What is the oldest english word in the english language

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What did the first words sound like? Did cavemen grunt like they do in cartoons and movies? Did they say, “me, man, you, woman”? Weeellllll, humans have been speaking for more than 50,000 years (some estimates say 150,000 years), so we really don’t know what they sounded like. Evidence of written language dates back only 4,000 years.

But if we want a clue as to how the building blocks of language developed, we can take a look at the oldest identified words. And that’s just what researchers at the University of Cambridge did when they studied 23 words in an extremely ancient language believed to have been spoken around the Black Sea area. These words gave rise to an extensive language family, Indo-European, which includes everything from Sanskrit to Latin to Russian to Irish to, yes, English.

Researchers found the meaning of these early words hadn’t changed much over thousands of years, showing how truly durable they are. Just think, you could show up to a Paleolithic barbecue some 15,000 years ago and actually talk to your ancestors!

What’s the first word you’d need to introduce yourself? How about I, the ultimate pronoun? This first-person singular personal pronoun develops from the Old English ic and ih. Humans have always needed a way to refer to themselves (as opposed to their mother, brother, husband, child). Self-identity was and always will be important. It would make sense that some of the most basic, nuts-and-bolt words are very old. 

Read on to learn which other English words link back to the oldest words we know.

The English language was first spoken in early medieval England around 1400 years ago. This gradually gave rise to today’s ‘Modern English’ which became the dominant form by the 1550s. Today I discovered some of the earliest English words that are still in common usage today.

According to a 2009 study by researchers at Reading University, the oldest words in the English language include “I”, “we”, “who”, “two” and “three”, all of which date back tens of thousands of years. The discovery was made by tracking the divergence of ancestral words into different languages (including English) with an IBM supercomputer.

“You type in a date in the past or in the future and it will give you a list of words that would have changed going back in time or will change going into the future,” explained Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University. “From that list you can derive a phrasebook of words you could use if you tried to show up and talk to, for example, William the Conqueror.”

In an unrelated study, the linguistic boffins at Dictionary.com revealed the oldest words in their online dictionary, although these only go back to 900AD or so. They include “love”, “black” (which predates “white” by a significant margin), “mother”, “give”, “man/woman”, “fire”, “hand”, “hear”, “pull”, “spit” and “worm”.

Interestingly, “old” itself is one of the oldest words in the English language. As Dictionary.com explains:

The ageing process is a fact of life. And, an old person is a vital member of a community for their wisdom and experience. People picked up on the ageing process pretty early on (before the year 900) in order to describe the elders who they relied upon for advice.

You can check out the full list of ancient words here.

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Oldest known word in the English language?

Modern English is made up of words with origins in Latin, Greek, Old English (Germanic), French, Dutch, modern German and many other sources.The oldest surviving elements in modern English are probably the pre-Roman Celtic British words and place-names, belonging to the Brythonic language. Since there is more than one such word, no individual word can be selected as the «oldest». Examples are Avon, Dover, Britain, Kent, Severn, Thanet, Thames, York, tor, combe.However, the fact is that almost every word in Englishcan be traced back to the Sanskrit language and beyond, since all the languages I mentioned above are Indo-European languages derived from extremely ancient languages in northern India; in that sense all English words have the same age, no matter by what route they came down through history.

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages (and, possibly, British Latin) that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.

After the Norman conquest in 1066, Old English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman (also known as Anglo-Norman French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English or Anglo-Saxon era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English. The conquering Normans spoke a Romance langue d’oïl called Old Norman, which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords entered the local language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system and the government. As Normans are descendants of Vikings who invaded France, Norman French was influenced by Old Norse, and many Norse loanwords in English came directly from French. Middle English was spoken to the late 15th century. The system of orthography that was established during the Middle English period is largely still in use today. Later changes in pronunciation, however, combined with the adoption of various foreign spellings, mean that the spelling of modern English words appears highly irregular.

Early Modern English – the language used by William Shakespeare – is dated from around 1500. It incorporated many Renaissance-era loans from Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as borrowings from other European languages, including French, German and Dutch. Significant pronunciation changes in this period included the Great Vowel Shift, which affected the qualities of most long vowels. Modern English proper, similar in most respects to that spoken today^{[citation needed]}, was in place by the late 17th century.

English as we know it today came to be exported to other parts of the world through British colonisation, and is now the dominant language in Britain and Ireland, the United States and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many smaller former colonies, as well as being widely spoken in India, parts of Africa, and elsewhere. Partially due to influence of the United States and its globalized efforts of commerce and technology, English took on the status of a global lingua franca in the second half of the 20th century. This is especially true in Europe, where English has largely taken over the former roles of French and (much earlier) Latin as a common language used to conduct business and diplomacy, share scientific and technological information, and otherwise communicate across national boundaries. The efforts of English-speaking Christian missionaries have resulted in English becoming a second language for many other groups.^[1][2]

Global variation among different English dialects and accents remains significant today.

