [ks], a word from German spitz is pronounced [spits], not [ſpits] as in German, the Greek word pneumonia and the Latin word psalter lost the sound [p] at the beginning.

Accent is another phonetic factor which is subject to assimilation. For example, in French borrowings the stress is usually transferred to the first syllable, which is a general rule in English. Thus, words like season, reason, honour, etc. are now accented on the same principle as other native words.

The process of assimilation is rather long and usually takes several centuries. If we compare Norman and Parisian borrowings from French, we shall see that the first are phonetically assimilated and do not differ from native words: price, fine, pupil, pencil, dinner, supper, table, plate, chair, etc. Most of Parisian borrowings still retain traces of their French origin: for example the shift of stress to the first syllable has not occurred in such words as police, machine, regime, etc.

5.2. Secondly, borrowings have to adapt themselves to the grammaticalstructure of the receiving language. Grammatical assimilation consists in a complete change of the paradigm of a loan word. Nouns and adjectives adopt a new system of declension, verbs – a new system of conjugation. The verbs to conduct, to disturb, to exaggerate, for instance, are grammatically assimilated Latin borrowings in English (in the Past Simple and Past Participle forms they have the dental suffix - ed). Nouns get s in the plural form – cups, acts (both Latin). Still some borrowings retain their foreign endings and are not completely assimilated from the grammatical point of view: medium – media (L), nucleus – nuclei (L), criterion – criteria (G), basis – bases (G), virtuoso – virtuosi (It.), etc.

5.3. Thirdly, we may speak of semantic adaptation. When a foreign word appears in the language its semantic structure undergoes certain changes.

Polysemantic words are usually taken in one of their meanings, then in the process of historical development borrowed words may acquire new meanings, not found in their former semantic structure. The word move in modern English has more than ten meanings, but in French dictionaries only two meanings of mouvoir are registered.

Furthermore, the borrowed word does not always preserve the meaning with which it was borrowed. A good example is the noun sport. When it was borrowed from French in Middle English period, it meant “amusement, pleasure, entertainment” but then it gradually acquired a new meaning denoting different sorts of outdoor games and exercise. In this new meaning the word sport was borrowed from English by many languages and has become international nowadays.

The adjective large was borrowed from French in the meaning of “wide”. Since in its meaning it fully coincided with the native word and, therefore, was not needed in the language, it entered another synonymic group with the general meaning “big in size”.

Degree of assimilation

Some borrowed words in English are easily felt as foreign, others are in no way different from words of Anglo-Saxon origin. The degree of assimilation depends on several factors.

It depends firstly on the time of borrowing – the older the borrowing, the more assimilated it is.

Importance for communicative purposes and frequency of usage is another factor determining the degree of assimilation. The principle is this: words widely used in everyday speech and known to a vast number of people are more easily assimilated than words used only occasionally and known to a comparatively small group of people.

One more factor is the way of borrowing. It has been noticed that words borrowed orally are more readily assimilated than words borrowed through written sources.

According to the degree of assimilation, lexicologists divide all borrowed words into three groups.

6.1. Completely assimilated words: here belong all early borrowings – the first two layers of Latin borrowings, Celtic, Scandinavian and Norman French borrowings: street, wall, wine, cradle, candle, husband, fellow, take, die, call, happy, ill, low, face, figure, matter. The long period of their functioning in the English language has made them fully identical with native words, so that a non-specialist native speaker would have been startled to find out that the words cup, pencil, face, table, aunt, river, etc. are words taken from other languages.

6.2. Partially assimilated words. Depending on the aspect which remains unaltered this group of borrowings can be divided into four sub-groups.

6.2.1. Loan words non-assimilated semantically. These words denote some specific realia of the countries from which they come. They may denote foreign clothing (kimono, Japan; sombrero, chiefly countries of Latin America), titles and professions (rajah, India; sheik, some Arab countries; toreador, picador, Spain), vehicles (rickshaw, originally used in Japan, now in countries of South Asia), some historical foreign practices (hara-kiri, Japan),human dwellings (wigwam, American Indians), money (forint, Hungary; dong, Vietnam; yen, Japan; yuan, China), etc.

6.2.2. Words non-assimilated grammatically. Some other examples of nouns of Greek, Latin, or Italian origin that have retained their original plural forms: bacillus – bacilli, formula – formulae, memorandum – memoranda, index – indices, phenomenon – phenomena, Mafioso – Mafiosi, etc.

6.2.3. Words non-assimilated phonetically. They are of different kinds: French borrowings with the stress on the final syllable (cartoon, routine, machine), words which contain sounds or sound combinations which do not occur in native words ([ğ] mirage, prestige, sabotage, pleasure, [ wa: ] memoir, bourgeois). In many cases it is not the sounds but the whole pattern of the word’s phonetic make-up that is different from the rest of the vocabulary. Italian borrowings umbrella, confetti, spaghetti, sonata or Spanish borrowings tomato, potato, tobacco may serve as examples.

6.2.4.Words non-assimilated graphically. Again French borrowings offer us good examples. We have cases of two kinds: words in which final consonants are preserved in spelling but not pronounced in speech (ballet, bouquet, beret, corps)and words which have kept diacritic marks(cliché, café, châlet, début, façade, garcon).

6.3. Completely non-assimilated words or barbarisms. These are foreign words used by English-speaking people in conversation or in writing, but not assimilated in any degree: chaise-longue, corps de ballet, tête-à-tête, vis-à-vis (French), ciao (Italian), ad infinitum, ad libitum, per se (Latin), etc.

International words

Borrowing of some words is not limited to one language. Often a word is borrowed by several languages at once, and begins spreading all over the world. Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as a result of borrowing from one ultimate source are called international words.

International words play a prominent part in scientific vocabulary, terms of art, culture, sports, politics, computer technologies, and some other spheres.

Many names of sciences of Greek and Latin origin are international words: zoology, algebra, chemistry, physics, philosophy, linguistics, etc.

Terms of art are also of Greek or Latin origin: drama, comedy, tragedy, music, artist, etc.

Terms of music come from Italian: opera, duet, soprano, etc.

Many sports terms come from English: match, hockey, tennis, football, basket-ball, etc.

Some international words that come from English denote clothing: pullover, sweater, nylon, tweed, jersey, etc.

Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries have also become a source of international vocabulary: grapefruit, banana, mango, cocoa, coffee, chocolate, etc.

Finally, some political terms belonging to the stock of international words must be mentioned: democracy, politics, progress, revolution, communism, capitalism, etc.

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