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Latin influence in English

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English has been called a Germanic language with a Romance vocabulary. Estimates of native (Anglo-Saxon) words in English range from 20%–33%, with the rest made up of foreign borrowings. A large number of these borrowings are Latinate, coming directly from Latin, from Latin through one of the Romance languages (French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish) or from some other language (such as Greek) into Latin and then into English.

Contents

Grammar

It is speculated that the rule against split infinitives developed around the beginning of the English Renaissance, as English grammarians, trained to look to Ancient Greek and Latin as ideal languages, took a closer look at their own mother tongue. In Greek and Latin, it is impossible to split infinitives because these languages have infinitives as a single word, i.e. there is nowhere to split: whereas one can say 'to really love', there is nowhere to put an adverb in the Latin infinitive 'amare'.

Dark Ages

The Germanic tribes who would later give rise to the English language (the Angles, Saxon, Frisians, and Jutes) traded and fought with the Latin speaking Roman Empire. Many words (some originally from Greek) for common objects therefore entered the vocabulary of these Germanic people via Latin even before the tribes reached Britain: anchor, butter, camp, cheese, chest, cook, devil, dish, dragon, fork, giant, gem, inch, kettle, kitchen, linen, mile, mill, mint (coin), noon, oil, pillow, pin, pound, punt (boat), sack, soap, stove, street, table, wall, wine.

Christian missionaries coming to Britain in the 6th century and 7th century brought with them Latin religious terms which entered the English language: abbot, altar, apostle, bishop, church, clerk, disciple, mass, minister, monk, nun, pope, priest, school, shrive.

Middle Ages

The Norman Conquest of 1066 gave England a two tiered society with an aristocracy that spoke Anglo-Norman and a peasantry that spoke English. From 1066 until Henry IV of England ascended to the throne in 1399, the royal court of England spoke a Norman that became progressively Gallicised through contact with French. However, the Norman rulers made no attempt to suppress the English language, apart from not using at all in their court. In 1204, the Anglo-Normans lost their continental territories in Normandy and became wholly English. By the time we see Middle English in the 14th century, the Normans had contributed roughly 10,000 words to English, of which 75% remain in use. Continued use of Latin by the Church and centres of learning brought new Latin influence.

Renaissance

During the English Renaissance, from around 1500–1650, some 10,000 to 12,000 words entered the English lexicon, including lexicon. Many of these words were borrowed directly from Latin, both in its classical and medieval forms. Some examples include: aberration, allusion, anachronism, democratic, dexterity, enthusiasm, imaginary, juvenile, pernicious, sophisticated.

Industrial Age

The dawn of the age of scientific discovery in the 17th and 18th centuries created the need for new words to describe newfound knowledge. Many words were borrowed from Latin, while others were coined from Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes, and Latin word elements freely combine with elements from all other languages including native Anglo-Saxon words. Some of the words which entered English at this time are: analysis, apparatus, aqueous, atomic, carnivorous, component, corpuscle, data, dynamic, experiment, formula, incubate, machinery, mechanics, molecule, nucleus, organic, ratio, structure, synthesis, theory, vertebra.

Consequences for English

As we saw with Latinate/Germanic doublets from the Norman period, the use of Latinate words in the sciences gives us pairs with a native Germanic noun and a Latinate adjective: It is not always easy to tell at what point a word entered English, nor in what form. Some words have come into English from Latin more than once, through French or another Romance language at one time and directly from Latin at another. Thus we have pairs like fragile/frail, army/armada, corona/crown, ratio/reason, and rotund/round. The first word in each pair came directly from Latin, while the second entered English from French (or Spanish, in the case of armada). In addition, some words have entered English twice from French, with the result that they have the same source, but different pronunciations reflecting changing pronunciation in French, for example chief/chef (the former a Middle English borrowing and the latter modern). Multiple borrowings explain other word pairs and groups with similar roots but different meanings and/or pronunciations: canal/channel, poor/pauper, coy/quiet, straight/strait/strict, disc/disk/dish/desk/dais/discus.

As new technologies are invented, Latin continues to be mined for borrowing or coining new English words: altimeter.

References

See also

 

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