Proto-English[edit]

English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire, most of the Germanic-inhabited area (Germania) remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within the empire. Some Germanics served in the Roman military, and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri, Batavi, Menapii and Frisii served in Britain (Britannia) under Roman command. Germanic settlement and power expanded during the Migration Period, which saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire. A Germanic settlement of Britain took place from the 5th to the 7th century, following the end of Roman rule on the island. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that around the year 449 Vortigern, king of the Britons, invited the «Angle kin» (Angles allegedly led by the Germanic brothers Hengist and Horsa) to help repel invading Picts, in return for lands in the southeast of Britain. This led to waves of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy. (The Chronicle was not a contemporaneous work, however, and cannot be regarded as an accurate record of such early events.)^[3] Bede, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History in AD 731, writes of invasion by Angles, Saxons and Jutes, although the precise nature of the invasion and settlement and the contributions made by these particular groups are the subject of much dispute among historians.^[4]

The languages spoken by the Germanic peoples who initially settled in Britain were part of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family. They consisted of dialects from the Ingvaeonic grouping, spoken mainly around the North Sea coast, in regions that lie within modern Denmark, north-west Germany and the Netherlands. Due to specific similarities between early English and Old Frisian, an Anglo-Frisian grouping is also identified, although it does not represent a node in the family tree.^[5]

These dialects had most of the typical West Germanic features, including a significant amount of grammatical inflection. Vocabulary came largely from the core Germanic stock, although due to the Germanic peoples’ extensive contacts with the Roman world, the settlers’ languages already included a number of loanwords from Latin.^[6] For instance, the predecessor of Modern English wine had been borrowed into early Germanic from the Latin vinum.

Old English[edit]

The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different dialects, which would develop into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon. It displaced the indigenous Brittonic Celtic (and the Latin of the former Roman rulers) in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England, while Celtic languages remained in most of Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, and many compound Celtic-Germanic place names survive, hinting at early language mixing.^[7] Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern English.^[8] The four main dialects were Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon; the last of these formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from Mercian.

Old English was first written using a runic script called the futhorc, but this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish missionaries in the 8th century. Most literary output was in either the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great’s time, or the Late West Saxon (regarded as the «classical» form of Old English) of the Winchester school inspired by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester and followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham («the Grammarian»). The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf, composed by an unknown poet.

The introduction of Christianity from around the year 600 encouraged the addition of over 400 Latin loan words into Old English, such as the predecessors of the modern priest, paper, and school, and a smaller number of Greek loan words.^[9] The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was also subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century (see below).

Most native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots.^[10] The grammar of Old English was much more inflected than modern English, combined with freer word order, and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern German. The language had demonstrative pronouns (equivalent to this and that) but did not have the definite article the. The Old English period is considered to have evolved into the Middle English period some time after the Norman conquest of 1066, when the language came to be influenced significantly by the new ruling class’s language, Old Norman.^[11][12]

Scandinavian influence[edit]

Vikings from modern-day Norway and Denmark began to raid parts of Britain from the late 8th century onward. In 865, however, a major invasion was launched by what the Anglo-Saxons called the Great Heathen Army, which eventually brought large parts of northern and eastern England (the Danelaw) under Scandinavian control. Most of these areas were retaken by the English under Edward the Elder in the early 10th century, although York and Northumbria were not permanently regained until the death of Eric Bloodaxe in 954. Scandinavian raids resumed in the late 10th century during the reign of Æthelred the Unready, and Sweyn Forkbeard eventually succeeded in briefly being declared king of England in 1013, followed by the longer reign of his son Cnut from 1016 to 1035, and Cnut’s sons Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut until 1042.

The Scandinavians, or Norsemen, spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse. The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more divergent. It is likely that significant numbers of Norse speakers settled in the Danelaw during the period of Scandinavian control. Many place-names in those areas are of Scandinavian provenance (those ending in -by, for example); it is believed that the settlers often established new communities in places that had not previously been developed by the Anglo-Saxons. The extensive contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers, including the possibility of intermarriage that resulted from the acceptance of Christianity by the Danes in 878,^[13] undoubtedly influenced the varieties of those languages spoken in the areas of contact. Some scholars even believe that Old English and Old Norse underwent a kind of fusion and that the resulting English language might be described as a mixed language or creole. During the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the first half of the 11th century, a kind of diglossia may have come about, with the West Saxon literary language existing alongside the Norse-influenced Midland dialect of English, which could have served as a koine or spoken lingua franca. When Danish rule ended, and particularly after the Norman Conquest, the status of the minority Norse language presumably declined relative to that of English, and its remaining speakers assimilated to English in a process involving language shift and language death. The widespread bilingualism that must have existed during the process possibly contributed to the rate of borrowings from Norse into English.^[14]

Only about 100 or 150 Norse words, mainly connected with government and administration, are found in Old English writing. The borrowing of words of this type was stimulated by Scandinavian rule in the Danelaw and during the later reign of Cnut. However, most surviving Old English texts are based on the West Saxon standard that developed outside the Danelaw; it is not clear to what extent Norse influenced the forms of the language spoken in eastern and northern England at that time. Later texts from the Middle English era, now based on an eastern Midland rather than a Wessex standard, reflect the significant impact that Norse had on the language. In all, English borrowed about 2000 words from Old Norse, several hundred surviving in Modern English.^[14]

Norse borrowings include many very common words, such as anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, window, and even the pronoun they. Norse influence is also believed to have reinforced the adoption of the plural copular verb form are rather than alternative Old English forms like sind. It is also considered to have stimulated and accelerated the morphological simplification found in Middle English, such as the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case (except in pronouns).^[15] That is possibly confirmed by observations that simplification of the case endings occurred earliest in the north and latest in the southwest. The spread of phrasal verbs in English is another grammatical development to which Norse may have contributed (although here a possible Celtic influence is also noted).^[14]

Some scholars have claimed that Old English died out entirely and was replaced by Norse towards the end of the Old English period and as part of the transition to Middle English, by virtue of the Middle English syntax being much more akin to Norse than Old English.^[16] Other scholars reject this claim.^[17]

Middle English[edit]

Middle English is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the end of the 15th century.

For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman, a variety of Old Norman, originating from a northern langue d’oïl dialect. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman, and later Anglo-French (see characteristics of the Anglo-Norman language).

