The role of the borrowings in the English language

The names of the days of the week are further examples of loan translations. They were borrowed from Latin approximately around 400 A.D. All Germanic people, except the Gothic, used the Germanic equivalents of the Roman gods when they named the days of the week, and the names are therefore from Germanic mythology [6 P. 60]. 

The word “calque” can also stand for a “loan transfer”, which is almost the same as a loan translation, the only difference being that “at least one part is semantically different from the model” [9]. An example of such a calque is the German word “Wolkenkratzer”, which literally means “cloudscraper”. Here “cloud” is used instead of “sky”, while the word “scraper” is correspondingly translated. 

A loan creation is another form of borrowing. A loan creation is a rather complicated type of borrowing, since a word or the meaning of word is not actually borrowed. If a new word is created in a language, and there was some sort of influence from other languages, even if only to a small degree, it is called a loan creation [9]. 
 

1.5 What kinds of words are borrowed? 

Usually, words that refer to exotic ideas, concepts or objects are borrowed. An example of this is how names of animals that do not inherently come from Great Britain are often loanwords in English [12]. The name of the animal is 

borrowed from the language that is spoken in the country in which the animal originally comes from or lives in. 

When we examine loanwords in different languages we will find that most of these borrowings are nouns. Nouns, and lexical words in general, are borrowed more frequently than grammatical words. The can be explained with the fact that a major reason for borrowing lexica is to extend the referential potential of a language. Since reference is established primarily through nouns, these are the elements borrowed most easily. 

  
 

1.6 How many words are loanwords? 

As this essay has shown, a vast amount of all English words are of foreign origin. Other languages also have loanwords in their vocabulary, but many of them do not have borrowings to the high extent that English does. An explanation for this is the fact that English is “fairly free of phonetic restrictions in its syllable structure” [12]. 

Words that therefore originally come from other languages, and that are differently structured, can anyhow be easily adopted into English. 

Another reason is the fact that there has been relatively little opposition against loanwords in English. In many other European countries there has been a great deal more resistance against adopting and using words from other languages. In Germany, for example, there have been many purist periods throughout history, where language-associations have tried to 

reduce the amount of loanwords in German. This type of purism directed against loanwords is called “xenophobic purism” and has not been as successful in Great Britain [12]. There was, however, some active resistance against loanwords in English in the 19th and 20th century. Many English writers thought consciously of using Anglo-Saxon words instead of Romance words when there were two synonyms to choose from [12]. An example of this is how many of them chose to use the word “foreword”, which is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, instead of “preface”, which is a Romance word. 

There are many different studies on borrowings in the English language. Linguists havetried to find out how many borrowings there are in the English language and the corresponding percentages. Most of them come to the conclusion that the majority of English words are of foreign origin, but they do not reach the same numbers and percentages. Below are two different studies, both drawing different conclusions. 

Aronstein comes to the conclusion that 55% of all English words are borrowed from Latin and French. 35% are, according to Aronstein, native English words, while 10% are loanwords from other languages [4 P. 64]. 

In the “Shorter Oxford Dictionary”  however, only 22 % of the 80 000 entries are of native Anglo-Saxon origin, and 64% are Romance and Greek loanwords. 4% of the words have been borrowed from other Germanic languages, like Old Norse, Yiddish or High and Low German. 2% were loanwords from non-European languages, and the rest of the words, which accounted to 10%, were words that had derived from proper names or the origin was unknown [2 P. 72]. 

Many of the words, which were examined in the two studies, are, however, hardly used in daily life. It is therefore important to consider that the percentages that are shown from the two studies do not regard how often a word is used. The most common words in English are namely native English words, while a large quantity of those words that are only seldom used are loanwords. Aronstein, for example, analyzed the words that Shakespeare used in his works and came to the result that 86% of all the words he used were of Germanic origin [2 P. 11]. 

