Some of them have however “survived” in English. Examples of such words are close, feature, fuel and remain [17].
Some 10,000 French words entered the English vocabulary during the Norman occupation. Around 75% of these words are still “alive” and used in English today [14].
Today it is also possible to look at English words and understand how certain aspects of society worked during this time. If we look at the words “beef” and “cow”, for example, it is clear to see that the words are not of the same origin even though their semantic relationship is obvious. The explanation for this is that the word “beef” derives from Norman French, while “cow” is of Germanic origin. Due to the fact that the French people were those who could afford to eat “beef” during this period, since many of them belonged to the aristocracy, they used a word from their language. The people who tended the cattle, however, were mostly the Anglo-Saxons and therefore they used the Germanic word “cow” [20].
Many times, words of Germanic and Romance origin that had the same meaning existed side by side. The Romance word was often more formal and not as emotional as the native word [9]. Today, many of these words are still used. Examples are the synonyms doom and judgment, and odor and scent [9].
In the 14th and 15th Century there was also a considerable amount of Latin influence. Due to translations of Latin literature, and the fact that some people read literature written in Latin, Latin loanwords managed to enter the English language [9]. The writings of Trevisa, Lanfranc, Arderne, and Wyclif are some famous scientific and theological works that were translated during this period [7 P. 8]. Examples of Latin loanwords from this period are “commit”, “create” and “impress”.
1.3.5 The Modern Period
During the Renaissance in the 15th century Latin and Greek became important languages once again. Scholars and intellectuals studied classical texts that were written in Greek and Latin, which eventually led to many loanwords from these languages entering the vocabulary of other European languages, like English. Thousands of words were borrowed during this
period, and many of them had already been borrowed from French some centuries earlier. Now, the “same” word entered the language, only this time from Latin directly [17]. “Perfect” is an example of a word that was borrowed twice. In Middle English the word was “parfit” and had been borrowed from French, but during the Modern Period the word was changed into “perfect”, because the Latin equivalent was “perfectus”, and it was considered better if the word resembled the Latin word [17].
1.4 Different types of borrowings
As mentioned earlier in the essay, there are different types of borrowings. In the empirical part of the essay the words in “God Save the Queen” will not be divided into subgroups, and the word “loanword” will still be used as the overall term. However, most linguists categorize borrowings in this way:
Loanwords are words that keep their meaning and phonetic shape, when they find their way into another language. The word “pizza”, for example, which has its origin in Italian, has the same “shape”, in other words, is pronounced and written in the same way in both English and Italian, which makes it a “real” loanword. It is also important that the word is inflected in the same way. The plural forms therefore also have to be identical in both languages.
A semantic loan is a borrowing where “the meaning of a foreign word is transferred onto an existing native word [9]. An example of a semantic loan is the word “God”. The word is a native English word and existed in Old English as well, but the Christian meaning it has today was borrowed from the Romans and their religion when they came to the British Isles.
A calque or a “loan translation” is a “one-to-one translation of a foreign model” [9]. An example of a calque is the English word “embody”, which has its origin in the Latin equivalent “incorporare”. The word “loanword” is also a calque.
The names of the days of the week are further examples of loan translations. They were borrowed from Latin approximately around 400 A.D. All Germanic people, except the Gothic, used the Germanic equivalents of the Roman gods when they named the days of the week, and the names are therefore from Germanic mythology [6 P. 60].
The word “calque” can also stand for a “loan transfer”, which is almost the same as a loan translation, the only difference being that “at least one part is semantically different from the model” [9]. An example of such a calque is the German word “Wolkenkratzer”, which literally means “cloudscraper”. Here “cloud” is used instead of “sky”, while the word “scraper” is correspondingly translated.
A loan creation is another form of borrowing. A loan creation is a rather complicated type of borrowing, since a word or the meaning of word is not actually borrowed. If a new word is created in a language, and there was some sort of influence from other languages, even if only to a small degree, it is called a loan creation [9].
1.5 What kinds of words are borrowed?
Usually, words that refer to exotic ideas, concepts or objects are borrowed. An example of this is how names of animals that do not inherently come from Great Britain are often loanwords in English [12]. The name of the animal is
borrowed from the language that is spoken in the country in which the animal originally comes from or lives in.