Until the 14th century, Anglo-Norman and then French were the language of the courts and government. Even after the decline of Norman, standard French retained the status of a formal or prestige language, and about 10,000 French (and Norman) loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food^[18] (see English language word origins and List of English words of French origin). The strong influence of Old Norse on English (described in the previous section) also becomes apparent during this period. The impact of the native British Celtic languages that English continued to displace is generally held to be very small, although a few scholars have attributed some grammatical forms, such as periphrastic «do», to Celtic influence.^[19][20] These theories have been criticized by a number of other linguists.^[21][22][23] Some scholars have also put forward hypotheses that Middle English was a kind of creole language resulting from contact between Old English and either Old Norse or Anglo-Norman.

English literature began to reappear after 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford, released in 1258, was the first English government document to be published in the English language after the Norman Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English. The Pleading in English Act 1362 made English the only language in which court proceedings could be held, though the official record remained in Latin.^[24] By the end of the century, even the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be a living language. Official documents began to be produced regularly in English during the 15th century. Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived in the late 14th century, is the most famous writer from the Middle English period, and The Canterbury Tales is his best-known work.

The English language changed enormously during the Middle English period, in vocabulary, in pronunciation, and in grammar. While Old English is a heavily inflected language (synthetic), the use of grammatical endings diminished in Middle English (analytic). Grammar distinctions were lost as many noun and adjective endings were levelled to -e. The older plural noun marker -en (retained in a few cases such as children and oxen) largely gave way to -s, and grammatical gender was discarded. Definite article þe appears around 1200, later spelled as the, first appearing in East and North England as a substitute for Old English se and seo, nominative forms of «that.»^[25]

English spelling was also influenced by Norman in this period, with the /θ/ and /ð/ sounds being spelled th rather than with the Old English letters þ (thorn) and ð (eth), which did not exist in Norman. These letters remain in the modern Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, having been borrowed from Old English via Old West Norse.

Early Modern English[edit]

English underwent extensive sound changes during the 15th century, while its spelling conventions remained largely constant. Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift, which took place mainly during the 15th century. The language was further transformed by the spread of a standardized London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardizing effect of printing, which also tended to regularize capitalization. As a result, the language acquired self-conscious terms such as «accent» and «dialect».^[26] As most early presses came from continental Europe, a few native English letters such as þ and ð died out; for some time þe (modern «the») was written as ye. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid 16th — early 17th century),^[27] the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. In 1604, the first English dictionary was published, A Table Alphabeticall.

Increased literacy and travel facilitated the adoption of many foreign words, especially borrowings from Latin and Greek, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English.^[28] In the 17th century, Latin words were often used with their original inflections, but these eventually disappeared. As there are many words from different languages and English spelling is variable, the risk of mispronunciation is high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects, most notably in the West Country. During the period, loan words were borrowed from Italian, German, and Yiddish. British acceptance of and resistance to Americanisms began during this period.^[29]

Modern English[edit]

The first authoritative and full-featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of the English Language, was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary standardized both English spelling and word usage. Meanwhile, grammar texts by Lowth, Murray, Priestly, and others attempted to prescribe standard usage even further.

Early Modern English and Late Modern English, also called Present-Day English (PDE), differ essentially in vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from the Industrial Revolution and technologies that created a need for new words, as well as international development of the language. The British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the Earth’s land surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries. British English and North American English, the two major varieties of the language, are together spoken by 400 million people. The total number of English speakers worldwide may exceed one billion.^[30] The English language will almost certainly continue to evolve over time. With the development of computer and online environments (such as chat rooms, social media expressions, and apps), and the adoption of English as a worldwide lingua franca across cultures, customs, and traditions, it should not be surprising to see further shortening of words, phrases, and/or sentences.

Phonological changes[edit]

Introduction[edit]

Over the last 1,200 years or so, English has undergone extensive changes in its vowel system, but many fewer changes to its consonants.

In the Old English period, a number of umlaut processes affected vowels in complex ways, and unstressed vowels were gradually eroded, eventually leading to a loss of grammatical case and grammatical gender in the Early Middle English period. The most important umlaut process was *i-mutation (c. 500 CE), which led to pervasive alternations of all sorts, many of which survive in the modern language: e.g. in noun paradigms (foot vs. feet, mouse vs. mice, brother vs. brethren); in verb paradigms (sold vs. sell); nominal derivatives from adjectives («strong» vs. «strength», broad vs. breadth, foul vs. filth) and from other nouns (fox vs. «vixen»); verbal derivatives («food» vs. «to feed»); and comparative adjectives («old» vs. «elder»). Consonants were more stable, although velar consonants were significantly modified by palatalization, which produced alternations such as speak vs. speech, drink vs. drench, wake vs. watch, bake vs. batch.

The Middle English period saw further vowel changes. Most significant was the Great Vowel Shift (c. 1500 CE), which transformed the pronunciation of all long vowels. This occurred after the spelling system was fixed, and accounts for the drastic differences in pronunciation between «short» mat, met, bit, cot vs. «long» mate, mete/meet, bite, coat. Other changes that left echoes in the modern language were homorganic lengthening before ld, mb, nd, which accounts for the long vowels in child, mind, climb, etc.; pre-cluster shortening, which resulted in the vowel alternations in child vs. children, keep vs. kept, meet vs. met; and trisyllabic laxing, which is responsible for alternations such as grateful vs. gratitude, divine vs. divinity, sole vs. solitary.

Among the more significant recent changes to the language have been the development of rhotic and non-rhotic accents (i.e. «r-dropping»); the trap-bath split in many dialects of British English; and flapping of t and d between vowels in American English and Australian English.

