Degree of assimilation

The degree of assimilation of borrowings depends on the following factors: a) from what group of languages the word was borrowed, if the word belongs to the same group of languages to which the borrowing language belongs it is assimilated easier, b) in what way the word is borrowed: orally or in the written form, words borrowed orally are assimilated quicker, c) how often the borrowing is used in the language, the greater the frequency of its usage, the quicker it is assimilated, d) how long the word lives in the language, the longer it lives, the more assimilated it is.

Accordingly borrowings are subdivided into: completely assimilated, partly assimilated and non-assimilated (barbarisms).

Completely assimilated loan words are found in all the layers of older borrowings. They may belong to the first layer of Latin borrowings, e. g. cheese, street, wall or wine. Among Scandinavian loan words we find such frequent nouns as husband, fellow, gate, root, wing; such verbs as call, die, take, want and adjectives like happy, ill, low, odd and wrong. Completely assimilated French words are extremely numerous and frequent: table, chair, face, figure, finish, matter etc

Completely assimilated borrowings are not felt as foreign words in the language, cf the French word «sport» and the native word «start». Completely assimilated verbs belong to regular verbs, e.g. correct -corrected. Completely assimilated nouns form their plural by means of s-inflexion, e.g. gate- gates. In completely assimilated French words the stress has been shifted from the last syllable to the last but one.

Semantic assimilation of borrowed words depends on the words existing in the borrowing language, as a rule, a borrowed word does not bring all its meanings into the borrowing language, if it is polysemantic, e.g. the Russian borrowing «sputnik» is used in English only in one of its meanings.

Partly assimilated borrowings are subdivided into the following groups:

a) borrowings non-assimilated semantically, because they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from the language of which they were borrowed

foreign clothing: mantilla, sombrero;

foreign titles and professions: shah, rajah, sheik, bei, toreador

foreign vehicles: caique (Turkish), rickshaw (Chinese);

food and drinks: pilaw (Persian), sherbet (Arabian);

foreign currency: euro (Germany), rupee (India), rouble (Russia), etc.

b) borrowings non-assimilated grammatically, e.g. nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek retain their plural forms (bacillus - bacilli, phenomenon - phenomena, datum -data, genius - genii etc.

c) borrowings non-assimilated phonetically. Here belong words with the initial sounds /v/ and /z/, e.g. voice, zero. In native words these voiced consonants are used only in the intervocal position as allophones of sounds /f/ and /s/ (loss - lose, life - live). Some Scandinavian borrowings have consonants and combinations of consonants which were not palatalized, e.g. /sk/ in the words: sky, skate, ski etc (in native words we have the palatalized sounds denoted by the digraph «sh», e.g. shirt); sounds /k/ and /g/ before front vowels are not palatalized e.g. girl, get, give, kid, kill, kettle. In native words we have palatalization, e.g. German, child.

d) borrowings can be partly assimilated graphically, e.g. in Greak borrowings «y» can be spelled in the middle of the word (symbol, synonym), «ph» denotes the sound /f/ (phoneme, morpheme), «ch» denotes the sound /k/(chemistry, chaos),«ps» denotes the sound /s/ (psychology).

Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, e.g. addio (Italian), tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme (French), gonzo (Italian) etc.

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