English vocabulary

Etymology is a branch of lexicology studying the origin of words.

Etymologically, the English vocabulary is divided into native and loan words, or
borrowed words. A native word is a word which belongs to the original English
word stock and is known from the earliest available manuscripts of the Old English
period. A borrowed word is a word taken over from another language and modified
according to the standards of the English language.
Native words are subdivided into two groups:
1) words of the Common Indo-European word stock;
2) words of the Common Germanic origin.
Words of the Indo-European stock have cognates (parallels) in different
Indo-European languages: Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Polish, Russian and
others:
father (OE fder, Gothic fadar, Swedish fader, German Vater, Greek patr, Latin
pter, French pere, Persian pedr, Sanscrit pitr);
words of the Common Germanic stock have cognates only in the Germanic group:
in German, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, etc.: to sing (OE singan, Gothic siggwan,
German singen).

" They include most of the auxiliary and model verbs: shall, will, should,
must, can, may; pronouns: I. he, my, your, his, who, whose; prepositions: in, out
on, under, for, of; numerals: one, two, three, four, five, six, etc; conjunctions; and,
but, till, as, etc.; words denoting parts of body: head, hand, arm, back, foot, eye
etc; members of a family: father, mother, brother, son, wife; natural phenomena
and planets: snow, rain, wind, sun, moon, animals: horse, cow, sheep, cat; common
actions: do, make, go, come, hear, see, eat, speak, talk etc. All these words are very
frequent words, we use them every day in our speech. Many words of native origin
possess large clusters of derived and compound words in the present-day language.
For example. help helper, helpful, helpfully, helpfulness, helping^
helpingly, helpable, helpably, helped, unhelpable etc.
Such affixes of native origin as er, -ness, -ish, -ed,
-un, -mis, -dom, -hood, -ly, -over, -out, -under are of native origin.
We see that the role of native words in the language is great. Many authors use
native words more than foreign ones. Thus Shakespear used 90% native words and
10% foreign words. Swift used 75% native words.

Native words constitute about 25 percent of the English vocabulary, but

they make up 80 percent of the 500 most frequent words. Almost all native words
belong to very important semantic groups. They include most of the auxiliary and
modal verbs, pronouns, prepositions, numerals, conjunctions, articles. Besides high
frequency value words of the native word stock are characterized by the following
features:
simple structure (they are often monosyllabic);
developed polysemy;
great word-building power;
an ability to enter a great number of phraseological units;
a wide range of lexical and grammatical valency;
stability.
The classification of borrowed words
Some scientists classify borrowings into: phonetic borrowings, translation
loans, semantic borrowings, morphemic borrowings.
Phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages, they are called
loan words proper. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and
meaning. Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is
substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language. In some cases
the spelling is changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The
position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the
borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the meaning of the
borrowed word are also changed. Such words as: labour, travel, table, chair, people
are phonetic borrowings from French; apparatchik, nomenklatura, sputnik are
phonetic borrowings from Russian; bank, soprano, duet are phonetic borrowings
from Italian etc.
Translation loans are word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme )
translations of some foreign words or expressions. In such cases the notion is
borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, to
take the bull by the horns (Latin), fair sex ( French), living space (German)
etc. Some translation loans appeared in English from Latin already in the Old
English period, For example. Sunday (solis dies). There are translation loans from
the languages of Indians, such as: pipe of peace, pale-faced, from German
masterpiece, homesickness, superman.

Semantic borrowings are such units when a new meaning of the unit existing
in the language is borrowed. It can happen when we have two relative languages
which have common words with different meanings, For example. there are
semantic borrowings between Scandinavian and English, such as the meaning to
live for the word to dwell' which in Old English had the meaning to wander.
Morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the
language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language
into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar
to the people speaking the borrowing language, For example we can find a lot of
Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of
words - hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, For
example. goddess, beautiful etc.
Non-assimilated borrowings (barbarisms) are borrowings which are used by
Englishmen rather seldom and are non-assimilated, For example. addio (Italian),
tete-a-tete (French), dolce vita (Italian), duende (Spanish), an homme a femme
(French), gonzo (Italian) etc.
There are different kinds of borrowed words.
According to the nature of the borrowing borrowed words may be:
1) borrowings proper; 1) translation loans; 3) semantic loans.
Borrowings proper are words which are taken from another language with
their sound, graphic forms and their meaning.
For example. street, wine (from Latin), anger, scare (from Scandinavian), garage
(from French),
Translation loans are words or expressions formed from the elements
existing in the English language according to the patterns of the source language.
For example. collective-farm, five-year- plan, house of rest, peaceful coexistence.
A semantic loan is the borrowing of a meaning for a word already existing in
the English language. For example. the compound word shock brigades which
existed in the English language with the meaning received a
new meaning under the influence of the Russian language
(compare Russian ). The English word pioneer meant
explorer and one who is among the first in new field of activity*. Now under
the influence of the Russian word it has got the meaning a member of
the Young Pioneer's Organization. A word borrowed from another language never
brings into the adopting language the whole of its semantic structure (meaning). It
is borrowed in one of its meanings. For example. the Russian word sputnik was
borrowed by the English language only in the meaning of artificial sattelite.
About 75 percent of the English vocabulary are borrowed words.
Words were borrowed, first of all, from Latin, Scandinavian and French.

Some words are borrowed from one language into several other languages and
become international: second, minute, professor, opera, jazz, sport and some
comparatively new words laptop, DVD disc, genetic code, bionics. Most international
words were either borrowed from Latin and Greek (text, atom, symbol, logic, museum,
zone (Gr)) or made from Latin and Greek elements in some language (or languages) and
then borrowed by other languages (cf.: democratic (Fr), civilization (Fr), determinism
(Germ), theology (Germ), etc.).
International words are especially important in terminology of politics, art,
industry, science. A great number of international words are also among the names of
sports (football, volleyball, hockey), clothes or cloths (pullover, sweater, leggings, jersey,
silk, etc.), food and drinks (pizza, spaghetti, vodka, martini, etc.), names of exotic fruits,
animals and other objects (avocado, grapefruit, mango, anaconda, orangutan, etc.).

False-cognate
Noun
(plural false cognates)
1. A word that appears to be cognate to that is, to have a shared linguistic
origin with a given word, but that is in fact unrelated.
2. (sometimes proscribed) A false friend, a word that appears to have the same
meaning as a given word, but that does not.
Usage notes
Some speakers consider the usage of false cognate to mean "false friend" to
be incorrect.
Examples of false cognates:
Many completely unrelated languages use some variant of ma for
"mother".
English have (the related German verb haben) and Latin habe are
thought to be false cognates have is more likely cognate to capi.
French attendre and English attend are indeed cognates (they have a
shared root), but they are false friends (they have different meanings),
thus, they are only false cognates in the second sense.
Similarly, Spanish atender and English attend mean "assist, look after"
and "attend," respectively; while Spanish asistir and
English assist mean "attend" and "assist," respectively. Both words are
derived from Latin attendere.
English island and Spanish isla are false cognates but also are true
friends, since they share the same meaning. Island is derived from old
English igland and isla is derived from Latin insula.