Borrowings in the English Vocabulary. Main Groups of Loan Words in English. Translation Loans and Semantic Borrowings

Italian Borrowings

Italian borrowings are mostly musical terms: allegro, aria, finale, piano, opera, solo, sonata, soprano, trill, violin, macaroni, spaghetti, influenza, umbrella, manifest etc.

Spanish Borrowings

The Spanish element in English like the Italian is mainly modern, e.g. cigar, embargo, junta, mosquito etc. The following words were introduced through Spanish to Europe from America: coco, chilly, chocolate, tomato, potato, tobacco, canoeing, yucca etc.

Russian Borrowings

Russian borrowings may be subdivided into 2 principle groups:

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  Borrowings that took place before 1917 such as: izba, ruble, kopeck, tsar, borzoi, Cossack etc.
  
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  And borrowings after 1917. The so-called sovietisms: Bolshevik, soviet, Komsomol, udarnik; later – sputnik, lunnik; recent – perestroika, glasnost, Gorbotchov etc.
  

Translation Loans

Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal (буквальный) morpheme or word-for-word translation, e.g.: world outlook (мировоззрение) – from German Weltanschauung; class struggle – Klassenkampf; wall newspaper – stennaya gazeta (Russian), a slip of the tongue – lapsus lingua (Latin); pale-faced, pipe of piece, fire-water – from Indian. Some other translation loans from Russians are: old believer, cult of personality, candidate/doctor of science, white night, Red square, Winter Palace etc.

Semantic Borrowings

Semantic borrowings are the expansion of the semantic structure of a word under the influence of correlated foreign one. It’s the borrowing of a meaning from the semantic structure of the correlated foreign word, e.g.: the English word pioneer (explorer) under the influence of the new meaning of the correlated Russian word (пионер) developed one more meaning: a member of a young pioneer organization; brigade (an army unit) under the influence of the new meaning developed one more meaning – active social workers; norm=standard – norm developed one more meaning – “an amount of work”.