English Vocabulary Today

Into the 21st Century

Barry J. Blake

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429683848
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century offers an innovative perspective on the ways in which contemporary English language vocabulary continues to adapt and grow in light of emerging technologies and ideas. The book begins with a concise history of the English language, followed by chapters covering key topics including lexical change, semantic change and word-formation. Additional chapters highlight unique topics not often covered in English language studies, including the mental lexicon, inclusive language and the importing and exporting of words between English and other languages. Chapter discussions are enhanced by dynamic examples from a wide range of varieties of English, including American, British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, South African and South Asian. Taken together, English Vocabulary Today: Into the 21st Century offers students a clear and comprehensive understanding of the multi-faceted nature of English vocabulary today as well as new insights into its continued development.

1

A brief history

Two thousand years ago the Roman Empire included all the nations bordering the Mediterranean and took in France (Gaul), Belgium (Belgica), the western edge of what is now Germany, and after AD 43, Britain. The area to the west and north of the Rhine taking in modern Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark was Magna Germania, ‘Greater Germany’, and was inhabited by Germanic peoples speaking closely related Germanic languages, languages ancestral to modern Danish, Dutch, German and English.

The empire was under constant threat from ‘barbarians’. In the fourth century the barbarians on the northern edge of the empire, mainly Germanic, were pressing belligerently on the frontier and in 378 the Roman army in the east suffered an overwhelming defeat at the hands of the invading Goths. Over the next 100 years the empire was overrun by these barbarians, mainly Germanic tribes such as the Goths and Vandals, but also Huns and Alans.

As part of this aggressive expansion, some Germanic peoples in Denmark and north-west Germany settled themselves forcibly in Britain. They started raiding Britain in the fourth century and by the fifth they were arriving in numbers and taking over most of what is now England from the Celts. These invaders and settlers were mainly Angles and Saxons, plus some Jutes. They spoke closely related tongues and these have come to be called collectively Anglo-Saxon or Old English, though almost all the surviving literature is in one particular dialect, West Saxon. The name England derives from Engla-land, i.e. Angles’ land.

Old English became the dominant language of England, with speakers of Celtic languages surviving in the west and north (Cornish in Cornwall, Welsh in Wales and Pictish in Scotland). England had been part of the Roman Empire from AD 43 until the fifth century. The last legion was withdrawn in 410. Although Latin must have been spoken by a good proportion of the population, perhaps most of the population, it did not survive in England. It did, however, survive on the Continent, as well as in North Africa until it was later displaced by Arabic.

In the Roman Empire two languages were used in administration to the exclusion of all others – Latin predominantly in the west and Greek in the east. Both were prestigious, written languages; languages of civilisation with extensive and varied literature. The languages of the largely unlettered barbarians to the north of the empire were doubtless considered primitive and inferior. Indeed, it’s likely citizens of the empire would hardly believe that an insignificant Germanic language, taken to Britain at a time when their empire was being overrun by predominantly Germanic barbarians, would one day be a global language, the most widely spoken language in the world if second and third language speakers are counted.

The language of the Angles and Saxons, Anglo-Saxon or Old English, is so different from the English of today that one needs to learn it as one would learn modern German. Here is an example from the anonymous Life of Saint Euphrosyne followed by a fairly literal translation. I have retained the eth ending on verbs, a form familiar to readers of Shakespeare (e.g. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven), where nowadays we use (e)s.

Eufrosina tha thohte thus cwethende, ‘Gif ic nu fare to faemnena mynstre, thonne secth min faeder me thaer, and me thaer findath, thonne nimth he me neadunga thanon for mines brydguman thingan. Ac ic wille faran to wera mynstre thar nan man min ne wene.’ Heo tha thone wiflican gegyrlan ofdyde, and hi gescridde mid werlicum. And on aefentid gewat of hire healle, and nam mid hir fiftig mancsas, and tha niht hi gehydde on digeire stowe.

Euphrosyne then thought thus, saying, ‘If I now fare to (a) women’s minster, then seeketh my father me there, and me there findeth, then taketh he me forcefully thence for my bridegroom’s sake (thing). But I will fare to a men’s minster there no man me may expect. She then the womanly clothing off-did (took off ) and her(self ) clad with manly (clothing). And at eventide went from her hall and took with her fifty mancuses (gold coins), and that night her(self ) hid in (a) secret place.