Vowel changes[edit]

The following table shows the principal developments in the stressed vowels, from Old English through Modern English (C indicates any consonant):

Old English (c. 900 AD)	Middle English (c. 1400 AD)	Early Modern English (c. 1600 AD)	Modern English	Modern spelling	Examples
ɑː	ɔː	oː	oʊ əʊ (UK)	oa, oCe	oak, boat, whole, stone
æː, æːɑ	ɛː	eː	iː	ea	heal, beat, cheap
eː, eːo	eː	iː	ee, -e	feed, deep, me, be
iː, yː	iː	əi or ɛi	aɪ	iCe	ride, time, mice
oː	oː	uː	uː	oo, -o	moon, food, do
uː	uː	əu or ɔu	aʊ	ou	mouse, out, loud
ɑ, æ, æɑ	a	æ	æ	a	man, sat, wax
aː	ɛː	eɪ	aCe	name, bake, raven
e, eo	e	ɛ	ɛ	e	help, tell, seven
ɛː	eː	iː	ea, eCe	speak, meat, mete
i, y	ɪ	ɪ	ɪ	i	written, sit, kiss
o	o	ɔ	ɒ ɑ (US)	o	god, top, beyond
ɔː	oː	oʊ əʊ (UK)	oa, oCe	foal, nose, over
u	ʊ	ɤ	ʌ	u, o	buck, up, love, wonder
ʊ	ʊ	full, bull

The following chart shows the primary developments of English vowels in the last 600 years, in more detail, since Late Middle English of Chaucer’s time. The Great Vowel Shift can be seen in the dramatic developments from c. 1400 to 1600.

Neither of the above tables covers the history of Middle English diphthongs, the changes before /r/, or various special cases and exceptions. For details, see phonological history of English as well as the articles on Old English phonology and Middle English phonology/.

Examples[edit]

The vowel changes over time can be seen in the following example words, showing the changes in their form over the last 2,000 years:

	one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	mother	heart	hear
Proto-Germanic, c. AD 1	ainaz	twai	θriːz	feðwoːr	fimf	sehs	seβun	moːðeːr	hertoːː	hauzijanã
West Germanic, c. AD 400	ain	θriju	fewwur	moːdar	herta	haurijan
Late Old English, c. AD 900	aːn	twaː	θreo	feowor	fiːf	siks	sĕŏvon	moːdor	hĕŏrte	heːran, hyːran
(Late Old English spelling)	(ān)	(twā)	(þrēo)	(fēowor)	(fīf)	(six)	(seofon)	(mōdor)	(heorte)	(hēran, hȳran)
Late Middle English, c. 1350	ɔːn	twoː	θreː	fowər	fiːvə	siks	sevən	moːðər	hertə	hɛːrə(n)
(Late Middle English spelling)	(oon)	(two)	(three)	(fower)	(five)	(six)	(seven)	(mother)	(herte)	(heere(n))
Early Modern English, c. 1600	oːn >! wʊn	twuː > tuː	θriː	foːr	fəiv	siks	sevən	mʊðər	hert	heːr
Modern English, c. 2000	wʌn	tuː	fɔː(r)	faiv	sɪks	mʌðə(r)	hɑrt/hɑːt	hiːr/hiə
	one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	mother	heart	hear

Grammatical changes[edit]

The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, Greek, modern German and Icelandic. Old English distinguished among the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases, and for strongly declined adjectives and some pronouns also a separate instrumental case (which otherwise and later completely coincided with the dative). In addition, the dual number was distinguished from the singular and plural.^[31]
Declension was greatly simplified during the Middle English period, when the accusative and dative cases of the pronouns merged into a single oblique case that also replaced the genitive case after prepositions. Nouns in Modern English no longer decline for case, except for the genitive.

Evolution of English pronouns[edit]

Pronouns such as whom and him (contrasted with who and he), are a conflation of the old accusative and dative cases, as well as of the genitive case after prepositions (while her also includes the genitive case). This conflated form is called the oblique case or the object (objective) case, because it is used for objects of verbs (direct, indirect, or oblique) as well as for objects of prepositions. (See object pronoun.) The information formerly conveyed by distinct case forms is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order. In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, these cases had distinct forms.

Although some grammarians continue to use the traditional terms «accusative» and «dative», these are functions rather than morphological cases in Modern English. That is, the form whom may play accusative or dative roles (as well as instrumental or prepositional roles), but it is a single morphological form, contrasting with nominative who and genitive whose. Many grammarians use the labels «subjective», «objective», and «possessive» for nominative, oblique, and genitive pronouns.

Modern English nouns exhibit only one inflection of the reference form: the possessive case, which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic (see the entry for genitive case for more information).

Interrogative pronouns[edit]

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Masculine, feminine (person)	Nominative	hwā	who	who
Accusative	hwone, hwæne	whom	whom, who1
Dative	hwām, hwǣm
Instrumental
Genitive	hwæs	whos	whose
Neuter (thing)	Nominative	hwæt	what	what
Accusative	hwæt	what, whom
Dative	hwām, hwǣm
Instrumental	hwȳ, hwon	why	why2
Genitive	hwæs	whos	whose3

¹ — In some dialects «who» is used where formal English only allows «whom», though variation among dialects must be taken into account.

² — An explanation may be found in the last paragraph of this section of Instrumental case.

³ — Usually replaced by of what (postpositioned).

First person personal pronouns[edit]

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Singular	Nominative	iċ	I, ich, ik	I
Accusative	mē, meċ	me	me
Dative	mē
Genitive	mīn	min, mi	my, mine
Plural	Nominative	wē	we	we1
Accusative	ūs, ūsiċ	us	us
Dative	ūs
Genitive	ūser, ūre	ure, our	our, ours

¹ — Old English also had a separate dual, wit («we two») etcetera; however, no later forms derive from it.