When we examine loanwords in different languages we will find that most of these borrowings are nouns. Nouns, and lexical words in general, are borrowed more frequently than grammatical words. The can be explained with the fact that a major reason for borrowing lexica is to extend the referential potential of a language. Since reference is established primarily through nouns, these are the elements borrowed most easily.
1.6 How many words are loanwords?
As this essay has shown, a vast amount of all English words are of foreign origin. Other languages also have loanwords in their vocabulary, but many of them do not have borrowings to the high extent that English does. An explanation for this is the fact that English is “fairly free of phonetic restrictions in its syllable structure” [12].
Words that therefore originally come from other languages, and that are differently structured, can anyhow be easily adopted into English.
Another reason is the fact that there has been relatively little opposition against loanwords in English. In many other European countries there has been a great deal more resistance against adopting and using words from other languages. In Germany, for example, there have been many purist periods throughout history, where language-associations have tried to
reduce the amount of loanwords in German. This type of purism directed against loanwords is called “xenophobic purism” and has not been as successful in Great Britain [12]. There was, however, some active resistance against loanwords in English in the 19th and 20th century. Many English writers thought consciously of using Anglo-Saxon words instead of Romance words when there were two synonyms to choose from [12]. An example of this is how many of them chose to use the word “foreword”, which is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, instead of “preface”, which is a Romance word.
There are many different studies on borrowings in the English language. Linguists havetried to find out how many borrowings there are in the English language and the corresponding percentages. Most of them come to the conclusion that the majority of English words are of foreign origin, but they do not reach the same numbers and percentages. Below are two different studies, both drawing different conclusions.
Aronstein comes to the conclusion that 55% of all English words are borrowed from Latin and French. 35% are, according to Aronstein, native English words, while 10% are loanwords from other languages [4 P. 64].
In the “Shorter Oxford Dictionary” however, only 22 % of the 80 000 entries are of native Anglo-Saxon origin, and 64% are Romance and Greek loanwords. 4% of the words have been borrowed from other Germanic languages, like Old Norse, Yiddish or High and Low German. 2% were loanwords from non-European languages, and the rest of the words, which accounted to 10%, were words that had derived from proper names or the origin was unknown [2 P. 72].
Many of the words, which were examined in the two studies, are, however, hardly used in daily life. It is therefore important to consider that the percentages that are shown from the two studies do not regard how often a word is used. The most common words in English are namely native English words, while a large quantity of those words that are only seldom used are loanwords. Aronstein, for example, analyzed the words that Shakespeare used in his works and came to the result that 86% of all the words he used were of Germanic origin [2 P. 11].
2.An investigation of the origin of the words in “God save the Queen”
In order to examine the words in “God save the Queen”, an etymological dictionary will be needed. Such a dictionary does not explain what a certain word means, but instead it gives information on what the word meant years ago, where its origin lies and how it came into the language. In this paper we will not focus on the semantic change of the words, and neither will we look at where a word originally comes from and therefore not trace the word back to its ultimate origin. We will only focus on finding out which words are borrowings and which the Online Etymology Dictionary.
I began the analysis by categorizing the words in their respective word classes. Grammarians and linguists are not in agreement on how many word classes there are, and how words are supposed to be classified. Some believe that there are only seven word classes while others suggest as many as 20. For this essay, I have decided to choose a categorization that only has eight word classes in order to simplify the analysis. These eight major word classes are, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, articles, and interjections.
Someday people might be singing “God save the King” instead of “God save the Queen” when they sing their national anthem. When the British monarch is male the word “Queen” is namely exchanged for “King”, so that the song corresponds to the monarchal situation.
It is unknown who the composer or author of the national anthem is. There have been plenty of speculations on which they could be, and people such as James Oswald, Dr. Henry Carey and Jean Baptist Lully have all been mentioned as possible candidates [12]. Today, however, approximately 200 years after the song became the national anthem, the composer and author are still unidentified.
“ God Save the Queen” is one of the first songs to be used as a national anthem. In the beginning of the 19th century, when the song became Great Britain’s national anthem, it was uncommon for countries to have national anthems, which they used for nationalistic purposes.
