Greek Influence on English Language

Indirect and direct borrowings Since the living Grecian and slope languages were not in direct pertain until modern times, borrowings were necessarily indirect, coming either through Latin (through texts or various vernaculars), or from Ancient Grecian texts, not the living language. Some Grecian nomenclature were borrowed intoLatinand its descendants, theRomance languages. incline often received these words fromFrench. Their phonetic and orthographic form has sometimes changed good.For instance,placewas borrowed both by grizzly position and by French from Latinplatea, itself borrowed from Grecian ( ) broad (street) the Italianpiazzaand Spanishplaza contrive the same origin, and have been borrowed into English in parallel. The wordolivecomes through theRomancefrom the Latin wordoliva, which in turn comes from the Grecian (elaiwa). 12A later Greek word, (bouturon)3becomes Latin unlessyrumand eventually English cover. A large group of early borrowings, again transmitted f irst through Latin, then through various vernaculars, comes from Christian vocabularybishop< episkoposoverseer),priest< (presbyteroselder), andchurch building<? (kyriakon). 4In some cases, the orthography of these words was later changed to reflect the Greek spellinge. g. quirewas respelled aschoirin the 17th century. Many more words were borrowed by scholars writing in post-classical Latin. Some words were borrowed in essentially their original meaning, often transmitted through classical Latinphysics,iambic,eta,necromancy. A a couple of(prenominal) result from scribal errorsencyclopedia< the circle of learning, not a compound in Greekacne(skin condition) < erroneous lt high point, acme. Others were borrowed unchanged as technical terms, but with specific, impertinent meaningstelescope< far-seeing refers to anoptical instrument for seeing far awayphlogiston< burnt thing is a supposedfire-making potential. But by far the largest Greek contribution to English vocabulary is the huge number of scientific, medical, and technicalneologismsthat have been coined bycompounding Greek roots and affixesto produce novel words which never existed in the Greek languageutopia(1516, not + place),zoology(1669, ),hydrodynamics(1738, + ),photography(1834, + ),oocyte(1895, + ),helicobacter(1989, + ). Such terms argon coined in all the European languages, and spread to the others freelyincluding to Modern Greek. Traditionally, these coinages were constructed development only Greek morphemes,e. g. metamathematics, but increasingly, Greek, Latin, and other morphemes are combined, as intelevision(Greek + Latinvision),metalinguistic(Greek + Latinlingua+ Greek - + Greek - ), andgarbology(Englishgarbage+ Greek - . Thesehybrid wordswere formerly considered to be barbarisms. Many Greek affixes such asanti-and-ichave becomeproductivein English, combining with arbitrary English wordsantichoice,Fascistic. Most learned borrowings and coinages quest af ter the classical LatinRomanization system, where c represents ? etc. , with a fewer exceptionseureka(cf. heuristic),kinetic(cf. cinematography),krypton(cf. cryptic). Some Greek words were borrowed through Arabic and then Romanceinterpersonal chemistry( or ),elixir( ),alembic( ),botargo( , and possiblyquintal( < Latincentenarium (pondus)). Curiously,chemistappears to be aback-formationfromalchemist. In the 19th and 20th centuries a few learned words and phrases were introduced using a more or less direct transliteration of Ancient Greek ( instead than the traditional Latin-based morphology and dropped inflectional endings),e. g. nous( ),hoi polloi( ). Some Greek words have given rise toetymological doublets, being borrowed both through an organic, indirect route, and a learned, direct route into Englishanthemandantiphon( ,franticandfrenetic( ),butterandbutyr(ic)( ),bishopandepiscop(al)( ),balmandbalsam( , probably itself a borrowing from Semitic),blameandblasphemy( ),boxandpyx( is)( ),choirandchorus( ),trivetandtripod( / -),slanderandscandal( ),oil,olive,oleum, andelaeo-( )almondandamygdala( )dramanddrachma( )paperandpaper rush( )caratandkeratin( , -). 56 Finally, with the growth of tourism, some words reflecting modern Greek ulture have been borrowed into Englishmany of them originally borrowings into Greek themselvesretsina,souvlaki,taverna(< Italian),ouzo(disputed etymology),moussaka(< Turkish < Arabic),baklava(< Turkish),feta(< Italian),bouzouki(< Turkish),gyro(the food, a calque of Turkishdoner). - editGreek as an intermediary Many words from theHebrew Biblewere transmitted to the western languages through the Greek of theSeptuagint, often without morphological ordinancepharaoh( ),seraphim( , ,paradise( < Hebrew < Persian),rabbi( ). - editThe written form of Greek words in English Many Greek words, especially those borrowed through the literary tradition, are placeable as such from their spelling. Already in Latin, there were speci fic conventions for borrowing Greek. So Greek? was written as y, as ? , as ? ,? as ph, and? as c. These conventions (which originally reflected pronunciation) have carried over into English and other languages with historical orthography (like French).They make it possible to recognize words of Greek origin, and give hints as to their pronunciation and inflection. On the other hand, the spelling of some words was refashioned to reflect their etymologyMiddle Englishcaracterbecamecharacterin the 16th century. 