Second person personal pronouns[edit]

Old and Middle English singular to the Modern English archaic informal

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Singular	Nominative	þū	þu, thou	thou (you)
Accusative	þē, þeċ	þé, thee	thee (you)
Dative	þē
Genitive	þīn	þi, þīn, þīne, thy; thin, thine	thy, thine (your, yours)
Plural	Nominative	ġē	ye, ȝe, you	you1
Accusative	ēow, ēowiċ	you, ya
Dative	ēow
Genitive	ēower	your	your, yours

¹ — Note that the ye/you distinction still existed, at least optionally, in Early Modern English: «Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free» from the King James Bible.

Here the letter þ (interchangeable with ð in manuscripts) corresponds to th. For ȝ, see Yogh.

Formal and informal forms of the second person singular and plural

	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Case	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal	Formal	Informal
Nominative	þū	ġē1	you	thou	you	ye	you
Accusative	þē, þeċ	ēow, ēowiċ	thee	you
Dative	þē	ēow
Genitive	þīn	ēower	your, yours	thy, thine	your, yours	your, yours

¹ — (Old English also had a separate dual, ġit («ye two») etcetera; however, no later forms derive from it.)

Third person personal pronouns[edit]

	Case	Old English	Middle English	Modern English
Masculine singular	Nominative	hē	he	he
Accusative	hine	him	him
Dative	him
Genitive	his	his	his
Feminine singular	Nominative	hēo	heo, sche, ho, he, ȝho	she
Accusative	hīe	hire, hure, her, heore	her
Dative	hire
Genitive	hir, hire, heore, her, here	her, hers
Neuter singular	Nominative	hit	hit, it	it, they
Accusative	hit, it, him	it, them
Dative	him
Genitive	his	his	its, their
Plural1	Nominative	hīe	he, hi, ho, hie, þai, þei	they
Accusative	hem, ham, heom, þaim, þem, þam	them
Dative	him
Genitive	hira	here, heore, hore, þair, þar	their, theirs

¹ — The origin of the modern forms is generally thought to have been a borrowing from Old Norse forms þæir, þæim, þæira. The two different roots co-existed for some time, although currently the only common remnant is the shortened form ’em. Cf. also the demonstrative pronouns.

Examples[edit]

Beowulf[edit]

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in alliterative verse. It is dated from the 8th to the early 11th centuries. These are the first 11 lines:

Hwæt! Wē Gār-Dena	in geārdagum,
þēodcyninga	þrym gefrūnon,
hū ðā æþelingas	ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scēfing	sceaþena þrēatum,
monegum mǣgþum,	meodosetla oftēah,
egsode eorlas.	Syððan ǣrest wearð
fēasceaft funden,	hē þæs frōfre gebād,
wēox under wolcnum,	weorðmyndum þāh,
oðþæt him ǣghwylc	þāra ymbsittendra
ofer hronrāde	hȳran scolde,
gomban gyldan.	Þæt wæs gōd cyning!

Which, as translated by Francis Barton Gummere, reads:

Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!

Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan[edit]

This is the beginning of The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, a prose text in Old English dated to the late 9th century. The full text can be found at Wikisource.

Ōhthere sǣde his hlāforde, Ælfrēde cyninge, ðæt hē ealra Norðmonna norþmest būde. Hē cwæð þæt hē būde on þǣm lande norþweardum wiþ þā Westsǣ. Hē sǣde þēah þæt þæt land sīe swīþe lang norþ þonan; ac hit is eal wēste, būton on fēawum stōwum styccemǣlum wīciað Finnas, on huntoðe on wintra, ond on sumera on fiscaþe be þǣre sǣ. Hē sǣde þæt hē æt sumum cirre wolde fandian hū longe þæt land norþryhte lǣge, oþþe hwæðer ǣnig mon be norðan þǣm wēstenne būde. Þā fōr hē norþryhte be þǣm lande: lēt him ealne weg þæt wēste land on ðæt stēorbord, ond þā wīdsǣ on ðæt bæcbord þrīe dagas. Þā wæs hē swā feor norþ swā þā hwælhuntan firrest faraþ. Þā fōr hē þā giet norþryhte swā feor swā hē meahte on þǣm ōþrum þrīm dagum gesiglau. Þā bēag þæt land, þǣr ēastryhte, oþþe sēo sǣ in on ðæt lond, hē nysse hwæðer, būton hē wisse ðæt hē ðǣr bād westanwindes ond hwōn norþan, ond siglde ðā ēast be lande swā swā hē meahte on fēower dagum gesiglan. Þā sceolde hē ðǣr bīdan ryhtnorþanwindes, for ðǣm þæt land bēag þǣr sūþryhte, oþþe sēo sǣ in on ðæt land, hē nysse hwæþer. Þā siglde hē þonan sūðryhte be lande swā swā hē meahte on fīf dagum gesiglan. Ðā læg þǣr ān micel ēa ūp on þæt land. Ðā cirdon hīe ūp in on ðā ēa for þǣm hīe ne dorston forþ bī þǣre ēa siglan for unfriþe; for þǣm ðæt land wæs eall gebūn on ōþre healfe þǣre ēas. Ne mētte hē ǣr nān gebūn land, siþþan hē from his āgnum hām fōr; ac him wæs ealne weg wēste land on þæt stēorbord, būtan fiscerum ond fugelerum ond huntum, ond þæt wǣron eall Finnas; ond him wæs āwīdsǣ on þæt bæcbord. Þā Boermas heafdon sīþe wel gebūd hira land: ac hīe ne dorston þǣr on cuman. Ac þāra Terfinna land wæs eal wēste, būton ðǣr huntan gewīcodon, oþþe fisceras, oþþe fugeleras.