Old English had a certain number of grammatical suffixes. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns, including the word for ‘the’ and ‘that’, had up to four case forms: nominative for subject, accusative for the object of the verb and of some prepositions, genitive for possession and dative for the object of other prepositions. We still have the genitive s, which we separate from the noun with an apostrophe, and we still mark case differences with pronouns, but we do this by using separate forms such as I for subject and me for object. In the sentence where Euphrosyne takes off her female clothing the words thone wiflican gegyrlan have the accusative form since this phrase is the object of the verb ofdyde, and when she dresses herself in men’s clothing the adjective werlic (man-like) takes the dative -um since it is governed by the preposition mid, meaning ‘with’. Verbs had various inflections. In ic wille faran (I will go) the -e on wille is the first-person subject form and the n on faran marks the infinitive. Most of the words in this passage are still part of Modern English. Faran is no longer a basic word for ‘go’, but it lives on in the sense of ‘to get on’ or ‘to get by’, as in the sentences ‘How did you fare with the solicitors’ or ‘She didn’t fare too well during the winter’. It also lives on in the words farewell and thoroughfare. Wiflic (womanly) lives on as wifely, though wife now means married woman.

Towards the end of the eighth century Vikings from Denmark and Norway began raiding Britain and by the late ninth century many had taken over territory in the north of Britain. Like the Angles and Saxons, these new settlers spoke a Germanic language, a western variety of Norse, the language ancestral to modern Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Swedish. Old English acquired a few hundred words from this source, mostly everyday words including take, which eventually replaced Old English niman, represented by present tense nimth and past tense nam in the Euphrosyne passage.

Languages change over time and by the eleventh century English was showing signs of losing some of its grammatical inflection. Something then happened in that century that radically changed the vocabulary of the language. In 1066 William the Conqueror successfully invaded England and established the Normans as the ruling class. The Normans were also Vikings who had taken over an area of north-west France and had come to speak French. The presence of a French-speaking ruling class in England eventually led to a large influx of words from French. This influx was augmented by the prestige of French culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some of the imports were everyday words like table and chair, but many were words to do with government, including government itself, words such as authority, chancellor and minister, words to do with the church such as sacrament, cardinal and redemption, and words related to the law including judgement, defendant, attorney and perjury. By the fourteenth century around 10,000 words had been adopted from French, and the character of discourse in the fields of government, religion, the law and indeed any intellectual topic was drastically changed. Whereas previously the terminology in these fields had been made up from familiar Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes, now the make-up of ‘big words’ was obscure to ordinary people. Consider witherwine, meaning ‘adversary’. It is made up of wither, a variant of with ‘against’, as in withstand, and win, ‘win’ or ‘strive’. Adversary is the French word that came to replace witherwine. It can be broken down to ad-vers-ary, but this is not clear to someone who knows English, but not French, or better Latin, since French is a descendant of Latin. Or take concupiscence. It means a strong desire for sexual fulfilment. In Old English the term was lustgeornnes, which breaks down into lust-georn-ness, i.e. lust-yearn-ness, where the meaning of the whole is transparent from the meaning of the parts; in comparison, it would take a scholar conversant with Latin to identify the formatives of concupiscence, namely con-cupi-sc-ence. It should be added that after the Norman invasion, along with borrowings from French, English also imported words directly from Latin.

The period 1100–1500 is regarded as one which saw a transition from Old English to Modern English and the language of the period is referred to as Middle English. Old English is almost as difficult for us to understand as modern German. Middle English, however, is more readily comprehensible, more so towards the end of the period, as one might expect. This is illustrated in the following passage from Wycliffe (also Wiclif ) written in the second half of the fourteenth century:

Lord! What cursed spirit of lesyngis stirith prestis to close hem in stonys wallis for all here lif, sith Crist comaundith to alle his apostlis and prestis to goo into alle the world and preche the Gospel. Certis thei ben opyn foolis, and don pleynly agenst Cristis Gospel; and, yif thei meyntenen this errour, thei ben cursed of God, and ben perilous ypocritis and heretiks also.

Lord! What cursed spirit of lying stirreth priests to close them(selves) in stone walls for all their life, since God commandeth to all his apostles and priests to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. Certainly, they be open (obvious) fools, and do (act) plainly against Christ’s Gospel, and, if they maintain this error, they be cursed of God, and be perilous hypocrites and heretics also.

In this passage the only words likely to be unfamiliar to the modern reader are lesyngis (lying) and sith (since), and the pronominal forms hem and here. In Modern English we have the forms they, their and them. These are from Old Norse. The corresponding Old English forms were hi, here and hem (with variant spellings). In Middle English the Old Norse forms were replacing the Anglo-Saxon ones. Wiclif uses a mixture, Old Norse thei and Old English here and hem. The form hem lives on in Present-day English as ‘em as in Chase ‘em, where it coincides with a reduced form of them.

There are 13 words of Greek or Latin origin in the passage, most of which were relatively new in the language, and they came via French. These are: spirit, prestis, wallis, commaundith, apostlis, preche, certis, pleynly, meyntenen, errour, perilous, ypocritis and heretics. There is one unfamiliar inflection, namely the -n on ben marking the verb as having a plural subject. Be is ...