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).

Дата добавления: 2015-08-03