External means of enriching vocabulary

The first Latin borrowings entered the language before the Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians invaded the British Isles, i.e. at the time when they still lived on the continent. Due to trade relations with their southern powerful neighbour – the Roman Empire – Germanic tribes learned a number of products that had been unknown to then, and, consequently, their names. So the first stratum of borrowings is mainly words connected with trade. Many of them are preserved in Modern English, such as:

pound, inch, pepper, cheese, wine, apple, pear, plumb, etc.

The second stratum of words was composed of loan Latin words that the German tribes borrowed already on British soil from the Romanized Celts, whom they had conquered in the 5^th century. Those were words connected with building and architecture, as the preserved nowadays:

title, wall, wall, mill, etc.

They denoted objects which the Germanic invaders encountered on the British Isles.

The third stratum of Latin loan words was composed of words borrowed after the introduction of the Christian religion. They are generally of a religious nature, such as the present-day words:

bishop, devil, apostle, monk.

As Latin was the language of learning at the time, there also entered the language some words that were not directly connected with religion, such as:

Master, school, palm, lion, tiger, plant, astronomy, etc.

- Celtic borrowings

The Celtic language left very few traces in the English language, because the Germanic conquerors partly exterminated the local population, partly drove them away to the less fertile mountainous parts of the country, where they were not within reach of the invaders. The Celtic-speaking people who remained on the territory occupied by the Germanic tribes were slaves, and even those were not numerous. It is small wonder therefore that the number of Celtic loan words was limited. Among the few borrowed words we can mention:

Down (the downs of Dover), binn (bin – basket, crib, manger),

Some Celtic roots are preserved in geographical names, such as:

Kil (church – Kilbrook), ball (house – Ballantrae), esk (water – river Esk)

and some others.