27. Latin loans.

I. period. The role of the Latin language in Medieval Britain is clearly manifest; it was determined by such historical events as the Roman occupation of Britain, the influence of the Roman civilization and the introduction of Christianity. It is no wonder that the Latin language exerted considerable influence on different aspects of English: the OE alphabet, the growth of writing and literature. The impact of Latin on the OE vocabulary enables us to see the spheres of Roman influence on the life in Britain.

Latin words entered the English language at different stages of OE history. Chronologically they can be divided into several layers. The earliest layer comprises words which the WG tribes brought from the continent when they came to settle in Britain. Contact with the Roman civilization began a long time before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The adoption of Latin words continued in Britain after the invasion, since Britain had been under Roman occupation for almost 400 years

1. Early OE borrowings from Latin indicate the new things and concepts which the Teutons had learnt from the Romans; as seen from the examples below they pertain to war, trade, agriculture, building and-home life.

Words connected with trade: OE ceapman ‘trader, came from the Latin names for 'merchant* — caupo and mango.

Units of measurement and containers were adopted with their Latin names: OE pund (NE pound), from L pondo OE ynce (NE inch) from L uncia.

The following words denote articles of trade and agricultural products, introduced by the Romans: OE win (from L vinum) - wine OE butere (from L biityrum)- butter

Roman contribution to building can & a group of words relating to domestic life is exemplified by OE cytel, cuppe, (NE kettle, cup,etc).

Borrowings pertaining to military affairs are OE mil (NE mile) from L millia passuum, which meant a thousand steps made to measure the distance;

2.Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names or components of place-names used by the Celts. L castra in the shape caster, coaster 'camp* formed OE place-names which survive today as Chester, Dorchester, Lancaster

3. The third period of Latin influence on the OE vocabulary began with the introduction of Christianity in the late 6th c. and lasted to the end of OE. Numerous Latin words which found their way into the English language during these five hundred years clearly fall into two main groups:

(1) words pertaining to religion, (2) words connected with learning. The rest are miscellaneous words denoting various objects and concepts which the English learned from Latin books and from closer acquaintance with Roman culture. The total number of Latin loan-words in OE exceeds five hundred, this third layer accounting for over four hundred words.

1).OE apostol NE apostle from L apostolus from Gr apostolos

After the introduction of Christianity many monastic schools were set up in Britain. The spread of education led to the wider use of Latin: teaching was conducted in Latin, or consisted of learning Latin. "'

OE scol NE school L schola (Gr skhole)

A great variety of miscellaneous borrowings came from Latin probably because they indicated new objects and new ideas.They belong to different semantic spheres: names of trees and plants — lily, plant; names of illnesses and words pertaining to medical treatment — cancer, fever; names of animals — camel, elephant, tiger, names of clothes and household articles — cap, mat, sack, sock; names of foods —beet, caul, oyster, radish;

The Latin impact on the OE vocabulary was not restricted to borrowing of words. There were also other aspects of influence. The most important of them is the appearance of the so-called "translation-loans" — words and phrases created on the pattern of Latin words as their literal translations. The earliest instances of translation-loans are names of the days of the week found not only in OE but also in other Old (and modern) Germanic languages:

OE Monan-dss (Monday) 'day of the moon', L Lunae dies;

Another question which arises in considering borrowings from a foreign language is the extent of their assimilation. Most Latin loan- words were treated in OE texts like native words, which means that they were already completely assimilated.

II. period. The Latin -language continued to be used in England all through the OE and ME periods in religious rituals, in legal documents and in texts of a scientific and philosophical character. After the Norman Conquest it was partly replaced by official Anglo-Norman. The main spheres of the Latin language were the Church, the law courts and academic activities.

Latin words were borrowed in all historical periods. In ME they were certainly less numerous than borrowings from French; their proportion was high only in religious texts translated from Latin. John Wyclif (late 14th c.), one of the most prolific borrowers from classical languages, introduced about a thousand Latin words in his translation of the Bible.

The extraordinary surge of interest in the classics in the age of the Renaissance opened the gates to a new wave of borrowings from Latin. Latin was the main language of philosophy and science, its use in the sphere of religion became more restricted after the Reformation and the publication of the English versions of the Bible.

In some cases it has been possible to specify the date of the borrowings and the authors who used them initially. Numerous Latin and Greek words were first used by Thomas More (early 16th c.), who wrote in Latin and in English; among his innovations were, explain, fact, monopoly. Many classical borrowings first appeared in Shakespeare's works: accommodation.

Some borrowings have a more specialized meaning and belong to scientific terminology (for the most part, they go back to Greek prototypes and may have been taken either from Greek or from Latin and French in a Latinized form), e.g. acid, antenna, apparatus, appendix, atom, formula.

The vast body of international terms continued to grow in the 18^th -19^th c. A new impetus for their creation was given by the great technical progress of the 20th c., which is reflected in hundreds of newly coined terms or Latin and Greek words applied in new meanings, e.g. examples of new application of Latin terms are —facsimile, introvert, quantum, radioactive, relativity;

In addition to words and roots, Latin and Greek have supplied English (as well as other modern languages) with a profusion of derivational affixes which have become productive in the English language of the recent centuries. These suffixes can be seen in the following classical loan-words: humanism (-ism from the Gr -ismos, L -ismus);protagonist (from the Gr -istes, L –ista) prefixes de-, ex-, re- and others occur in numerous modern words combined with other components of diverse origin (see below).

One of the effects of the classical borrowings on the English language was the further increase of the number of synonyms

Early NE borrowings from classical languages have been assimilated by the language: they do not contain any foreign, un-English, sounds and receive primary and secondary stresses like other English words; the grammatical forms of borrowed words are usually built in accordance with the regular rules of English grammar.