Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English
language. It was spoken from about 600 A.D. until about 1100 A.D., and most of its
words had been a part of a still earlier form of the language. Many of the common
words of modern English, like
home, stone, meat
are native, or Old English, words.
Most of the irregular verbs in English derive from Old English (
speak, swim, drive,
ride, sing
), as do most of the English shorter numerals (
two, three, six, ten
) and most
of pronouns (
I, you, we, who
).
Many Old English words can be traced back to Indo-European, a prehistoric
language that was the common ancestor of Greek and Latin as well. Others came into
Old English as it was becoming a separate language.
(a) Indo-European Element: the oldest words in English are of the Indo European
origin. They form part of the basic word-stock of all Indo-European languages. There
are several semantic groups:
∙
words expressing family relations:
brother, daughter, father, mother, son
;
∙
names of parts of the human body:
foot, eye, ear, nose, tongue
;
∙
names of trees, birds, animals:
tree, birch, cow, wolf, cat
;
∙
names expressing basic actions:
to come, to know, to sit, to work
;
∙
words expressing qualities:
red, quick, right, glad, sad
;
∙
numerals:
one, two, three, ten, hundred
, etc.
(b) Common Germanic words are not to be found in other Indo-European
languages but the Germanic. They constitute a very large layer of the vocabulary,
e.g.:
∙
nouns:
hand, life, sea, ship, meal, winter, ground, coal, goat
;
∙
adjectives:
heavy, deep, free, broad, sharp, grey
;
∙
verbs:
to buy, to drink, to find, to forget, to go, to have, to live, to make
;
∙
pronouns:
all, each, he, self, such
;
∙
adverbs:
again, forward, near
;
∙
prepositions:
after, at, by, over, under, from, for
.
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§ 2. Borrowings
The foreign or borrowed element in the English vocabulary is represented by
words originating from different languages. Many of them are given below.
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: