English words and their origin:



English words and their origin:

Learning from history

Elly van Gelderen

ellyvangelderen@asu.edu

1 The nature of English vocabulary: a double set of words

|Involuntary Conversions, Preemptive Counterattacks, and Incomplete Successes: The World of Doublespeak |

| |

|There are no potholes in the streets of Tucson, Arizona, just “pavement deficiencies.” The administration didn’t propose any new |

|taxes, just “revenue enhancement through new user’s fees.” Those aren’t bums on the street, just “non-goal oriented members of |

|society.” There are no more poor people, just “fiscal underachievers.” There was no robbery of an automatic teller machine, just an|

|“unauthorized withdrawal.” The patient didn’t die because of medical malpractice, it was just a “diagnostic misadventure of a high |

|magnitude.” The U.S. Army doesn’t kill the enemy anymore, it just “services the target.” And the doublespeak goes on. |

Table 1: Text marked for loanwords, adapted from Lutz’s Doublespeak (1990: 1)

What’s the point?

-different formality

-euphemisms

-spelling problems

Where do the words come from?

|Old English French Latin Other Germanic Other |

| |

|32 45 17 4 2 |

Table 2: Percentage of origins (Roberts 1965)

[pic]

Figure 1: Origins

Core and Periphery:

| Old English French Latin Scandinavian Other |

|1000 83 11 2 2 2 |

|2000 34 46 11 2 7 |

|3000 29 46 14 1 10 |

Table 2: The first, second, and third 1,000 most frequent words and their origins

(Williams 1975)

are, no, world

yes, and, the, new

deficiency, pavement

Figure 2: Core and Periphery

2 How did it happen?

| 449 C6–8 C8–C10 1066 1500 1600 |

|…Latin+Celtic… |

|street…Dover abbot …Scandinavian… |

|egg, odd, give …French+Latin… |

|state, judge Latin+Greek … |

|emancipate.. |

|pharmaceutic.. colonial |

|pajamas |

|_____Germanic_____|||_________________English____________________ |

Figure 3: Linguistic Influence on English

[pic]

Figure 4: Just one set of migrations

Major Influence: French and Latin

|a. government, royal, state, authority, prince, duke, duchess, tax, marshal, mayor, governor, warden, treasurer |

|b. judge, jury, felon, bail, estate, evidence, verdict, punish, crime |

|c. study, anatomy, geometry, grammar, logic, medicine, square |

|d. art, sculpture, music, painting, color, figure, image, poet, title, preface, fashion, dress, lace, garment, veil, button, couch,|

|chair, cushion |

|e. dinner, supper, feast, appetite, taste, salmon, mackerel, beef, veal, mutton, pork, pastry, lemon, orange, raisin, date |

|f. temptation, damnation, salvation, confess, convert, ordain, baptism, communion, mercy, sanctity, charity, solemn, divine, |

|devout |

Table 3: A few French loans

Latin loans:

Some estimate that between 1500 and 1660 nearly 27,000 new words enter the language (Garner 1982: 151; Wermser 1976: 23).

Not all of the new words survive into Modern English. Some of my favorite rejected words are:

adminiculation ‘aid’, anacephalize ‘to summarize’, eximious ‘excellent’, illecebrous ‘alluring’, ingent ‘immense’, and honorificabilitudinitatibus.

Minor Influence: Other languages

|Australian straight borrowings: mallee, wallaby, wombat, boomerang, dingo |

|adaptations: paddock ‘field’, outback, station, stock, bush, shanty ‘pub’, sheila ‘girl’ |

|American anorak, coyote, squash, chipmunk, moose, raccoon, igloo, kayak, totem, pecan, hickory |

|New Zealand hoot ‘money’, kete (kit) ‘basket’, kitchen tidy ‘garbage can’ |

|South African apartheid, spoor ‘track’, veldt ‘field’, trek ‘migration’, boer ‘farmer’, braai ‘BBQ’, koppie ‘small hill’, commando|

|South Asian police walla ‘policeman’, auto rickshaw wallah people ‘rickshaw driver’, dhobi ‘washerman’, chowkidar ‘guard’, |

|panchayat ‘village council’ |

Table 4: New words due to contact with indigenous languages (with the less obvious meanings within ‘…’)

|African cayman, dengue (fever), gumbo, jumbo, yam |

|Canadian French prairie, rapids |

|Chinese chop-suey (Cantonese), chow mein, feng-shui, ginseng |

|Dutch boss, Santa Claus, cookie, spook, Yankee |

|German semester, seminar, noodle, pretzel, schnitzel, hex, wunderkind, deli(catessen), -fest |

|Spanish patio, taco, tamale, tortilla, tequila, ranch, corral, rodeo, canyon |

|Yiddish chutzpah, borscht belt, dreck, mensch, -nik, schlep |

|Tagalog boondocks |

|Malay amok, batik, orangutan |

Table 5: Words adopted into (American) English through later contact with other languages

3 What's the use of a `double’ vocabulary?

perspire - sweat

donate - give

narrate/describe - tell

obtain - get

arrive - come

liberty - freedom

adolescent - boy/girl

Are native speakers aware? YES, to some extent

|Who was Ogden/Basic English, English in 850 words, |

| |

| |

|OPERATIONS - 100 words |

|come, get, give, go, keep, let, make, put, seem, take, be, do, have, say, see, send, may, will, |

|about, across, after, against, among, at, before, between, by, down, from, in, off, on, over, through, to, under, up, with, |

|as, for, of, till, than, |

|a, the, all, any, every, little, much, no, other, some, such, that, this, I, he, you, who, |

|and, because, but, or, if, though, while, how, when, where, why, |

|again, ever, far, forward, here, near, now, out, still, then, there, together, well, |

|almost, enough, even, not, only, quite, so, very, tomorrow, yesterday, |

|north, south, east, west, please, yes . |

Table 6: Basic English

Attitudes regarding `inkhorn terms':

George Orwell:

-Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

-Never use a long word where a short one will do.

-If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

AND?

|BOSTON, MA — The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school |

|graduate should know. |

| |

|"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which |

|graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior|

|command of the language." |

| |

|The following is the entire list of 100 words: |

| |

|abjure |

|abrogate |

|abstemious |

|acumen |

|antebellum |

|auspicious |

|belie |

|bellicose |

|bowdlerize |

|chicanery |

|chromosome |

|churlish |

|circumlocution |

|circumnavigate |

|deciduous |

|deleterious |

|diffident |

|enervate |

|enfranchise |

|epiphany |

|equinox |

|euro |

|evanescent |

|expurgate |

|facetious |

|fatuous |

|feckless |

|fiduciary |

|filibuster |

|gamete |

|gauche |

|gerrymander |

|hegemony |

|hemoglobin |

|homogeneous |

|hubris |

|hypotenuse |

|impeach |

|incognito |

|incontrovertible |

|inculcate |

|infrastructure |

|interpolate |

|irony |

|jejune |

|kinetic |

|kowtow |

|laissez faire |

|lexicon |

|loquacious |

|lugubrious |

|metamorphosis |

|mitosis |

|moiety |

|nanotechnology |

|nihilism |

|nomenclature |

|nonsectarian |

|notarize |

|obsequious |

|oligarchy |

|omnipotent |

|orthography |

|oxidize |

|parabola |

|paradigm |

|parameter |

|pecuniary |

|photosynthesis |

|plagiarize |

|plasma |

|polymer |

|precipitous |

|quasar |

|quotidian |

|recapitulate |

|reciprocal |

|reparation |

|respiration |

|sanguine |

|soliloquy |

|subjugate |

|suffragist |

|supercilious |

|tautology |

|taxonomy |

|tectonic |

|tempestuous |

|thermodynamics |

|totalitarian |

|unctuous |

|usurp |

|vacuous |

|vehement |

|vortex |

|winnow |

|wrought |

|xenophobe |

|yeoman |

|ziggurat |

| |

Table 7: Pomposity or …?

4 Is English still borrowing?

Yes, but lots of compounds, alphabet-soup, etc: `turning inwards' (Minkova & Stockwell 2007)

|Medicine: appendicitis, clinic, radiotherapy, HIV, AIDS, aspirin, insulin, hormones. MRI, PET, vaccine, cholesterol |

|Science: electrode, biochemical, DNA, relativity theory, radiation, fractals, atom bomb, UV rays |

|Psychology: Freudian, Jungian, psychotherapy, shock therapy, multiple personality, behaviorism, closure, ego, fixation, Gestalt, |

|IQ, REM, Rorschach test, Type A personality |

|Communication: TV, radio, computer, internet, mouse, chip, bookmark, commercial, CD, DVD, GTS, wiki, podcast |

|Transport: locomotive, helicopter, train, automobile, shuttle, airplane, cruise control, garage, sunroof, SUV, ATV, public/mass |

