Influence of Language Contact on English Language

Influence of Language intimacy on incline LanguageTo what extent has language reach stirred the slope language?In discussing the influence of different languages on the face language, the term language tangency may be defined as the trespass of early(a) languages on English as a firmness of socio-historical interaction (Mrquez 90). Languages are dynamic entities, which are constantly evolving to reflect our involve and the state of the societies that we live in (Bex 26). This is certainly the case for the English language, which has been firmly influenced by legion(predicate) languages doneout history as a leave alone of legion(predicate) invasions, proselytism, interest in so-called prestigious languages, and many other factors, with the code-switching that ensued as a result of these having a labored impact on English. Therefore, this essay will illustrate the enduring impact that language contact has had by looking at how aspects of the English language manage lexicon, orthography, phonology and put-names have been greatly affected by Englishs interaction with other languages, with finicky focus on the influence of the Italic languages of Latin and french.Regarding lexicon and place-names, Latin has undeniably left a lasting impression on the English language. For instance, Jonathan Culpeper states that the Romans approximately successful raid under Emperor Claudius in AD 43 was what successfully laid the foundation for the partial Latinisation of many of Britains Celtic place-names (2, 3). art object it remained rare for British place-names to be closelyly derived from Latin origins, rare exceptions much(prenominal) as Speen from the Latin Spinis do exist however, one of the most bombastic legacies that Latin left occurred through compounding, with certain elements of the names of numerous cities and towns having Latin root (Nielsen 154, 155). For instance, the suffix -wich in place-names such as Greenwich was derived from the Latin vicus, signification village (Ayers and Cherry 7).Regardless, firearm Latin certainly had an impact on many British place-names, it also left a more oecumenical mark on the English language in the form of borrowed lexicon and contribute nomenclature. tally to Culpeper, sequence early Christian missionaries introduced approximately four hundred and cardinal Latin words into emeritus English through religious texts, and thousands of Latin loans entered the English Language during the lay English period from areas such as religion, science, law and literature, it was not until the sixteenth century that borrowing from Latin and categoriseic became extremely popular (36, 37), which became a defining feature of Early in advance(p) English (c.1500 17000). This may be explained by the influence of the Renaissance (c. 1300 1600), which was a time of signifi green goddesst interest in the sciences and arts, and which led to a re-create interest in Latin as the language o f scholars, scientists and philosophers (Minkova and Tunberg xxvi). However, as on that point were no English equivalents for many of the complex scholarly terms have in these texts, approximately s yet-thousand Latin loanwords entered the English language, which much delineated defraud concepts, un care English words of Germanic origins (Culpeper 39). Also, several Latinate roots have been borrowed numerous times, resulting in doublets for instance, the Latin word sal has inspired numerous English words, including saline and salary (Green 35). Nonetheless, borrowing from Latin decreased later on the seventeenth century, mainly due to Englishs parvenufound prestige and status as the language of scholarship (Culpeper 37, 38). Regardless, it is clear to see that Latin has had a profound impact on the English lexicon through thousands of loanwords.On the other hand, because of the Norman invasion of 1066, cut became the official language of law and administration in England and, due to its prestigious status as the language of the top(prenominal) class and the code-switching that occurred after the invasion, approximately ten-thousand cut words associated with warfare, rule, law and fashion (Millar 126) were espouse into the English language during the Middle English period (c. 1100-1500) (Mellinkoff 97). However, while some(a) Norman-French terms completely replaced their Old English counterparts, such fortune replenishment wyrd, semantic change occurred when both terms survived, with an example being the musical note between the Old English house and the French loan menage (Culpeper 37). However, much like Latin, French borrowing has been in decline since the upper class stopped speaking French and English became regarded as the new language of administration (Culpeper 37, 38), yet the influence of French has lived on in various levels of borrowings, such as through borrowed food-related lexis like poultry, phrases such as mnage trois, and bound m orpheme suffixes like -ible (Fromkin et al. 358, 505). Unlike the written lexis of Latin, the fact that French influenced English mostly through spoken vocabulary is significant because it places French loanwords between Germanic and Latinate lexis in that they may convey a mixed register and refer both concrete and abstract concepts (Culpeper 39).However, while Norman-French generally had a small impact on place-names as most British places already had established names by 1066, some elements of French did inspire certain naming practices. For example, the French-speaking aristocracy routinely named castles and estates like Belvoir and Malpas directly after landmarks and places in France, Norman scribes substituted sounds for some more long-familiar to French (which is reflected in the spelling and pronunciation of places such as Cambridge), and the preponderance of double-barrelled named manors like Kingston Lacy can also be attributed to the French aristocracy, who often gave th eir properties recognisable names to distinguish their manors from others (Mills xvi). Consequently, much like Latin, it is undeniable that French has had an impact on the place-names and lexicon of the English language.Moreover, it may be argued that both languages have had a significant impact on the orthography and, in turn, the phonology of the English language. The fact that English spellings are not always phonemic, for example, may be attributed partly to the move from the Runic prototypal rudiment to the Latin alphabet used by the Romans during the Conversion Period (c. AD 597 AD 735), which meant that there were not enough orthographic counterparts for all of the Old English phonemes, as the Latin alphabet consisted of only twenty-three earn (Culpeper 22). Also, Doreen Scott-Dunne has noted that Latin impacted English orthography and phonology through etymological respellings. For instance, because of the renewed interest in Latin and Greek texts, many Renaissance schol ars decided to respell certain words to make them orthographically resemble their Latin origins, which is evident in the change of words like the Middle English det to the modern debt, which now more closely resembles the Latin debitum (62). However, while this apparently resulted in the addition of silent letters to many words (Scott-Dunne 62), other Latin-inspired spelling changes were mirrored by significant changes in pronunciations. For example, Renaissance scholars often added the letter after in words to make English advance as prestigious as Latin, which changed lexis like the Old French loan trone to throne (Algeo and slaughter 155). This resulted in a change of pronunciation, with the words first phoneme shifting from t to nonetheless, this was not a universal change for all words that contained the letter , and words like Anthony did not always change in pronunciation in British English, which exemplifies the fact that language contact can often result in a lack of re gularity (Algeo and slaughter 155).Furthermore, French scribes during the Middle English period may have caused English spelling variations (House 243), which often led to phonological changes. For instance, the runic symbol , which stand for the phoneme w, was scarcely used after 1300, due to it being replaced by the symbols or , which originated in northern France (Culpeper 22). Also, the letter represented a vowel in Middle English, but a consonantal that was pronounced as d appeared during the Middle English period, which is often attributed to the influence of Norman-French (House 241). However, another significant phonological impact occurred because the importee of French lexis during the Middle Ages encouraged a separation of easygoing and unvoiced fricatives into separate phonemes (Millar 126). While Old English had simply represented f and v as at the start of words and in other positions, the importation of French lexis like voice that began with the phoneme v, along with the desire to speak with a prestigious French accent, meant that graphological distinctions between the phonemes naturally occurred (Millar 126).Similarly, while lexis such as centre was borrowed from the Latin centrum, the influence of French meant that the grapheme started to represent the phoneme s kinda of k in some words (Culpeper 26), leading to a lack of regularisation. Additionally, while Old English had a strict accent pattern, in which stress fell on the first central (not prefix) syllable, the stress pattern of French was variable depending on each word and, therefore, prosodic changes had to take place during the Middle Ages so that French loanwords could be smoothly integrated into English (Millar 126). However, while etymological respellings of some words took place to show their French origins, scribes sometimes incorrectly assumed the etymology of words like island, meaning a was added to the Middle English iland to make resemble the Old French isle, even thou gh the word was originally from the Old English iegland, and therefore had Germanic roots (Horobin 112, 113).By and large, the profound influence of Latin and French on the English language exemplifies the fact that languages are not static, and continuously modernize organically in order to meet our linguistic and societal needs. In fact, English itself has already split into separate variations like American English and Australian English, which each have unique variations based on their contact history. Moreover, due to advances in travel and technology, English continues to be shaped and changed by more languages in our modern world, as evidenced by fresh additions to the Oxford English lexicon such as dopiaza (dopiaza, n.) and maitake (maitake, n.), which have Hindi and Japanese roots, respectively. Therefore, while syntagmatic, paragigmatic, social and technological changes (including scientific discoveries and the development of the internet) are arguably the primary cause s of language change in the twenty-first century (Algeo and Butcher 10), language contact has undeniably had a significant impact on the English language overall, and will most likely continue to move a role in influencing various aspects of the English language for long time to come.Works citedAlgeo, John, and Carmen A. Butcher. The Origins and Development of the English Language. Seventh ed. Boston, MA Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.Ayers, Donald M., and R. L. Cherry. 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