A translation:

Ohthere said to his lord, King Alfred, that he of all Norsemen lived north-most. He quoth that he lived in the land northward along the North Sea. He said though that the land was very long from there, but it is all wasteland, except that in a few places here and there Finns [i.e. Sami] encamp, hunting in winter and in summer fishing by the sea. He said that at some time he wanted to find out how long the land lay northward or whether any man lived north of the wasteland. Then he traveled north by the land. All the way he kept the waste land on his starboard and the wide sea on his port three days. Then he was as far north as whale hunters furthest travel. Then he traveled still north as far as he might sail in another three days. Then the land bowed east (or the sea into the land — he did not know which). But he knew that he waited there for west winds (and somewhat north), and sailed east by the land so as he might sail in four days. Then he had to wait for due-north winds, because the land bowed south (or the sea into the land — he did not know which). Then he sailed from there south by the land so as he might sail in five days. Then a large river lay there up into the land. Then they turned up into the river, because they dared not sail forth past the river for hostility, because the land was all settled on the other side of the river. He had not encountered earlier any settled land since he travelled from his own home, but all the way waste land was on his starboard (except fishers, fowlers and hunters, who were all Finns). And the wide sea was always on his port. The Bjarmians have cultivated their land very well, but they did not dare go in there. But the Terfinn’s land was all waste except where hunters encamped, or fishers or fowlers.^[32]

Ayenbite of Inwyt[edit]

From Ayenbite of Inwyt («the prick of conscience»), a translation of a French confessional prose work into the Kentish dialect of Middle English, completed in 1340:^[33]

Nou wille þet ye hou is
þet þis boc is Engliss of Kent.
Þis boc is vor men
Vor vader and vor moder and vor oþer
vor to vram alle manyere
þet ine ne no voul .
‘ ase god’ in his name ,
Þet þis boc made god him þet bread,
Of angles of hevene, and þerto his ,
And his þet he is . Amen.

The Canterbury Tales[edit]

The beginning of The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in poetry and prose written in the London dialect of Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century:^[34]

Whan that Aprill with his shoures
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in
Of which vertu engendred is the ;
Whan Zephirus with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the his half cours ,
And smale maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open
(So in ),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge ,
To , in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they ,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That whan that they were .

Paradise Lost[edit]

The beginning of Paradise Lost, an epic poem in unrhymed iambic pentameter written in Early Modern English by John Milton and first published in 1667:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

Oliver Twist[edit]

A selection from the novel Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens in Modern English and published in 1838:

The evening arrived: the boys took their places; the master in his cook’s uniform stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out, and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared, the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver, while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity—

«Please, sir, I want some more.»

The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder, and the boys with fear.

«What!» said the master at length, in a faint voice.

«Please, sir,» replied Oliver, «I want some more.»

The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

See also[edit]

• Influence of French on English
• Phonological history of the English language
• Comparison of American and British English
• English phonology
• English studies
• Inkhorn debate
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• Middle English creole hypothesis
• Middle English declension
• History of the Scots language
• Changes to Old English vocabulary

Lists:

• List of dialects of the English language
• List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents
• Lists of English words of international origin

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Bill Bryson (1990). The Mother Tongue — English And How It Got That Way. William Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0380715435.
• David Crystal (2013). The Story of English in 100 Words. Picador. ISBN 978-1250024206.
• David Crystal (2015). Wordsmiths and Warriors: The English-Language Tourist’s Guide to Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198729136.
• John McWhorter (2017). Words on the Move: Why English Won’t — and Can’t — Sit Still (Like, Literally). Picador. ISBN 978-1250143785.
• Hejná, Míša & Walkden, George. 2022. A history of English. (Textbooks in Language Sciences 9). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6560337 . A history of English. Open Access.

External links[edit]

• The History of English Podcast
• The Spread of English Language (video)
• Penn Corpora of Historical English
• Scandinavian loans in Old and Middle English, and their legacy in the dialects of England and modern standard English

1. LECTURE 3 THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH WORDS www.philology.bsu.by/кафедры/кафедра английского языкознания/учебные материалы/кафедра английского языкознания/папки препода

LEXICOLOGY COURSE
LECTURE 3
THE ORIGIN OF ENGLISH
WORDS
www.philology.bsu.by/кафедры/кафедра английского
языкознания/учебные материалы/кафедра английского
языкознания/папки преподавателей/Толстоухова В.Ф.

2. The questions under consideration

1. The historical circumstances which stimulate the
borrowing process
2. Native Words
3. Borrowings
3.1. The earliest group of English borrowings
3.2. Celtic borrowings. The fifth century A.D.
3.3. The period of Cristianization. The seventh century
A.D.
3.4. The characteristic features of Scandinavian
borrowings
3.5. Norman French borrowings (1066)
3.6. The Renaissance Period
3.7.Modern period

3. The questions under consideration

4. Three stages of assimilation
5. International words
6. Etymological Doublets
7. Translation-loans
8.Interrelations between etymological
and stylistic characteristics of English
words

4. 1. The historical circumstances which stimulate the borrowing process

A borrowing (a loan word) is a word taken over
from another language and modified in
phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or
meaning according to the standards of the
English language.
The period of borrowing (more than 1,000
years. )
Quantity (up to 80 per cent of the English
vocabulary consists of borrowed words).It is
due to the specific conditions of the English
language development.

5. Examples of the many words that have come into use during XX century

Atomic,
cybernetics,
jeans,
khaki,
sputnik,
perestroika

6. What are the conditions which encourage the borrowing process ?

Each time two nations come into close
contact, certain borrowings are a natural
consequence.

