Roots
A generous host
Deepti

English language is a compound of so many influences over so many centuries that traces of numerous peoples can be found in every sentence. The above opening sentence contains two words from Latin (century and trace), one from French (language) and one from Old English (over). This column has often described the input within English from various languages but today the focus is on the many founts of English vocabulary. Since so many societies have become a part of English through their words, it is no wonder that it is a global language today.

The earliest influence came from the Celts and it can be seen even today in words like ‘crag’. The next contribution came from the Romans, with Latin words like ‘belt, candle, cheese, and street’. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought with them words of Germanic or Anglo-Saxon origin. These ‘loans’ were lexical items like ‘arm, door, mother, horse, great, run’. The Vikings burst upon the scene with Scandinavian items like ‘cake, flat, neck, and smile’.

From Italian, the language has ‘borrowed’ words such as ‘carnival, balcony, opera’. Spanish and Portuguese have made a contribution through items such as ‘cannibal, embargo, canoe and tank’, while the European languages have ‘lent’ words like ‘cruise, ski and horde’. Asia and India have contributed their mite to English with words like ‘pyjama, tycoon, thug and jungle’. The Middle East has given English words such as ‘coffee, jackal and caravan’.

This sort of an input means that often words in English have semantic twins. These twins are words like ‘begin/commence’, ‘help/aid’, ‘hide/conceal’, ‘wedding/marriage’ and ‘wish/desire’. These twins enrich the lexis. Another way in which the vocabulary is enriched is the creation of compound words. This process combines two words and forms a word that differs in meaning from the two parts. Usually, a compound word starts off as two different words used together but later it gets hyphenated, only to ultimately become one word. Examples are ‘postman, windmill, silkworm, paperknife, darkroom, homesick, watertight, everlasting, and breathtaking’.