hus known as Anglo-Saxon words.
24 - Apart from the characteristics mentioned of the basic word stock, in contrast to borrowed words, native words have two other features:
Neutral in style. they are not stylistically specific.
Stylistically, natives words are neither formal nor informal whereas the words borrowed from French or Latin are literary and learned, thus appropiate in formal style.
Frequent in use. Native words are most frequently used in everyday speech and writing.
25 - Words taken over from foreign languages are known as borrowed words or loan words or borrowings in simple terms. It is estimated that English borrowings constitute 80 percent of the modem English vocabulary. The English language is noted for the remarkable complexity and heterogeneity of its vocabulary because of its extensive borrowings
26 - Aliens are borrowed words which have retained their original pronunciation and spelling. These words are immediately recognizable as foreign in origin.
27 - Semantic-loans. Words of this category are not borrowed with reference to the form. But their meanings are borrowed. In other words, English has borrowed a new meaning for an existing word in the language.
Chapter 2
1 - It is assumed that the world has approximately 3, 000 (some put it 5, 000 ) languages, which can be grouped into roughly 300 language families on the basis of similarities in their basic word stock and grammar.
2 - The Indo-European is one of them. It is made up of most of the languages of Europe, the Near East, and India.
3 - They accordingly fall into eight principal groups, which can be grouped into an Eastern set: Balto-Slavic , Indo-Iranian , Armenian and Albanian ; a Western set: Celtic, Italic, Hellenic, Germanic.
4 - In the Eastern set, Armenian and Albanian are each the only modern language respectively. The Balto-Slavic comprises such modern languages as Prussian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Russian.
5 - In the Indo-Iranian we have Persian. Bengali, Hindi, Romany, the last three of which are derived from the dead language Sanskrit.
6 - In the Western set, Greek is the modern language derived from Hellenic.
7 - The Germanic family consists of the four Northern European Languages: Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and Swedish, which are generally known as Scandinavian
languages. Then there is German, Dutch, Flemish and English.
languages. Then there is German, Dutch, Flemish and English.
8 - Old English (450-1150)
Anglo-Saxon as Old English. Old English has a vocabulary of about 50, 000 to 60, 000 words. It was a highly inflected language just like moderm German.
Anglo-Saxon as Old English. Old English has a vocabulary of about 50, 000 to 60, 000 words. It was a highly inflected language just like moderm German.
9 - Middle English (1150-1500)
Although there were borrowings from Latin, the influence on English was mainly Germanic.
Between 1250 and 1500 about 9000 words |
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