2.An investigation of the origin of the words in “God save the Queen” 

In order to examine the words in “God save the Queen”, an etymological dictionary will be needed. Such a dictionary does not explain what a certain word means, but instead it gives information on what the word meant years ago, where its origin lies and how it came into the language. In this paper we will not focus on the semantic change of the words, and neither will we look at where a word originally comes from and therefore not trace the word back to its ultimate origin. We will only focus on finding out which words are borrowings and which the Online Etymology Dictionary. 

I began the analysis by categorizing the words in their respective word classes. Grammarians and linguists are not in agreement on how many word classes there are, and how words are supposed to be classified. Some believe that there are only seven word classes while others suggest as many as 20. For this essay, I have decided to choose a categorization that only has eight word classes in order to simplify the analysis. These eight major word classes are, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, articles, and interjections. 

Someday people might be singing “God save the King” instead of “God save the Queen” when they sing their national anthem. When the British monarch is male the word “Queen” is namely exchanged for “King”, so that the song corresponds to the monarchal situation. 

It is unknown who the composer or author of the national anthem is. There have been plenty of speculations on which they could be, and people such as James Oswald, Dr. Henry Carey and Jean Baptist Lully have all been mentioned as possible candidates [12]. Today, however, approximately 200 years after the song became the national anthem, the composer and author are still unidentified. 

“ God Save the Queen” is one of the first songs to be used as a national anthem. In the beginning of the 19th century, when the song became Great Britain’s national anthem, it was uncommon for countries to have national anthems, which they used for nationalistic purposes. 

The song was first publicly sung in a theater in 1745 when the band leader decided to play it after hearing that Prince Charles Edward Stuart had defeated the army of King II at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh [18]. At this time the song was not the official national anthem, but the audience liked the performance so much, and the song became such a present [18]. 

Today there is no authorized version of the song, “as the words are a matter of tradition” [18]. Normally, only the first, but sometimes also the second verse of the song are sung, but the national anthem actually does consist of five verses. These have been added to the original first two verses over the years, and are not as famous as the first ones, since they are not sung very often. For this essay, however, all verses will be analyzed, in order to have as many words as possible for the investigation and to make the result as precise and reliable as possible [Appendix 1]. 

“God Save the Queen” consists of 92 different words. Of the 92 words, 29 belong to the group of nouns. 24 words are verbs and 17 are adjectives. Five words are adverbs, six are prepositions and three are conjunctions. Six pronouns were found and one definite article and one interjection. 

The 92 words were then analyzed regarding their origin. The outcome was approximately that what I had expected. 57 words, which accounts to 62% of all investigated words were of Old English origin. 22 words, or 24% of the words were Old French loanwords. 5.4% or five of the 92 words were loanwords from Old Norse, while 2.2% or two words were of Anglo- 

French origin. 4.4% of all words or four words had been borrowed from Latin directly, and 1% had been borrowed from Middle German. One When one examines the 57 native English words, one realizes that many of these words are fundamental and basic words in the English vocabulary. Verbs that describe very basic human actions are found in this group. Examples are the verbs “live”, ”send”, “see”, “give” and “sing”. Among these words are also the two auxiliary verbs “may” and “should”. One could draw the conclusion that words like these do not normally get borrowed from other languages, since they account for the most elementary and primary vocabulary that all languages ought to have in order to be labeled as a language. Therefore, the Anglo- Saxons did not borrow these words from the Romans, Normans or the other people they came in contact with, since they already existed in their vocabulary. 

Not only verbs, but also nouns and pronouns that describe fundamental objects, people or ideas can be found in the group of the native English words. “Brothers”, “world”,  “men” and “arm” are examples of such words. These are words that are so basic that all human languages have them as part of their vocabulary. Obviously, all human beings in the world have families and body parts and need the respective terms. 

All pronouns, except for one, that were found among the 92 words were of Old English origin. “Her”,  “us”, “thee”, “we” and “she” are all native words, and these words are also typical main words in a language. 

All three conjunctions that were found are also of Old English origin. These words are needed in a language to explain relations between sentences, and in order to make the language logical. The fact that these words are native words is not surprising, since Old English also needed conjunctions to make it a structured language. 

