The Vocabulary of English  

Have you ever considered that in modern English we often use different words to express the same idea. Why? Well, it seems that English, perhaps more than any other language, has successfully 'absorbed' words from all over the world. For example, 'fear', 'terror', 'alarm', and 'fright' all have similar meanings but each originally came into English from a different language.

It all started with ANGLO-SAXON................................

English developed from Anglo-Saxon (also known as Old English), the language brought to our shores by the Germanic tribes (the Angles and the Saxons) in the fifth century AD. These invaders gave England its name, 'the land of the Angles', and provided the language with many common basic terms like 'man', 'eat', 'breed', 'shire', 'woman', 'house', and 'work'.

 

In February we noted how the ANGLO-SAXON invaders influenced the English language in the fifth century AD. A hundred years or so later we can detect English absorbing a lot of common LATIN words. At the end of the sixth century, a group of monks came as missionaries from Rome to strengthen Christianity in Britain. The words which came into English from Latin at this time are mainly connected with religion and learning. Here are just a few examples: 'school', 'minister', 'pope', 'verse', 'candle' and 'mass'.

The next clearly defined stage in the development and expansion of English vocabulary comes some 300 years later with the arrival of the Vikings in Britain.

 

Old Norse was spoken widely throughout Scandinavia in the ninth and tenth centuries. At this time invaders came from Scandinavia and occupied large parts of eastern England. Many everyday words in modern English come from their language which was closely related to Anglo-Saxon. Many of the place-names we use today end in -by (eg. Whitby) which was the Old Norse word for village. Other words that came in to English from Old Norse at this time are: 'sky', 'leg', 'call', 'take', and 'dirt'.

The effects of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 proved to be very influential for the development of English language vocabulary. With victory in the battle, the Normans (from France) effectively conquered Britain and French thus became the language of the ruling classes. It is understandable then that many of the modern English words we use for describing our governmental and legal systems are directly linked to 11th century French. Interestingly, a good number of our modern cooking terms have also been traced to the language used by the Normans all those years ago. Here are some examples: 'braise', 'veal', 'mutton', 'sovereign', 'court', 'govern' and 'advise'.

 

In around 1400 British history entered a period which has been become known as the 'Renaissance'. The period lasted about two hundred years and it was a time when all things classical were much admired. Architects, writers, artists and administrators all tried to copy and refine the achievements of their predecessors from the

ancient worlds of Rome and Athens. Many words of Latin origin had already come into English through French, but the Renaissance brought a new interest in classical learning and an influx of words from Latin and Greek was the result. Here are some examples: 'physics', 'radius', 'history', 'architecture', 'compute' and 'educate'.

 

Latin and Greek are still used as a source for new words, particularly in the field of science, but English speakers today take words from a wide variety of other languages for phenomena that have no existing English name. Here are some examples.........do you know which languages they come from??...............: 'tea', 'futon', 'telephone', 'video', 'sauna' and 'tattoo'."