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The Rise Of English Language
How English has changed over time
The Rise Of English Language
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With the power that the internet has been able to retain within the last two decades, words are being introduced to the English language and added to the oxford dictionary on a yearly basis. However, there was a time where words were being borrowed from other counties as men began migrating and exploring different lands. With the increase of movement, there was also a movement of language. This movement molded certain words into different spellings and with time, shifted their definitions. In this paper, I will analyze the way words are introduced into the English language. In particular, I note the different places where certain English words have been borrowed from and how words are often named after people and/or places. I also note how certain words are introduced into the English lexicon based on the different features that the object which they represent …show more content…
With the language having a later start than many other languages, the origin of many different English words have been borrowed from different countries. Some examples of the constant borrowing of words from different languages is how words such as giraffe, harem, and algebra, which all originated from Arabic, but are extremely common to the English language. A second example of the way that words travel from each continent are the words they and them. These third person plural pronouns are taught to kids that speak English even before they enter school, but the two words did not originate from Old English. They were actually introduced to the English language from Scandinavian around the decade of 1200-1209. Then there are words such as nebulous and plethora that have a European origin from the French and Latin languages but weren’t recorded as being used in the English language until the early 20th
6 The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989) 140. All future references will appear in the text.
Although these words may have one meaning in another language, to English often their meaning changes after importation. In Bill Bryson’s book “Where words come from”, we are given five categories in which words come about. According to Bryson, words are created, words are created in error, words are changed by doing nothing, words are created by adding or subtracting something, and words are adopted. I feel that the easiest way words come about is by adoption. I think it is interesting how we can apply words from different countries into our everyday dialogue. According to Wikipedia.com, 30% of all English words have a French origin.
Words are like vessels—they are merely novel constructions of sounds empty of meaning until we fill them. They mean only what we discern in them, and nothing more. Words are only our impressions of them—imprecise, indefinite, unclear. A single word suggests infinite shades of intensity, quality, or connotation. They are variable, distinct in each era and dialect, even in each language.
One obvious reason is interaction with other languages. If one tribe of people trades with another, they will pick up specific words and phrases for trade objects,for example.
Shipley, Joseph T. The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
During the 16th century, developments in the arts, literature, medicine, science and renewed interest in classical languages, flooded the English language with new words. According to The British Library Board (2015), Cawdrey described that well-to-do gentleman decorated sentences with fancy phrases and complicated words from abroad. As a result, Cawdrey felt that by creating and publishing the ‘A Table Alphabeticall’, the English language would be better organised and help readers understand challenging
2.Guralnik, David B. Webster’s New World Dictionary. The United States of America.World Publishing Company. 1980
The objective of this term paper is to observe the etymology and the etymological borrowings from other languages. This paper will touch upon many borrowings from other languages such as Latin, Greek, French, Spanish and others. The etymology studies the origin and history of words, their form and meaning. More particularly, “the etymology of words means the origin of a particular word”. The etymology is the study about the word, word`s history, their meanings, how their meaning and form change over time. Thus, the etymology tells about the word’s origin, where it comes from, what it means in the English language and what it means in the language it originally belonged to as well as the meaning it has in both languages. Most modern English words are borrowings from other languages, especially from Latin and Greek. In my paper I have also chosen to examine the etymology of fruit names and mammals.
Many words in the English language have changed drastically over time. Some of those words have changed from meaning one thing to something similar. While other words have gone from meaning one thing to its complete opposite. The study of the history of words and their origin is referred to as etymology. It can be very insightful to learn the etymology of words. Many of the words that we use on a day to day basis have changed majorly from their original meaning. This paper focuses in on one word the word “awful.” The word “awful” has made a one hundred eighty-degree shift changing the meaning from its original meaning to the way we use it today. “Awful” is an example of a word with intriguing etymology one that would make an individual more interested in learning more about the history of English words.
There are many word in English borrowed from different languages and one of the main source of English loanword borrowed from French.
Language as a dynamic structure is exposed to constant development, transformation and alteration. Media, society, culture, science, technology and politics are the core factors that contribute towards language evolution. Due to numerous linguistic and extra linguistic factors, newly coined units in the language are in the process of entering and influencing the English language. These new units, known as neologisms, serve as our guidance in understanding the never-ending evolution in the English language. Furthermore, neologisms ease each individual’s process of coping with changes by creating mental bridges between the old and the contemporary. The English language vocabulary is facing constant change, as neologisms enter in a blink of an eye through the media. The mass media being the major source and ground on which English neologisms are coined, plays a significant role of intermediary between the English population as active consumers and the language itself.
Reiteration, as the first category of lexical cohesion, is a phenomenon in which the lexical item refers back to another item that has a connection with a general reference. It is a lexical cohesion which forms a constituent that has been mentioned. Reiteration consists of repetition, hyponymy, synonyms, and antonymy. The purpose of using these aspects of reiteration is to obtain the effect of the intensity of the meaning of language, information events, and beauty of other languages. Haliday and Hasan (1976) says that:
Reading of Chapter four in the textbook titled " Foreign Influences on Old English,” the followings are the terms that came across as interesting and necessary for the understanding of the extent of foreign influence on the old English language:
113-117. 151-195. The. English: A Linguistic Tool Kit, (2012), (U214, Worlds of English, DVD ROM), Milton Keynes, The Open University. English in the World, (2012), (U214, Worlds of English, DVD ROM), Milton Keynes, The Open University.
As each new language that is studied reveals more exciting and unanticipated linguistic features, a shift away from the dominant view of language universality is gradually taking place. Evans and Levison (2009) suggest this generative position, which has pervaded modern linguistics since Chomsky’s proposal of Universal Grammar, be replaced by the functionalist position that heralds language variation as the key to natural human language. This change is concurrent with that of another more specific view that has also restricted linguistic theory for decades, stemming from Saussure’s principle of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. Due to the dominance of study on European languages, linguists have projected their grammars onto claims about all languages, believing them all to be the same at some deep level. The study of iconicity in languages has thus been largely neglected as it was considered a marginal phenomenon in the lexicon of languages, restricted mainly to onomatopoeia. This may be the case for some spoken, Indo-European languages, but within the diversity of languages worldwide, this feature is much more widespread, deserving equal attention to arbitrariness, as a driving factor for the choice of a linguistic sign. This paper discusses the notion of iconicity, with regard to how it may support or clash with these concepts of language universals and variation.