LATIN AND FRENCH
The heavy lenders
Even the Anglo-Saxons borrowed from Latin: fork, street and wine. After the Norman Conquest came French words such as government, pay, science and war.
See the numbers
WORDS ON LOAN
English is a
great borrower.
Even the word loan is borrowed.
A loanword is a word taken from one language and used in another. English has taken them from Latin, French, Old Norse and, today, from languages all over the world, and most of them never went back.
ON LOAN since the Vikings
Guess the source- Latin and French lead
- Vikings gave everyday words
- Borrowing is now global
- A vocabulary built from many others
THE SHORT ANSWER
Most borrowing came
from two languages.
Latin and French dominate in almost every period.
Other languages left fewer words, but some of the most everyday ones.
OLD NORSE
Viking everyday words
Scandinavian settlers left sky, egg, skirt and window, and even they, their and them. Estimates of surviving Norse loanwords range from 600 to 900.
Guess the source
WORLDWIDE
A global menu
Today English borrows from all over the world. Recent food loanwords include sushi, tapas, chapatti and pizza, usually kept in their original form.
Spot a loanword
FOUR WAYS TO SPOT ONE
Look at the word,
listen to the sound.
Many loanwords have settled in so well that nobody notices them. A few clues help you tell the newer arrivals.
Look for accents
Some loanwords keep marks from their original spelling, like the diacritic in the French naïveté.
Listen to the pronunciation
We often say loanwords more like English words, but some keep a sound from the language they came from.
Watch the plural
We usually leave loanwords unchanged, though countable ones take an English plural: pizzas, chapattis.
Check a historical dictionary
An etymology entry shows where and roughly when a word arrived, and whether it came through another language first.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Borrowed words
do the heavy lifting.
One figure on everyday vocabulary,
one on the Viking legacy.
nearly 50%
Share of the 1,000 most used English words from French or Latin
Among the 1,000 most frequently used words in modern English, not far short of 50 percent came into the language from French or Latin, based on Oxford English Dictionary data.
COMMON WORDS · BORROWED WORDS
600–900
Estimated Old Norse loanwords surviving in English
Researchers since the 19th century have tried to count them. Estimates range from 600 to 900, including die, egg, law, leg, loan, sky, take and they.
VIKING WORDS · DANCE (2013)
Numbers do not tell the whole story: the total from early Scandinavian is relatively low, but it includes some of the most intimate words in English, such as leg, skin, sky and they.
GUESS THE SOURCE
Where did this
word come from?
Pick an everyday word to see which language English borrowed it from. The bar shows roughly how long it has been part of English.
Word origins as given by the sources below. Some words came partly from French and partly from Latin.
VIKINGS IN THE VOCABULARY
Neighbours who could
half understand each other.
Old English and Old Norse were both Germanic languages, and the University of Nottingham notes that their speakers could, to a certain extent, understand one another. That closeness helped Norse words slip into everyday English.
It also makes them hard to prove. Richard Dance of the University of Cambridge sorts candidate words into four groups, from clear sound-change evidence to obscure etymologies, and says listening for the Vikings needs a selective and discriminating ear.
Questions
Questions people ask
What is a loanword?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines a loanword as a word taken from one language and used in another, such as the French naïveté.
Which languages has English borrowed most from?
Latin and French dominate in almost every period of English, according to Oxford English Dictionary data summarised in Borrowed Words. English has also borrowed from Greek, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Old Norse and Japanese.
Did the Vikings change English?
Yes. Words such as sky, egg, skirt and window come from Old Norse, and so do the pronouns they, their and them. Estimates of surviving Norse loanwords range from 600 to 900.
Is the word loan itself borrowed?
Yes. Loan appears in the list of Old Norse loanwords that survive in modern English, alongside die, egg, law, leg, meek, seem, sky, take, they and till.
Is English still borrowing words?
Yes, now with a global sweep. Borrowing from Japanese has grown over the past century, and recent food loanwords include sushi, tapas, chapatti and pizza.
Sources
- Slate (from Oxford Dictionaries): Languages that have contributed to English vocabulary over time
- University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections: Language and Runes (PDF)
- Medievalists.net: Listening for the Vikings, some evidence from etymology (Richard Dance, 2013)
- Cambridge Dictionary: loanword
- Cambridge Dictionary, English Grammar Today: loan words and new words
Updated