The six prepositions that were found are also all native English words. These words are also needed in a language in order for it to be logical and complete, since prepositions, just as conjunctions, describe the relationship between words. The Anglo-Saxons did not borrow such words, since they already had them, but also because grammatical words like these normally do not carry any prestige and are therefore not borrowed. Only if a word from another language is more prestigious or has a connotation that the native word lacks, would it be meaningful to borrow a word. 

A further distinction with the words that are of Old English origin is that they are fairly short. Most of them only have between three and five letters, while many of the loanwords have more. Native English words often only have one syllable, while many of the other words consist of more. Only seven of the 57 native words had more than one syllable. A reason for this could be that native words have obviously been a part of the language the longest, and have therefore had the most time to be changed and simplified. 

Many of the words that were examined were loanwords from Old French. 24% of all words were borrowed from this language. It is important to remember that most of these words are originally of Latin origin. More than 90% of all Old French words came from Vulgar Latin [12]. These French loanwords are verbs, 

adjectives and nouns. Not one single preposition, conjunction, pronoun, definite article or interjection was borrowed from French. This confirms, once again, the statement put forward in the theoretical part; grammatical words or function words are normally not borrowed. 

All verbs that were found in this group are weak verbs. “Save” and “fix” are two such examples. The strong verbs in English are almost always of proto Germanic origin, and are therefore native words. When one examines German, English and Swedish strong verbs, for example, it is possible to see that they all derive from the same source, due to their resemblance. 

Many of the adjectives that are of Old French origin have the ending “ous”, as in the words “gracious”, “victorious” and “glorious”. Here we can easily identify that these words are of Romance origin, since the suffix “ous” is originally from Latin [10]. 

Almost all of the 92 words that are connected to the fields of politics are French loanwords. Such examples are the words “reign”, “enemies”, “nations”,  “defend”, “prince” and the word “politics”  itself. Only the word “queen” is a native Anglo-Saxon word. All these “political” French loanwords were borrowed in the 13th and 14th Century, when Norman 

French was the administrative language on the British Isles. These words show us that French was the language that was spoken in the field of politics. 

One remarkable thing is that the name “Britain” is also a loanword from Old French. It was borrowed in the end of the 13th century, in a time when many French loanwords were adopted. Most of the Old French borrowings entered the English language in the 13th and 14th century, which makes them loanwords from the third Romance period. Only the words “politics” and “assassins”  are from the Modern Period, and it is unknown when the word “gracious”  was adopted. 

These words show us that English borrowed an enormous amount of words from French during this period, and that the words come from all different aspects of society. “Voice”,  “tricks” and “pour” are three more examples of words that were borrowed during this period. 

English has a large amount of lexica, in comparison to many other languages. This can be explained with the fact that English has borrowed a great deal of words from other languages and simultaneously kept the native vocabulary. This is a major reason why English has so many synonyms that only have small differences in connotation. 

Only two words were found that had once been borrowed directly from Norman French or Anglo French; “confound”  and “extend”. This was rather surprising, considering the vast amount of borrowings there is in English from this French dialect. One possible explanation for this is the classification system used in etymological works. The Etymology dictionary most likely states that a word is an Old French borrowing when a word is identical in Norman French and Old French. Only when a word is distinctively Norman French does the dictionary label it as such Lockwood [6 P. 79], for example, uses the term Old French when the dialects Norman French and Central French are “not tangibly distinguished”. 

Altogether, the French loanwords made up 26.2%, which means that slightly more than one out of four words were of French origin. This is a rather large percentage, in comparison to how many French loanwords were found in Shakespeare’s works. This could be explained with the fact that “God Save the Queen” is a political anthem, and therefore many of the words are in one way or the other connected to politics. As we saw in the theoretical part, politics is one of those fields, in which a great deal of words were borrowed during the third Roman period, so this has probably played a role in the outcome of the analysis. 

