English Latin Russian

mother mater мать

brother frater брат

night nox ночь

be fieri быть

stand stare стоять

two duo два

three tres три

ten decem десять

Common Germanic stratum

There are also words inherited from Common Germanic. Common Germanic is supposed to exist before it began splitting into various subgroups around the 1^st century B.C. – 1^st A.D. these words can be found in various Germanic languages, but not in Indo-European languages other than Germanic.

English Germanic Swedish

man Mann man

earth Erde jord

harm Harm harm

green grün grőn

grey grau grā

The occurrence or non-occurrence of corresponding words in related languages is often a proof of their common origin. But, certainly, the word could be borrowed from the same source into different languages, especially if we speak about languages in modern times.

Foreign element in Modern English (borrowings)

As we know, borrowed words comprise more than half the vocabulary of the language. These borrowings entered the language from many sources, forming consequently various etymological strata. The principal ones here are as follows:

- the Latin element

- the Scandinavian element

- the French element

Latin element

The first Latin words entered the language of the forefathers of the English nation before they came to Britain. It happened during a direct intercourse and trade relations with the peoples of the Roman Empire. They mainly names of household items and products:

Apple, pear, plum, cheese, pepper, dish, kettle, etc.

Already on the Isles from the Romanized Celts they borrowed such words as:

Street, wall, mill, tile, port, caster (camp – in such words as Lancaster, Winchester).

Words of this kind denoted objects of Latin material culture. Latin words such as:

Alter, bishop, candle, church, devil, martyr, monk, nun, pope, psalm, etc.

were borrowed after the introduction of the Christian religion (7^th century), which is reflected in their meaning.

The number of these words inherited from Old English is almost two hundred.

We mentioned these words as Latin borrowings in the sense that they entered English from Latin, but many of them were Greek borrowings into Latin, such as:

Bishop, church, devil

and many others.

Another major group of Latin borrowings entered English with the revival of learning (15^th – 16^th centuries). Latin was drawn upon for scientific nomenclature, as at the time the language was understood by scientists all over the world, it was considered the common name-language for science. These words were mainly borrowed through books, by people who knew Latin well and tried to preserve the Latin form of the world as much as possible. Hence such words as:

Antenna – antennae, index – indices, datum – data, stratum – strata, phenomenon – phenomena, axis – axes, formula – formulae, etc.

Very many of them have suffixes which clearly mark them as Latin borrowings of the time:

- verbs ending in –ate, - ute: aggravate, prosecute

- adjectives ending in –ant, -ent, -ior, -al: reluctant, evident, superior, cordial.

These word-building elements together with the stylistic sphere of the language where such words are used are generally sufficient for the word attribution.