7 The Ancient Greek diphthongs and may be spelled in three different ways in English the digraphsaeandoe the ligatures? and? or the simple lettere. Both the digraphs and ligatures are uncommon in American usage, but the digraphs remain common in British usage. Examples are encyclopaedia /encyclop? ia / encyclopedia, haemoglobin / h? moglobin / hemoglobin, oedema / ? dema / edema, Oedipus / ? dipus / Edipus (rare). The verbal ending- is spelled-izein American English and-iseor-i zein British English. In some cases, a words spelling clearly shows its Greek origin. If it includesphor includesybetween consonants, it is very in all probability Greek. If it includesrrh,phth, orchth or starts withhy-,ps-,pn-, orchr- or the rarerpt-,ct-,chth-,rh-,x-,sth-,mn-,tm-,gn-orbd-, then it is Greek, with some exceptionsgnat,gnaw,gneiss.One exception isptarmigan, which is from aGaelicword, thephaving been added byfalse etymology. The wordtrophy, though in the long run of Greek origin, did not have a? but a? in its Greek form, . - editPronunciation In clusters such asps-,pn-, orgn-which are not allowed byEnglish phonotactics, the usual English pronunciation drops the first consonant (e. g. psychology) at the start of a word comparegnosticn? st? k andagnostic? gn? st? k there are a few exceptionstmesistmi? s? s.Initialx-is pronouncedz. Chis pronounced likekrather than as in churche. g. character, chaos. Consecutive vowels are often pronounced separately rather than forming a single vowel sound or one of them becoming silent (e. g. theatrevs. feat). - editInflectional endings and plurals Though many English words derived from Greek through the literary route drop the inflectional endings (tripod,zoology,pentagon) or use Latin endings (papyrus,mausoleum), some preserve the Greek endingstetrahedron,schema(cf. cheme),topos,lexicon,climax. In the case of Greek endings, the plurals sometimes follow theGreek rulesphenomenon, phenomenatetrahedron, tetrahedracrisis, criseshypothesis, hypothesesstigma, stigmatatopos, topoicyclops, cyclopes but often do notcolon, colonsnot*cola(except for thevery rare technical term of rhetoric)pentathlon, pentathlonsnot*pentathlademon, demonsnot*demonesclimaxes, not*climaces.Usage is mixed in some casesschema, schemasorschematalexicon, lexiconsorlexicahelix, helixesorhelicessphinx, sphingesorsphinxesclitoris, clitorisesorclitorides. And there are misleading casespentagoncomes from Greekpentagonon, so its plural cannot be*pentaga it ispentagons(Greek /pentagona). (cf. Plurals from Latin and Greek) - editVerbs Few English verbs are derived from the corresponding Greek verbs examples arebaptizeandostracize.However, the Greek verbal suffix-izeis productive in Latin, the Romance languages, and English words likemetabolize, though composed of a Greek root and a Greek suffix, are modern compounds. - editStatistics The contribution of Greek to the English vocabulary can be quantified in two ways,typeandtokenfrequencies type absolute frequency is the proportion of distinct words token frequency is the proportion of words in actual texts.Since most words of Greek origin are specialized technical and scientific coinages, the type frequency is considerably higher than the token frequency. And the type frequency in a large word list will be larger than that in a low-down word list. In a typical English dictionary of 80,000 words, which corresponds very roughly to the vocabulary of an educated English speaker, about 5 % of the words are borrowed from Greek directly, and about 25% indirectly (if we count modern coinages from Greek roots as Greek). citation needed - editReferences 1. This must have been an early borrowing, since the Latinvreflects a still-pronounceddigamma. The Greek word was in turn apparently borrowed from a pre-Indo-EuropeanMediterraneansubstrate(see alsoGreek substrate language), although the earliest attested form of it is theMycenaean Greeke-ra-wa(transliterated as elava), attested inLinear Bsyllabic scriptseee-ra-wa, Mycenaean (Linear b) English Glossary 2. Palaeolexicon, Word study instrument of ancient languages 3. Carl Darling Buck,A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European LanguagesISBN 0-226-07937-6notes that the word has the form of a compound + cow-cheese, possibly a calque from Scythian, or possibly an adaptation of a native Scythian word 4. church, on Oxford Dictionaries