Lectures 6&7 Flashcards
these words form the nucleus of the vocabulary of English
Anglo-Saxon words
Four major varieties of the language were distinguished:
- Kentish
- Mercian
- Northumbrian
- West-Saxon
Kentish
associated with the Jutes
Mercian
the Anglian dialect spoken in Mercia, a kingdom stretching from the Thames to the Humber
Northumbrian
the northernmost of the Anglian dialects, spoken from the Humber to the Forth
West-Saxon
in the southern region called Wessex, the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms (Old English is a West-Saxon dialect)
Anglo-Saxon words have the following characteristics (4):
a. they tend to be short (usually 1-2 syllables)
- parts of the body: arm, bone, chest, ear, eye, foot, hand; natural landscape: field, hill, land, wood;
- domestic life: door, floor, home, house; the calendar: day, month, moon, sun, year; animals: cow, dog, fish, goat, hen, sheep, wine;
- common adjectives: black, white, wide, good, long;
- common verbs: become, do, eat, fly, help, kiss, love, say, see, sell, send
b. they are associated with informality: begin (AS) – commence (Fr)
c. they enter a great number of phrases
d. Anglo-Saxon words have great power to create new words: wood
wooden/woody/woodland/woodcutter/woodcraft/woodwork;
aber
(‘river mouth’) Aberystwyth (‘mouth of the Ystwyth’)
llan
(‘church’) Llanfair (‘St Mary’s church’)
inis
(‘island’) Innisfree
caer
(‘fortified place’) Carlisle, Caernarfon
pen
(‘head, top, hill’) Pendle
llyn
(Scots ‘loch’, Irish ‘lough’, lake) Llyn Tegid (‘Tegid’s lake’)
cwm
(‘valley’) Cwmafan (‘valley of the Afan’)
Viking raids began in
the 8th century and continued for some 200 years
The Danes spoke dialects of
Old Norse (Germanic language, related to OE)
by mid-ninth century the Danes controlled eastern England called
Danelaw
How can we identify words of Scandinavian origin?
- Notice some endings in Scandinavian place names
- Notice the cluster sk-/sc- e.g. skill, skin, sky, skirt, score, scrape
- Notice the ending –son in personal names e.g. Henderson, Jackson, Davidson
- Notice that OE personal pronouns hie, hiom, hiera were replaced by their Scandinavian equivalents giving modern they, them their
endings in Scandinavian place names
- -by (‘town’, ‘farm’) Derby, Rugby, Grimsby
- -thorpe (‘village’) Althorpe, Linthorpe
- -thwaite (‘clearing’) Braithwaite, Applethwaite
- -toft (‘homestead’) Sandtoft, Eastoft
- -scale (‘hut’) Seascale
- -kirk (‘church’) Selkirk
- wick/-wich (‘creek’, ‘bay’) Greenwich
Latin borrowings are often recognized from their typical endings
e. g. -um/quorum, referendum;
- us/campus, chorus;
- a/diploma, formula;
- ex, ix/index, appendix.
a result of the Norman conquest was
the absorption of hundreds of French words into English, and the loss of many OE words.
Some of the suffixes can reveal their French origin:
-age/homage;
-ance/abundance;
-ence/diligence;
-ee/devotee;
-ese/journalese;
-ity/felicity;
-our/favour/
-ant/infant.
The prefix de/de la also reveals the French origin of the borrowing, e.g. Marquis de Lafayette. There are also loan translations: that goes without saying (cela va sans dire).
Suffixes used in connection with medicine: (greek)
- itis (arthritis)
- oma (hematoma)
- osis (tuberculosis)
cardi-(cardiologist) chondr- (chondrocyte) cyan- (cyanide) cyt- (cytology) hepat- (hepatomegaly) melan-(melanosis) nephr- (nephritis) oste- (osteotome) sclera- (arteriosclerosis) aden- (adenoid) hyster-(hysterotomy) mast- (mastectomy) leuc-, leuk- (leucoma, leukemia) neur- (neurosis) rhin- (rhinitis).
greek bases
bibli-, crypt-, cryph-, gloss-, icon-, pyr-, and cycl-
The following are some Greek bases
a-, amphi-, ana-, cata, dia-, dys-, endo-, ec-, en-, epi-, hyper-, hypo-, meta-, para-, pro-, or syn-
Prefixes of Greek origin
-ic, -ism, -al, -ist, -ics, -tics, -al, –an, -ast, -y, -ma, -sis, -logy, -nomy, -cracy, -ous, -arch, -mania, -phobia, -meter, graph, scope, -gram, -ize, or-ous.
Greek Suffixes
-is (crisis, analysis) and -on (phenomenon, neutron).
Greek endings
the greatest supplier of words to English (geographical proximity)
French
