TOPIC 41 Romanisation and latin influence on the english language

A large number of these borrowings are Latinate, coming directly from Latin, or from Latin through one of the Romance languages, particularly French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish or f

TOPIC 41

ROMANISATION: THE INFLUENCE OF LATIN ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

BORROWINGS & CALQUES

English has been called a Germanic language with a romance vocabulary Estimates of native-AngloSaxon words in English range from 20% to 33%, with the rest made up of foreign borrowings A large number of these borrowings are Latinate, coming directly from Latin, or from Latin through one of the Romance languages, particularly French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish or from some other languages (such as Greek) into Latin and then into English The influence of Latin on English has been so remarkable and eduring that nowadays some of its most commonly used terms for everyday objects come from this ancient language such as street, table, wine or mile

In this topic I´m going to deal with the Latin influence on English language throughout different stages of its development I have divided my topic into three main sections: first of all I´ll give an account for the historical background of the Roman conquest and its effects on culture, then, in the main section of my topic I´ll be looking at the influence of Latin vocabulary and grammar on Old, Middle and Modern English, finishing with an explanation of the traces of Latin on present day English

Before I go any further, however, I´d like to say that to write this topic, I´ve consulted the following works:

Baugh and Cable´s book A history of the English language published in 2002,

David Crystal´s The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language published in 2002, and Web pages: AskOxford.com, EnglishClub.com, Anglik.net

It is never easy to pinpoint when a specific language began, but in the case of English we can say that there is little sense in speaking of English language before the Anglo-Saxon came to Britain Thus the history of English language really started with the arrival of the three Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) who invaded Britain during the 5th century Before the arrival of the Germanic tribes British Isles were populated by a race called the Celts, whose language lives on in Celtic languages such as Gaelic and Welsh spoken in Scotland and Wales The Celts were superstitious people who believed in many Gods and their priests, the Druids, were the custodian of knowledge and allow no written language in order to protect the secrecy of their secret rites that´s why their language made very little

impact on that of the following invaders Quite a few English place names are of Celtic origin (London, Dover, Avon and Thames) but hardly any other Celtic words remain in common use

The Celts were conquered by the Romans and from 43 BC to about AD 410 the areas which are now England and Wales were part of the Roman Empire, and Latin was the language of government, until the coming of the Germanic tribes

In the summer of 55 BC Julius Caesar, having completed the conquest of Gaul, decided to invade England after obtaining some information regarding their geographical and human characteristics This first expedition wasn´t successful because of the resistance of the native tribes of Celts Roman troops made a bloody landing and their progress inland was painfully slow Four weeks after landing he re-embarked his army for France, determined to return the next year and gain Britain as a Roman province

Accordingly the following summer he again invaded the island, after much more elaborate preparations He found that the Britons (the Celtic tribes) had joined in order to fight their common enemy under the rule of an only leader called Cassivellaneous Nevertheless Caesar managed to desunite the Britons and to reach an agreement regarding the tribute that Britain would pay to the Empire After Julius´ death the contact between the Empire and the Britons continued because of the constant come and go of sailors, traders and so on The next invasion, which was to lead to a period of almost 4 centuries of Roman rule, was ordered by Emperor Claudius in 43 AD, who decided to undertake the actual conquest of the island They met a rather strong opposition, especially in the areas of Wales and Scotland Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2nd century, the rich plain of the South had been subdued

The military conquest of Britain was followed by the Romanization of the province so the Romans applied their system of occupation The Romans brought the skills of reading and writing to Britain because, contrary to the Celts’ approach, the Romans considered the written word important for spreading ideas and also for establishing power The most obvious characteristic of Roman Britain was its towns, which were the basis of Roman administration and civilisation Many grew out of Celtic settlements, military camps or market centres The Romans left about 20 large towns and almost 100 smaller ones Many of these towns were at

first army camps, and the Latin word for camps, castra, has remainded part of many town names to this day (with the ending “ chester”, “ caster” or “ cester”): Gloucester, Leicester,

Winchester, Lancaster, Chester

The structure of the towns followed the Roman plan All of them consisted of a FORUM or quadrangular market to which all the streets led cutting in a right angle They rose a great number of public buildings such as baths or theatres and they provided the towns with infrastructure Many houses had central heating and in most of them there was running-water Towns were connected by roads which were so well built that continued to be used long after the Romans left and became the main roads of modern Britain London grew in the times of the Romans and started to be considered the capital of the province because it was the most important trading centre in the northern Europe The best preserved Roman vestiges in Britain can be appreciated in Saint Albans and Bath

