The role of the borrowings in the English language

People all around the globe with different mother tongues often have the same opinion regarding loanwords in their languages; they mostly do not like them. They wish that their own native words would be used instead and often fear that too much borrowing could lead to their mother tongue eventually dying out. A lot of this fear has been directed on the English language the last decades. Due to its tremendous rise as a global language many English words have entered other languages in all parts of the world. Babysitter and makeup are just two examples of common English words that are used in many other languages around the globe. Today, many countries are trying to reduce the influence that English has on their native tongues. In France, for example, laws are passed that make it illegal to use an English word in official contexts when there are native words that could be used instead .

Introduction…………………………………………………………………...……3

1. Theoretical background………………………………………………………….4

1.1 Definiton………………………………………………………………………..4

1.2 History of the English language…………………………………………...…...7

1.3 Loanword periods………………...…………………………………………….8

1.3.1 The Zero period…………………………………...………………………….9

1.3.2 The First period……………………………………………………………..10

1.3.3 The Second period…………………………………………………………..11

1.3.4 The Third period…………………………………………………….………13

1.3.5 The Modern period………………………………………………….………15

1.4 Different kinds of borrowings………………………………………….……..16

1.5 What kinds of words are borrowed?.................................................................17

1.6 How many words are loanwords?.....................................................................19

2. An investigation of the origin of the words in “God save the Queen”…..…….21

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….….28

List of the literature………………………………………………………………30

Appendix 1……………………………………………………………………….31