7. The nature of contact may be different.

It may be wars, invasions or conquests
when foreign words are in effect imposed
upon the reluctant conquered nation.
E.g.The Norman culture of the 11th c.
was certainly superior to that of the
Saxons. The result was that an immense
number of French words forced their way
into English vocabulary.

8. The nature of contact may be different.

There are also periods of peace when the
process of borrowing is due to trade and
international cultural relations.
These latter circumstances are certainly
more favourable for stimulating the
borrowing process, for during invasions
and occupations the natural psycological
reaction of the oppressed nation is to
reject and condemn the language of the
oppressor.

9. Why are words borrowed?

to fill a gap in vocabulary
to represent the same concept in some
new aspect
to accompany cultural elements
borrowed from one culture by another

10. Examples (to fill a gap in vocabulary)

When the Saxons borrowed Latin words
for butter, plum, beet, they did it because
their own vocabulary lacked words for
these new objects.
For the same reason the words potato
and tomato were borrowed by English
from Spanish when these vegetables
were first brought to England by the
Spaniards.

11. Examples (to represent the same concept in some new aspect )

This type of borrowing enlarges groups
of synonyms and greatly provides to
enrich the expressive resources of the
vocabulary. That is how the Latin cordial
was added to the native friendly, the
French desire to wish and the French
adore to like and love.

12. Examples (to accompany cultural elements)

In English a material culture word rouge
was borrowed from French, a social
culture word republic from Latin, and
religious culture word baptize from
Greek.

13. Borrowed words become completely absorbed into the system

so that they are not recognized by
speakers of the language as foreign. Few
people realize that tomato is of Aztec
origin.

14. Borrowed words haven’t changed

Some words and phrases have retained
their original spelling, pronunciation and
foreign identity, for example: rendezvous,
coup, gourmet, detente (French); status
quo, ego, curriculum vitae, bona fide
(Latin); patio, macho (Spanish);
kindergarten, blitz (German,); kowtow, tea
(Chinese,); incognito, bravo (Italian).

15. Borrowed words have changed their meaning

e.g. mind originally meant «memory»,
and this meaning survives in the phrases
«to keep in mind», «time out of mind»,
etc. The word brown preserves its old
meaning of «gloomy» in the phrase «in a
brown study». There are instances when a
word acquires a meaning opposite to its
original one, e.g. nice meant «silly» some
hundreds of years ago.

16. two main problems connected with the vocabulary of a language

the origin of the words,
their development in the language

17. Etymology (definition)

Etymology (from Greek etymon «truth» +
logos «learning») is a branch of linguistics
that studies the origin and history of
words tracing them to their earliest
determinable source.

18. Structure of the English vocabulary

The etymological structure of the English
vocabulary consists of the native element
(Indo-European and Germanic) and the
borrowed elements.

19. 2. Native Words

words that are not borrowed from other
languages (the Native Element)
the earliest recorded form of the English
language (Old English, or Anglo-Saxon)
words of Indo-European origin (Indo-European
Element )
are not to be found in other Indo-European
languages but the Germanic (Common
Germanic words)
words appeared in the English vocabulary in
the 5th century (The English proper element )

20. The Native Element

By the Native Element we understand
words that are not borrowed from other
languages. A native word is a word that
belongs to the Old English word-stock.
The Native Element is the basic element,
though it constitutes only up to 20-25%
of the English vocabulary.

21. Examples of native words

The native element in English comprises a large
number of high-frequency words like
the articles,
prepositions,
pronouns,
conjunctions,
auxiliaries and
words denoting everyday objects and ideas
(e.g. house, child, water, go, come, eat, good,
bad, etc.).

22. Grammatical structure

the grammatical structure is essentially
Germanic having remained unaffected by
foreign influence

23. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the
earliest recorded form of the English
language. It was spoken from about A.D.
600 until about A.D. 1100, and most of its
words had been part of a still earlier form
of the language.

24. Examples of Old English words

Many of the common words of modern
English, like home, stone, and meat are
native, or Old English, words.
Most of the irregular verbs in English
derive from Old English (speak, swim,
drive, ride, sing),
as do most of the English shorter
numerals (two, three, six, ten) and
most of the pronouns (I, you, we, who).

25. Old English words

Many Old English words can be traced
back to Indo-European, a prehistoric
language that was the common ancestor
of Greek and Latin as well. Others came
into Old English as it was becoming a
separate language.

26. Indo-European Element:

since English belongs to the Germanic
branch of the Indo-European group of
languages, the oldest words in English
are of Indo-European origin. They form
part of the basic word stock of all IndoEuropean languages. There are several
semantic groups:

27. semantic groups

words expressing family relations: father,
mother, son, daughter, brother;
names of parts of the human body: foot, eye,
ear, nose, tongue, lip, heart;
names of trees, birds, animals: tree, birch, cow,
wolf, cat, swine, goose;
names expressing basic actions: to come, to
know, to sit, to work;
plants: tree, birch (ср. р. берёза), corn;
time of day: day, night;

28. semantic groups

heavenly bodies (небесные тела): sun, moon,
star;
words expressing qualities: new, red, quick,
right, glad, sad;
numerals: from one to a hundred;
pronouns – personal (except they which is a
Scandinavian borrowing), demonstrative.
numerous verbs: be (ср. русск. быть), stand
(стоять), sit (сидеть), eat (есть), know.

29. Common Germanic words

are not to be found in other IndoEuropean languages but the Germanic.
They constitute a very large layer of the
vocabulary

30. Common Germanic words

nouns: hand, life, sea, ship, meal, winter,
ground, coal, goat;
adjectives: heavy, deep, free, broad, sharp, grey,
green, blue, white, small, high, old, good;
verbs: to buy, to drink, to find, to forget, to go, to
have, to live, to make, see, hear, speak, tell, say,
answer, make;
pronouns: all, each, he, self, such;
adverbs: again, forward, near,
prepositions: after, at, by, over, under, from, for.

