Native English words

Etymology of English words

Native English words

Causes and ways of borrowing

Assimilation of loan words. Types of assimilation

Degree of assimilation

Translation and semantic loans

Etymological doublets

Native English words

Etymologicaily the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogene­ous. It consists of two layers - the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words. Native words comprise only 30 % of the total number of words in the English vocabulary but the native words form the bulk of the most frequent words actually used in speech and writing. The native element in English comprises a large number of high-fre­quency words like the articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliaries and, also, words denoting everyday objects and ideas (e. g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good, bad, etc.). Words belonging to the subsets of the native word-stock are for the most part characterized by a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency, high frequency value and a developed polysemy; they are often monosyllabic, show great word-building power and enter a number of set expressions. Furthermore, the grammatical structure is essen­tially Germanic having remained unaffected by foreign influence.

A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, as known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English period. A loan word, borrowed word or borrowing is a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.

The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of the Indo-European stock and those of Common Germanic origin i.e. of words having parallels in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc., but none in Russian, Ukrainian or French.

The words having the cognates(words of the same etymological root, of common origin) in the vocabularies of different Indo-European languages form the oldest layer which readily falls into definite semantic groups:

1. Family relations: father, mother, brother, son, daughter

2. Parts of the human body: foot, nose, lip, heart.

3. Animals: cow, swine, goose.

4. Plants: tree, birch, corn.

5. Time of day: day, night.

6. Heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star.

7. Numerous adjectives: red, new, glad, sad.

8. The numerals from one to a hundred.

9. Pronouns: personal (except they which is a Scandinavian borrowing); demonstrative.

10. Numerous verbs: be, stand, sit, eat, know.

Some of the most frequent verbs are also of Indo-European common stock: bear, come, sit, stand and others. The adjectives of this group denote concrete physical proper­ties: hard, quick, slow, red, white. Most numerals also belong here.

The Germanic element represents words of roots common to all or most Germanic languages. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the same as in the Indo-Euro­pean element.

1. Parts of the human body: head, hand, arm, finger, bone.

2. Animals: bear, fox, calf.

3. Plants: oak, fir, grass.

4. Natural phenomena: rain, frost.

5. Seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer.

6. Landscape features: sea, land.

7. Human dwellings and furniture: house, room, bench.

8. Sea-going vessels: boat, ship.

9. Adjectives: green, blue, grey, white, small, thick, high, old, good.

10. Verbs: see, hear, speak, tell, say, answer, make, give, drink.

Many adverbs and pronouns also belong to this layer.

It is probably of some interest to mention that at various times purists have tried to purge the English language of foreign words, replacing them with Anglo-Saxon ones. One slogan created by these linguistic nationalists was: "Avoid Latin derivatives; use brief, terse Anglo-Saxon monosyllables". The irony is that the only Anglo-Saxon word in the entire slogan is "Anglo-Saxon".

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