The song was first publicly sung in a theater in 1745 when the band leader decided to play it after hearing that Prince Charles Edward Stuart had defeated the army of King II at Prestonpans, near Edinburgh [18]. At this time the song was not the official national anthem, but the audience liked the performance so much, and the song became such a present [18].
Today there is no authorized version of the song, “as the words are a matter of tradition” [18]. Normally, only the first, but sometimes also the second verse of the song are sung, but the national anthem actually does consist of five verses. These have been added to the original first two verses over the years, and are not as famous as the first ones, since they are not sung very often. For this essay, however, all verses will be analyzed, in order to have as many words as possible for the investigation and to make the result as precise and reliable as possible [Appendix 1].
“God Save the Queen” consists of 92 different words. Of the 92 words, 29 belong to the group of nouns. 24 words are verbs and 17 are adjectives. Five words are adverbs, six are prepositions and three are conjunctions. Six pronouns were found and one definite article and one interjection.
The 92 words were then analyzed regarding their origin. The outcome was approximately that what I had expected. 57 words, which accounts to 62% of all investigated words were of Old English origin. 22 words, or 24% of the words were Old French loanwords. 5.4% or five of the 92 words were loanwords from Old Norse, while 2.2% or two words were of Anglo-
French origin. 4.4% of all words or four words had been borrowed from Latin directly, and 1% had been borrowed from Middle German. One When one examines the 57 native English words, one realizes that many of these words are fundamental and basic words in the English vocabulary. Verbs that describe very basic human actions are found in this group. Examples are the verbs “live”, ”send”, “see”, “give” and “sing”. Among these words are also the two auxiliary verbs “may” and “should”. One could draw the conclusion that words like these do not normally get borrowed from other languages, since they account for the most elementary and primary vocabulary that all languages ought to have in order to be labeled as a language. Therefore, the Anglo- Saxons did not borrow these words from the Romans, Normans or the other people they came in contact with, since they already existed in their vocabulary.
Not only verbs, but also nouns and pronouns that describe fundamental objects, people or ideas can be found in the group of the native English words. “Brothers”, “world”, “men” and “arm” are examples of such words. These are words that are so basic that all human languages have them as part of their vocabulary. Obviously, all human beings in the world have families and body parts and need the respective terms.
All pronouns, except for one, that were found among the 92 words were of Old English origin. “Her”, “us”, “thee”, “we” and “she” are all native words, and these words are also typical main words in a language.
All three conjunctions that were found are also of Old English origin. These words are needed in a language to explain relations between sentences, and in order to make the language logical. The fact that these words are native words is not surprising, since Old English also needed conjunctions to make it a structured language.
The six prepositions that were found are also all native English words. These words are also needed in a language in order for it to be logical and complete, since prepositions, just as conjunctions, describe the relationship between words. The Anglo-Saxons did not borrow such words, since they already had them, but also because grammatical words like these normally do not carry any prestige and are therefore not borrowed. Only if a word from another language is more prestigious or has a connotation that the native word lacks, would it be meaningful to borrow a word.
A further distinction with the words that are of Old English origin is that they are fairly short. Most of them only have between three and five letters, while many of the loanwords have more. Native English words often only have one syllable, while many of the other words consist of more. Only seven of the 57 native words had more than one syllable. A reason for this could be that native words have obviously been a part of the language the longest, and have therefore had the most time to be changed and simplified.
Many of the words that were examined were loanwords from Old French. 24% of all words were borrowed from this language. It is important to remember that most of these words are originally of Latin origin. More than 90% of all Old French words came from Vulgar Latin [12]. These French loanwords are verbs,
adjectives and nouns. Not one single preposition, conjunction, pronoun, definite article or interjection was borrowed from French. This confirms, once again, the statement put forward in the theoretical part; grammatical words or function words are normally not borrowed.
All verbs that were found in this group are weak verbs. “Save” and “fix” are two such examples. The strong verbs in English are almost always of proto Germanic origin, and are therefore native words. When one examines German, English and Swedish strong verbs, for example, it is possible to see that they all derive from the same source, due to their resemblance.
Many of the adjectives that are of Old French origin have the ending “ous”, as in the words “gracious”, “victorious” and “glorious”. Here we can easily identify that these words are of Romance origin, since the suffix “ous” is originally from Latin [10].