Five words were found that were borrowed from Old Norse. “Happy”, “them”, “gifts”,  “laws” and “their” all have their origin in the North Germanic language. The fact that the pronoun “them” managed to enter the English language shows us the profound influence that Old Norse must have had on English. It is unusual that pronouns and grammatical words are borrowed, and only when the “lending” language community was powerful and there was much contact between the groups could this be possible. The fact that Old Norse and Old English were fairly similar languages is also a reason for the large amount of borrowings from Old Norse [2 P. 18]. The languages, most likely, mixed into each other and this made it easier to borrow loanwords. The five words that were borrowed from Old Norse entered the English language approximately 200 to 400 years after the first Scandinavian settlements in Great Britain in the 10th century. This gives us a picture of how long time it may take before words are adopted from one language to another. Of the five native Old Norse words, two are adjectives, two are nouns and one is a pronoun. 

The word “law” also revels to us in what fields the Scandinavians were powerful. In year 878 A.D., the Danish legal system was introduced in the northern parts of the country, and consequently some legal terminology was borrowed [2 P.17]. The word “law” is one example. 

The word “gift” which is also an Old Norse borrowing and therefore also of Germanic origin exists beside its synonym “present” in the English vocabulary today. This word, on the other hand, is of Romance origin, and was borrowed from Old French around 1225 A.D. This is one example of two synonyms in English that have both been borrowed, and that do not 

have a native equivalent. 

Four Latin loanwords were found among the 92 examined words. “Frustrate”, “cause”, “family”, and “latent”. All the Latin words that were found were adopted between the 13th century and the 15th century. These words were borrowed during a period when the English adopted a considerable amount of Latin words. People were reading a lot of literature in Latin, and a reason for this could be that William Caxton had recently brought the book printing to England, which made the books a lot cheaper and more available to more people. 

A further reason is that the Renaissance and the interest in classical texts had just begun in Europe. 
 

Conclusion 

The results confirm that English is a very open language with regards to its acceptance to adopt foreign words into its vocabulary. There has been little resistance against loanwords in Great Britain in comparison to many other European countries. In Great Britain, purist groups, whose ultimate goal is to make a language free of foreign influences, were never as successful as in Germany for example [19]. As a consequence, the English have borrowed words from all kinds of people that they have come in contact with over the years. The Romance languages have had the longest and deepest impact on the English language and both Latin and French have played a major role in “lending” words to English. 

The people that spoke these Romance languages were not only powerful people abroad, but many of them also lived in the British Isles. There was, in other words, direct contact between the English and the people from whom they borrowed lexica, and this direct contact, which was also of long duration, resulted in this vast borrowing. Great Britain’s history is hence a major reason why a large amount of English words are of foreign origin. 

The words in “God Save the Queen”  proved not to be any different than the words in general in the English vocabulary. Many of them had once been borrowed from other languages, but the majority was native English words. The results coincide with the percentages shown in the theoretical part of the essay. There we could see that linguists come to the conclusion that the majority of words in a dictionary are of foreign origin. When the most commonly used words are analyzed, however, we saw that most of them were native English words. The words in “God Save the Queen” are all fairly common words, and therefore the majority was of Anglo-Saxon origin. 

This paper has showed that linguistic borrowing is an old way of acquiring new vocabulary, and not a new phenomenon of our globalized world. People of different cultures have always interacted with each other, and there has always been an exchange of lexica due to this interaction. Loanwords enrich a language, since the vocabulary gets larger and each word therefore acquires a more specific and subtle meaning and this should be kept in mind before one simply criticizes and dismisses borrowings. 
 

List of the literature 

1. Apologising in British English; M. Deutschmann, Sweden, Umeå University: 2003 - 262 p.

5. English as a Global Language; D. Crystal, Cambridge University Press: 1997 - 229 p.

6. Languages of the British Isles past and present; W. B. Lockwood, London: 1999 - 262 p.

7. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology;  C. T. Onions,  Oxford University Press: 2004 - 1042 p.