Subtheme 1. The development of the English vocabulary. English Basic Word Stock

A Dictionary of English Words Derived from Latin and Greek Sources, Presented Individually and in Family Units".

Although most of the written and spoken English consists of Anglo Saxon words, Latin and Greek make up approximately 25% to 30% of the polysyllabic words used in the mass media of newspapers, magazines, and popular books. The percentage is even greater when the written material involves technical and scientific content.

Albert Baugh in his A History of the English Language says that it is not difficult to realize that the English we speak today has developed over many centuries. "The Christianization of Britain in A.D. 596 brought England into contact with Latin civilization and made significant additions to our vocabulary. After the Scandinavian invasions and settlements, there was a considerable mixture of the two races and their languages."

The changes that characterize the development of English as well as any other vocabulary may be roughly classified under three headings: losses of words, additions to the vocabulary and semantic changes.

Losses of words are different by their nature.

On the one hand words come out of use together with the objects they denote. Thus, after the Norman conquest when the English nobility was ruined by William the Conqueror the words denoting ranks of the OE nobility such as ælderman (nobleman of the highest rank) or þegn (warrior) gradually fell in disuse.

On the other hand words may be ousted from the vocabulary by their synonyms. Thus, after the Scandinavian and after the Norman invasion many of the OE words were ousted by their Scandinavian or French equivalents.

Additions to the vocabulary are made from internal or external sources. Internal sources embrace different means of word building (affixation, word composition, conversion, etc); external sources are languages from which new words are borrowed.

Borrowings in ME and NE

The borrowed element in the English vocabulary is estimated as including two thirds of the whole word stock. It is clear therefore that the history of the English vocabulary is to a great extent the history of borrowings. However the OE vocabulary was mostly Germanic (see 005), and the process of intensive borrowing began in the ME period.

The ME language adopted foreign words mainly from two sources: Scandinavian and French.