31. Common Germanic words

parts of the human body: head, hand, arm,
finger, bone.
animals: bear, fox, calf.
plants: oak, fir, grass.
natural phenomena: rain, frost.
seasons of the year: winter, spring, summer
(autumn is a French borrowing).
landscape features: sea, land.
human dwellings and furniture: house, room,
bench.
sea-going vessels: boat, ship.

32. The Indo-European and Germanic

The Indo-European and Germanic groups
are so old that they cannot be dated. The
tribal languages of the Angles, the
Saxons, the Jutes, by the time of their
migration, contained only words of IndoEuropean and Germanic roots plus a
certain number of the earliest Latin
borrowings.

33. The English proper element

Firstly, it can be approximately dated.
The words of this group appeared in the
English vocabulary in the 5th century or
later, that is after the Germanic tribes
migrated to the British Isles. Secondly,
these words have another distinctive
feature: they are specifically English
having no cognates in other languages

34. What are cognates?

Cognates are words of the same etymological
root, of common origin. For Indo-European and
Germanic words such cognates can always be
found, as, for instance, for the following words
of the Indo-European group.
Star: Germ. Stern, Lat. Stella, Gr. aster.
Sad: Germ, satt, Lat. satis, R. сыт, Snscr. sā-.
Stand: Germ, stehen, Lat. stare, R. стоять,
Snscr. stha-.

35. examples of English proper words

These words stand quite alone in the
vocabulary system of Indo-European
languages. They are not numerous but
unique: bird, boy, girl, lord, lady, woman,
daisy, always.

36. the English proper element

words which were made after the 5th
century according to English wordbuilding patterns both from native and
borrowed morphemes. For instance, the
adjective beautiful built from the French
borrowed root and the native suffix
belongs to the English proper element. It
is natural, that the quantity of such words
is immense.

37. 3. Borrowings (What does the word borrowing mean?)

the process by which a borrowed word
came into the vocabulary of one
language from another
the result of this process, that is a
borrowed word itself

38. What is the percentage of borrowed words in the English vocabulary?

Many scholars estimate the percentage
of borrowed words in the English
vocabulary at 65 — 70 per cent.

39. 3.1.The earliest group of English borrowings (WHY?)

Europe is occupied by the Roman Empire.
Among the inhabitants of the continent
are Germanic tribes. (a rather primitive
stage of development )

40. What did Germanic tribes borrow?

Latin words to name foodstuffs (butter
and cheese)
Latin names of fruits and vegetables
enter their vocabularies: cherry, pear,
plum, pea, beet, pepper
The word plant is also a Latin borrowing
of this period

41. 3.2.Celtic borrowings. The fifth century A.D. (Why?)

Several of the Germanic tribes (the most
numerous being the Angles, the Saxons
and the Jutes) migrated to the British
Isles.
Through their numerous contacts with
the defeated Celts, the conquerors got to
know and assimilated a number of Celtic
words

42. Celtic borrowings

(Modern English bald, down, glen
(лощина), druid (кельтский жрец), bard,
cradle (колыбель).
place names, names of rivers, hills
the name of the English capital London
originates from Celtic

43. 3.3.The period of Cristianization. The seventh century A.D.

This century was significant for the
christianization of England. Latin was the
official language of the Christian church.
Latin borrowings came from church
Latin. They mostly indicated persons,
objects and ideas associated with church
and religious rituals.

44. Borrowings from church Latin

priest (священник), bishop (епископ),
monk (монах), nun (монахиня), candle
(свеча), dean, cross, alter, abbot.
educational terms (the first schools in
England were church schools, the first
teachers – priests and monks

45. 4. Three stages of assimilation

Most of the borrowed words adjust
themselves to their new environment.
They are assimilated. The foreign origin
of a word is quite unrecognizable.
It is difficult to believe that such words as
dinner, cat, take, cup, travel, sport, street
are not English by origin.

46. Bear traces of their foreign background

Distance and development, for instance,
are identified as borrowings by their
French suffixes,
skin and sky by the Scandinavian initial
sk,
police and regime by the French stress on
the last syllable.

47. Assimilation

Partially assimilated words are taiga,
phenomena, police
Unassimilated words are coup d’etat,
tete-a-tete, ennui, eclat.

48. the three main areas of adaptation

the phonetic
the grammatical
the semantic

49. the phonetic adaptation

fully adapted to the phonetic system of
the English language
bear no phonetic traces of their French
origin
table, plate, courage

50. the phonetic adaptation

phonetic adaptation is not completed.
borrowings still sound surprisingly French
regime,
valise (саквояж, чемодан),
matinee,
cafe,
ballet.

51. The grammatical adaptation

is a complete change of the former
paradigm of the borrowed word
Renaissance borrowings cup, plum,
street, wall were fully adapted to the
grammatical system of the language
but datum (pl. data), phenomenon (pl.
phenomena), пальто hasn’t changed
(a lasting process)

52. The semantic adaptation

is an adjustment to the system of
meanings of the vocabulary.
E.g. semantic adjustment
gay was borrowed from French in several
meanings at once: noble of birth, bright,
shining, multi-coloured.
Rather soon it developed the meaning
joyful, high-spirited in which sense it
became a synonym of the native merry.

53. The semantic adaptation

there was no place in the vocabulary for
the former meanings of gay, but the
group with the general meaning of high
spirits obviously lacked certain shades
which were supplied by gay.