Latin borrowings

Among words of Romanic origin borrowed from Latin during the period when the British Isles were a part of the Roman Empire, there are such words as: street, port, wall etc. Many Latin and Greek words came into English during the Adoption of Christianity in the 6-th century. Latin words: alter, cross, dean, and Greek words: church, angel, devil, anthem.

French borrowings

There are the following semantic groups of French borrowings:

· a) words relating to government: administer, empire, state, government;

· b) words relating to military affairs: army, war, banner, soldier, battle;

· c) words relating to jury: advocate, petition, sentence, barrister;

· d) words relating to fashion: luxury, coat, collar, lace;

· e) words relating to jewelry: topaz, emerald, ruby, pearl;

· f) words relating to food and cooking: lunch, dinner, appetite, to roast, to stew.

Italian borrowings.

Cultural and trade relations between Italy and England brought many Italian words into English. The earliest Italian borrowing came into English in the 14-th century. But mostly Italian is famous by its influence in music and in all Indo-European languages musical terms were borrowed from Italian: alto, baritone, basso, tenor, falsetto, solo, duet, trio, quartet, quintet, opera, operetta, libretto, piano, violin.

Among the 20-th century Italian borrowings we can mention: gazette, incognito, fiasco, fascist, dilettante, grotesque, graffito etc.

Spanish borrowings.

Spanish borrowings came into English mainly through its American variant. There are the following semantic groups of them:

· a) trade terms: cargo, embargo;

· b) names of dances and musical instruments: tango, rumba, guitar;

· c) names of vegetables and fruit: tomato, potato, tobacco, cocoa, banana, ananas, apricot etc.

GERMANIC BORROWINGS

English belongs to the Germanic group of languages and there are borrowings from Scandinavian, German and Holland languages, though their number is much less than borrowings from Romanic languages.

Scandinavian borrowings.

By the end of the Old English period English underwent a strong influence of Scandinavian due to the Scandinavian conquest of the British Isles.

German borrowings.

There are some 800 words borrowed from German into English. Some of them have classical roots, e.g. in some geological terms, such as: cobalt, quarts.

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