English Words

10.6
THE GERMANIC INHERITANCE
Borrowing is the main external cause of LANGUAGE CHANGE. As we have seen, borrowing has had a
big impact on the English lexicon: a high proportion of English words and affix morphemes are of foreign
origin. Does that make English a hybrid language? In this section we will see that in spite of the very large
number of foreign acquisitions, much has remained of the original language.
152 ENGLISH WORDS

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English belongs to the GERMANIC branch of the INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY of languages, which
includes these languages: 
[10.31]
HELLENIC the mother of Ancient Greek,
GERMANIC languages (e.g. German, English, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic),
ROMANCE languages (e.g. French, Italian, Spanish), which are descendants of Latin, itself a daughter of Italic,
CELTIC languages (e.g. Breton, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Gaelic),
SLAVIC languages (e.g. Russian, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croat, Czech),
INDO-IRANIAN languages (e.g. Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, Kurdish, Persian).
Historical linguists have shown that much of the core vocabulary of Indo-European languages is
COGNATE, i.e. it developed from the same historical source. You can verify this for yourself by examining
the table below:
[10.32] Indo-European cognates
heart
lung
night
sun
Old English
heorte
lungen
niht
sunne
German
Herz
Lungen
Nacht
Sonne
Old Norse
hjarta
lunga
nátt
sól, sunna
Gothic
hairto
leihts ‘light’
nahts
sauil, sunno
Latin
cordis
levis ‘light’
noctis
s l
Greek
kardia
elachus ‘little’
nuktos
h lios
Russian
serdtse
legkoe
noch’
solntse
Lithuanian
irdis
lengvas ‘light’
naktis
saule
Irish
cridhe
laigiu ‘less’
nocht
heol (Breton)
Sanskrit
hrd
laghus ‘light’
naktam
surya
Proto-IndoEuropean
*kerd
*le(n)gwh
*nokwt
s wel-/sun
Source:
based on Algeo (1972:90–1)
Languages belonging to the same family inherit from the parent language many structural features (of
phonology, morphology and syntax) as well as CORE VOCABULARY items (i.e. basic words, such as
words for parts of the body, kinship terms, numbers, basic bodily functions like eating and sleeping). The
more closely related languages are, the more shared vocabulary items they have.
Borrowing does not alter the genetic inheritance of a language. The acquisition of foreign words has led
to diversification in the English lexicon, but it has not destroyed the Germanic and Old English inheritance.
Words of Anglo-Saxon origin are still the words people use most frequently in everyday conversation (e.g.
I, the, am, a, are, on, child, see, sun
etc.).
However, extensive borrowing has had very important stylistic consequences. Often there are near
synonyms, one of which is an everyday word of Anglo-Saxon origin and the other a foreign (usually
Latinate) word which is used in formal situations—or just by people ‘talking posh’:
A LEXICAL MOSAIC 153

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[10.33]
Old or Middle English
Latinate
house, home
habitation, domicile
limb
member
walk
promenade
food
victuals
dying
expiring
leave
depart
get
obtain
give
donate
sweat
perspiration
gushy
sentimental
put out (a fire)
extinguish (a fire)