The Romans applied their system of penetrating peacefully into the country and this favoured the acceptance of the new culture among the Celts The arrival of Roman population to the island was rather scarce and very soon the Imperial Army was constituted by the native population This led native people to take part in the Roman life-style The Romans, in their turn, accepted in some way the Celts culture Regarding religion, for instance, they borrowed some Celts Gods

The Romans could not conquer “Caledonia”, as they called Scotland The tribes from the North, Picts and Scots, attacked the Roman territories, obtaining rich loots At last the Romans built a strong wall along the northern border, named after the Emperor Hadrian who planned it

By the end of the 4th century the Celto-Roman had to face a new menace: Germanic tribes from what today are Denmark and the Low Countries crossed the North Sea and established themeselves in the South and East of the island By that time the whole Roman Empire was

in danger: the barbarian tribes from North and Central Europe were trying to invade the Roman territories Rome sought help from Britain, which sent a great number of soldiers, thus remaining Britain with few defenders The Romanised Celts were left to fight alone against the Scots, the Picts and the Saxon raiders from Germany The following years Rome itself fell to raiders and the empire began to collapse In some districts, the Anglo-Saxons probably settled down beside the Celts in more or less peaceful contact, in others the invaders met with resistence and succeeded in establishing after much fighting Most of Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by invaders mainly in Wales, Scotland and Ireland The Roman civilization in Britain was largely destroyed by the new invaders and Roman towns were burnt and abandoned Latin language completely disappeared both in its spoken and written form

Having dealt with the historical background of the Romans in Great Britain, I am going

to review the influence of Latin vocabulary on English language Before starting with the main develpment of the topic it is important to bear in mind that the adoption of Latin vocabulary

into English falls into two categories: borrowings (those words adopted with a slight modification in meaning, context of use, phonetic or spelling) and calque (those expressions,

phrases or compound words translated literally from another language) The nature of this influence has varied throughout every stage of the English language development, thus it is

important to focus on the peculiarities of every stage: Old English period (450-1150),

Middle English period (1150-1500) and Modern English (1500- )

Regarding the Old English period, we should distinguish three different ways in which Latin

enterred the English language These, according to Baugh, are the Zero Period or Continental, the First Period or Celtic Transmission and the Second Period or Christianity

 During the Continental Period we cannot speak about an English language yet Anglo-Saxons were still settled in the Continent where they had various contacts with the Romans, through which they borrow words for everyday objects and concepts These first contacts

were mainly commercial and military so the borrowings adopted by the Germanics are mostly found in this field In this period we have borrowings related to war such as CAMP

(battle), WEALL (wall), MIL (mile), STRAET (street) Regarding trade they borrowed PUND

(pound), CEAP (bargain), WIN (wine), MUST (new wine) Connected with domestic life they took MESE (table), CUPPE (cup), TEPED (curtain) Some foods are named after the Roman words such as CIESE (cheese), BUTERE (butter) or PIPAR (pepper)

 During the First Period or Celtic Transmission, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes invaded Britain At that time the British population (the Celts) was Romanized Celtic peasantry remained illiterate and only Celtic speaking, but town dwellers and the richer landowners in the country spoke Latin and Greek with ease The Celts are thought to have adopted over six hundreds of Latin words in their languages, but probably due to the disorders between Celts and Anglo-Saxons and their slight contact no more than half a dozen Latin words entered the English language in this period It is probable that the use of Latin as spoken language did not long survive the end of Roman rule in the island thus there was no opportunity for direct contact between Latin and Old English in England Among the few Latin words that the Anglo-Saxons seem to have acquired upon settling in England, one

of the most likely seems to be CEASTER, which represents the Latin CASTRA (camp) and

started to form a familiar element in English place-names such as Chester, Manchester, as

I said above A few other words are thought to be for one reason or another to belong to this

period: PORT (from Latin “portus”) meaning mountain, TORR (from Latin “turris”) meaning tower, WIC (from Latin “vicus”) meaning village

 During the Second Period or Christianity Period, St Augustine and his 40 monks introduced Christianity into Britain in 597 They firstly found the support of a small number of Christians but the total process of conversion of the rest of England was completed within a hundred years The introduction of Christianity meant the building of churches and the establishment of monateries such as Canterbury and York where the monks developed a lot

of work related to grammar, prosody and science and mostly about the books of the Old and New Testament Thus Latin was once more heard in England Thanks to the church England held the intellectual leadership of Europe and, in like manner, vernacular literature and the arts received a new impetus

The flourishing state of the church was interrupted by the invasion of the Danes who at the end of the 8th century began their ravages upon the country, burning and destroying churches and monasteries By the end of 10th there seemed to be no remembrance of Christian Culture in England

