Borrowings from Contemporary Languages

In addition to three main sources – Greek, Latin and French, English speakers of the NE period borrowed words from many other languages. It has been estimated that even in the 17^th c. the English vocabulary contained words derived from no less than fifty foreign languages.

The main contributors to the vocabulary were Italian, Dutch, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian. A number of words were adopted from languages of other countries and continents, which came into contact with English: Persian, Chinese, Hungarian, Turkish, Malayan, Polynesian, the native languages of India and America.

Next to French, Latin and Scandinavian, English owes the greatest number of foreign words to Italian, though many of them entered the English language through French: million, florin, pistol cartridge, alarm; musical terms: aira, bass, cello, concerto, finale, piano, solo, sonata, soprano, etc.

Borrowings from Spanish came as a result of contacts with Spain in the military, commercial and political fields, due to the rivalry of England and Spain in foreign trade and colonial expansion (16-17^th. c.c .):armada, barricade, cannibal, cargo, embargo; colonial expansion: banana, canoe, chocolate, cocoa, Negro, potato, tobacco, tomato, etc.

Dutch made abundant contribution to English, particularly in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, when commercial relations between England and the Netherlands were at their peak. Dutch artisans came to England to practise their trade, and sell their goods. They specialized in wool weaving and brewing, which is reflected in the Dutch loan-words: pack, spool, hops, tub; nautical vocabulary: cruise, deck, dock, freight, skipper; painting: easel, landscape, sketches.

Loan words from German reflect the scientific and cultural achievements of Germany at different dates of the New Period: mineralogical terms: cobalt, nickel; philosophy: (18-19^th c.c.): dynamics, transcendental; kindergarten, halt, strolls, plunder, poodle, waltz. A peculiar feature of German influence on the English vocabulary in the 18-19^th c.c. was the creation of translation-loans on German model: swan-song is a literal translation of German Schwanenlied; superman was naturalized by B.Shaw as translation of Nietzsche’s Ubermensc h; class struggle as the German Klassenkampf, etc. Recent German borrowings in English are connected with WWII and other political events: blitz, bunker, fuhere, Gestapo, nazi, etc.

The Russian element in the English vocabulary is found as back as the 16^th century, when the English trade company established the first trade relations with Russia. English borrowings adopted from the 16^th till the 19^th centuries indicate articles of trade and specific features of life in Russia, observed by the English: beluga, boyar, copeck, intelligentsia, muzhik, rouble, samovar, troika, tsar, verst, vodka.

The loan-words adopted after 1917 reflect the new social relations and poltical institutions in the USSR: Bolshevik, Komsomol, Soviet, etc. Some of them are translation-loans: collective farm, Five-Year Plan, wall newspaper; other terms associated with developments in science and engineering and other areas: sputnik, cosmonaut, perestroika, glasnost, khozraschyot, etc.

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