|transport |

|Linguistics: nativism, phoneme, transformational grammar, polysynthetic |

|Military: gun, tank, agent orange, WMD, embedded journalism |

|Philosophy: existentialist, rationalist, postmodern, positivism |

|Art/music: impressionist, outsider art, rap, hip-hop |

|Politics: emancipation, human rights, Cold War, banana republic, junta, cold war, police state, chads, teflon president |

|Economics: creative book-keeping, e-bubble |

|Recreation: eco-tourism, geocaching |

Table 8: 19th and 20th century new words

|a. loans from other languages: |

|zeitgeist, weltanschauung, schadenfreude, wanderlust, kindergarden, jungle, pajamas/pyjamas, polo, pasta, broccoli, zucchini, |

|mensch, bête noire, fait accompli |

|b. new compounds or phrases: |

|skydiving, acid rain, junkfood, green butcher (one that sells free range meat), a wedding wedding (a very extravagant wedding), |

|gabfest, innerchild, geek-chic |

|c. new affixes: |

|postmodern, prewoman, proto-Nostratic, counterrevolution, pseudo-metarule, ex-ex-husband (divorced and then remarried) |

|d. clippings, mergers, and inventions: |

|decaf, motel, fridge(idaire), phys-ed, ad(vertisement), dancercise, boycot, quizling, popemobile, bookmobile, camcorder, talkathon,|

|smog, slumlord, simulcast, netglish (internet English), veggie-burger, block-buster, crime-buster, bikaholic, chocaholic, |

|workaholic |

|e. phrase words: hit-and-run drivers, a nobody-cares attitude, a larger-than-life problem, a sonot-cool situation, |

|so-out-of-the-loop |

|f. conversion: to impact (N to V), to fax (N to V), a show-off (V to N), play-off (N to V), to teach-in (N to V), the Ancients (Adj|

|to N), to empty (Adj to V) |

|g. slang: rip-off, pizzazz, crap, grody to the max (from the 1970s), depresso city |

|h. acronyms: SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle), ATM (Automatic Teller Machine), HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), WMD (Weapons of Mass|

|Destruction), VD (Venereal Disease), ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), LOL (Laughing out loud), FAQ (Frequently Asked |

|Question) |

Table 9: Type of innovation

|1940: borscht belt, clochard, intercom, male chauvinist, Okinawan, panzer, paratroops, Picassian, Quisling, roadblock, sitzkrieg, |

|superbomb, superconduction, West Nile virus |

|1950: apparat, bonsai, brainwashing, encrypt, fall-out, geekish, hi-fi, information theory, lateralization, LSD, McCarthyism, |

|moving target, napalm(ing), open-heart, Orwellian, psychometrician, yellowcake, to zonk |

|1960: bionics, breathalyzer, Castroism, dullsville, dumbo, kook, to market test, minivan, nerdy, over-inhibition, reportability, |

|software |

|1970: biofeedback, citizen advocacy, detox, herstory, humongous, minidisk, offroading, poststructural, yucky |

|1980: ecofeminism, to download, mega-rich, neohippie, neopunk, non-veg, power dressing, Reaganomics, waitperson, what’s-her-face |

|1990: bi-curious, cringeworthy, DWEM (Dead White European Male), emoticon, feminazi, greenwashing, nanostructured, Nostraticist, |

|soap-dodger |

Table 10: New words for 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990

5 Resources: the OED!

Etymology

First date!

Language of origin

6 Exercises

A Guess which words are Latin or French in:

a. A word is dead b. Fire and Ice

When it is said, Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say. Some say in ice.

I say it just From what I’ve tasted of desire

Begins to live I hold with those who favor fire.

That day.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Poems by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost

B Simple Search in the OED

1: Do a simple search for `tree'. Which of the 12 instances would you click on? Is it a loanword? What other languages is it related to?

2: Still using simple search, use a wildcard, e.g. ? means one letter: br?ng or s?ng. Do any words start with y and end in z? Use *.

Advanced Search

3: Using Advanced Search, look how many instances of `ain't' there are in the entire OED.

4: Find all the words that first came in in 1960.

5: First look up `assasination' in simple search; then in the full text. Difference?

6: Which words derive from Arabic? Search in etymologies!

7: How often is Shakespeare quoted?

Tables and figures in this handout are taken from the below, unless otherwise marked:

Gelderen, Elly van 2006 A History of the English Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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