By that time King Alfred and later King Edgar, trying to spread education in the kingdom, restored the monastic life by the observance of the Bendictine Rule This reform brought about a religious revival and monasteries were once more centres of literary activity When speaking about the influence of Latin upon OE by means of Christianity, we should distinguish, according to Baugh, two separate periods: the one of the reintroduction of Christianity and the one of the Benedictine Reform

- Regarding the “Reintroduction of Christianity”, the most typical and numerous classes of words introduced by the new religion have to do with the church and its services Thus the great majority of words having to do with religion were borrowed at this time and most of them have survived in only slightly altered form in Modern English Some of them are ABBOT, MASS, TEMPLE, CANDLE But the church also exercised a profound influence on the domestic life of the people This is seen in the adoption of many words as names of clothing and household such as PURPLE or CHEST, words denoting food LENTIL and PEAR, names of trees PINE or ALOE, words related to education and learning SCHOOL, GRAMMAR, or any other matter ANCHOR, FEVER, ELEPHANT

- Regarding the “Benedictine Reform”, a considerable number of words have to do with religious matters, but these differed from the previous ones in being less popular and expressing ideas of scientific and learned character such as CLOISTER or PROPHET,

literary and learned words such as HISTORY or TITLE, plans and trees such as CYPRESS and FIG, medical terms such as PLASTER or PARALYSIS, and animals as CAMEL or TIGER

In 1066 the Norman invasion changed the course of the English language by bringing to England both Norman French and Latin, thus dividing the country linguistically between the educated classes who spoke French and Latin and the common people who spoke only

English These historical events marked the beginning of the Middle English Period

(1150-1500) In this stage Latin entered the English language mainly through French although there was a big deal of words borrowed directly from Latin which were characterized by being less popular and by entering generally through written language

When William the Conqueror invaded England he led a politically well-organized power, built

on strong feudal base with an outstanding law and political organization, but the Normans were not so civilized in scholarship and literature At this time Paris replaced England as the centre of European intellectual life and Latin was the spoken language among ecclesiatics and men of learning Latin was not used as a spoken language by the common English population any longer but it continued to be used in written documents in England at different levels: in official texts and documents, in social communication and literature, and in educational and religious contexts Basically in the first century and a half after the Norman Conquest, written Latin replaced English for the formal communication From the end of the

12th century until the 13th century, French gradually began to replace Latin as the official language for charters, wills and in educational contexts Because French resembles Latin in many ways, it made borrowings from Latin to French very easy This is why it is often difficult

to decide whether a word was borowed directly from French or directly from Latin One of the sources of Latin vocabulary was the so-called “Wycliffe translation of the Bible” Wycliffe and his associates are credited with more than one thousand Latin words not previously found in English As these words have been retained in subsequent translations they have passed into common use Most of these terms are related to law, medicine, theology, science and literature These words were justified in the beginning by technical or professional use and later acquired a wider application such as GENIUS, INDEX, LEGAL, SPACIOUS or SCRIPT

As far as all three English, French and Latin were used in England during the Middle English Period it is easy to find three different words conveying the same idea in Modern English with some difference in tone, being English more popular, French more literary and Latin more

learned such as ASK – QUESTION – INTERROGATE or TIME – AGE – EPOCH, or HOLY – SACRED – CONSECRATED

In the 13th and 14th centuries, English began to re-emerge as an accepted standard language (rather than being just for the peasants) but at the same time it became fashionable among some poets and prose writers to embellish the texts with Latin borrowings as DIURNE, PALESTRAL or RECLINATORY This tendency came to be known as “aureate diction” Most

of these terms were lost in later language development but some of the “aureate terms” become part of the common speech such as LAUREATE, MEDITATION or ORIENTAL which were firstly found in Chaucer´s poems

The beginning of the Modern English Period is placed at 1500, which was the starting point

of the Renaissance, an important period for culture and science which was going to last until

1650 As I said above in the 14th century English had re-emerged as an accepted standard language while Norman French was decreasing in importance At the same time in the 16th century there were new circumstances affecting English language: the invention of the printing press, the rapid spread of popular education, the increased communication and means of communication and the growth of social consciusness All of these factors made possible the creation and absortion of a more or less standard English Regarding the printing press, more than 35,000 books were printed in Europe, the majority of which were in Latin Around 1640 over 20,000 titles in English appeared in England, which was a powerful force for promoting a standard uniform English

From a cultural point of view Renaissance was a period of increased activity in almost every field: the discovery of America, the reform of the church, the Copernican theory, the revolution of thought and the revival of classical learning There was a healthy desire for knowledge and Latin and Greek was the key to the world´s knowledge and the languages in which much highly esteemed literary works were to be read By contrast it was felt that vernacular languages such as English could not express the abstract ideas and the range of thought embodied in the ancient languages Under these circumstances English translators felt the temptation to transfer and borrow from Latin important terms they considered English language lacked Many new Latin words were introduced in English particularly in various technical and scientific fields, where English was notably weak Among the borrowings which were introduced in this period were nouns such as EXCURSION, ACCEPTANCE and EXPECTATIONS, adjectives such as EXTERNAL, FRIVOLOUS or APPROPRIATE and verbs such as ADAPT, MEDITATE or ANTICIPATE

Some words, in entering the language, retained their original form; other underwent change The adaptation of Latin words to English was affected by a simple process of cutting off the

Latin ending: consultore = CONSULT or excursionem = EXCURSION But it was not always

so More often a further change was necessary to bring the word in accordance with the

usual English spelling Thus Latin ending –us in adjectives was changed into –ous as in

conspicus – CONSPICUOUS or was replaced by –al as in external externus – EXTERNAL

Latin nouns ending in –tas were changed into –ty as in celeritas – CELERITY; -antia –entia appear in English with the ending –once, -ence or –ancy, -ency as in consonantia – CONSONANCE, constantia – CONSTANCE, concurrentia – CONCURRENCE or frequentia

– FREQUENCY

To fulfil the demand of new technological and scientific terms English had to coin new words

by using borrowed prefixes and suffixes, many of them taken from Latin Among the prefixes

we find Auto- as in AUTPBIOGRAPHY, Post- as in POSTGRADUATE, Super- as in SUPERHEATED, or Bi- as in BILINGUAL Regarding the suffixes we find –an as in AFRICAN, -ant/-ent as in ASSISTANT/PRESIDENT, -ian as in AUSTRIAN or –ician as in

MUSICIAN

It is interesting to point out that the borrowing of Latin words met with the opposition of many scholars as Sir John Cheke who believed that English could very well develop new words from old roots or revive expressions that had gone out of use The same attitude was found

in other scholars who considered the use of learned words pedantic and tried to drive them out by ridicule, calling them “inkorn terms” Cheke was so strongly opposed to the borrowing

of Latin and Greek words that he sought whenever possible for English equivalents He proposed to use FLESHSTRING for MUSCLE, MOONED for LUNATIC or CROSSED for CRUCIFIED

Regarding grammar, there are few traces of Latin grammar on English language To

understand the lack of influence it must be pointed out that Latin is a synthetic language,

that is say, a language which indicates the relationship of words in a sentence by means of inflections Most words chage their endings or forms to show their relationship to other words

of the sentence according to number, gender, case and tense By contrast English language

is an analytic language, that is, it makes extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs,

and depends on word order to show other relationships Some modern English words still inflect, much less so than in other European languages Old English was a fully inflected language as were most of the languages from the Germanic branch of IndoEuropean

languages, but English has suffered a notable process of simplification up to the present day, showing an almost complete absence of inflections The most noticeable trace of Latin grammar is the extensive use of prefixes and suffixes of Latin origin to coin new words, as I

have already explained, most of them adopted after 1500 (TRANSATLANTIC, ULTRASONIC, OBLIGATORY)

Latin influence is still growing in Modern English, as the extensive use of Latin calques demonstrates It is not difficult to find expressions such as COMMONPLACE which calques

Latin locus communis, DEVIL´S ADVOCATE from Latin advocatus diaboli (referring to an

official appointed to present arguments against a proposed beatification in the Catholic

Church), WISDOM TOOTH which calques Latin dens sapientiae, MILKY WAY from via lactea, REST IN PEACE from requiescat in pace, or IN A NUTSHELL which calques Latin in nuce

To sum up, I have made an account of Latin influence on English throughout different historical stages, reaching the conclusion that Latin tracks on present day English is mainly appreciated on vocabulary We must remind our students that the English vocabulary of Latin origin is basically restricted to learned and scholarly contexts This vocabulary makes an important contribution to the richness of English but they must know that the bulk of vocabulary used in everyday conversation is from Anglo-Saxon origin, as the case of phrasal verbs, whose use is difficult for Spanish students to assimilate Many English students of Spanish origin are tempted to use words of Latin origin in everyday conversations producing

a striking effect on English speaking people (for instance saying “I have constructed a sentence” instead of “I have made a sentence”) In conclusion the simplicity of form together

with the flexibility towards the assimilation of words borrowed form other languages and the spontaneous creation of new words have made English what is today, an effective medium of international communication