Lexical borrowing from
modern European languages
Sources
include OED analysis by former students JRS and ZP—thanks!
Fields?
see Millward and the encyclopedia
articles by Jurcic, Schwarz, and Ward for generalizations
§ French includes arts,
fashion, food
§ Italian includes trade,
architecture, the arts (musical terms esp.)
§ Spanish/Portuguese often the
medium for “many of our terms for the exotic products and life-forms found in
the Far East and the New World”
Today:
use some specific examples to illustrate general
concepts
Remember
requirements for borrowing
§ some bilingualism
§
projected
gain (linguistic/objective/need or social/subjective/prestige)
Some
foreign borrowings are fairly straightforward (objective/need?):
§
new
words for new things
Lexercise: let’s look at sherry
What
language is it from? (Spanish)
What’s
the etymon? (Xeres) How was it pronounced in the c16th ?
(/š/)
Semantic
field: it’s a specific kind of white wine
§ sack “a general name for a class of
white wines formerly imported from Spain and the Canaries”
§ sherris = sherris sacke
originally “the still white wine made near Xeres”
1597 SHAKES. 2 Hen.
IV (Qo. 1600) IV. iii. 104 A good sherris sacke hath a two fold operation
in it.
1597 SHAKES. 2 Hen.
IV, IV. iii. 111 The second propertie of your excellent Sherris,
is, the warming of the Blood:..the Sherris warmes it, and makes it course from
the inwards, to the parts extremes.
-can we infer that sherris and sherris sacke are interchangeable for this speaker?
Do these
early examples show ‘adoption’ (pronunciation)? ‘adaptation’ (spelling)?
How was the word subsequently adapted? (back-formed singular sherry from reanalysis of sherris as plural)
1608 MIDDLETON Mad World v. H1, Some Shirry for my
Lords players there
What
were the C17th spellings? sherry, shirry, shery, sherree
§ more oral borrowing? (no
attempt to replicate Spanish place name)
§ variation also reflects
state of English spelling, e.g.
o
double
consonants <r> / <rr>
o
final
<-y> / <-ee> / <-ie>
Motive:
need or prestige?
§ commercial need: distinguish
particular product or class of sack
§ prestige of foreign name
(source of superior product)
1614 B. JONSON Barth. Fair V. iv, Cok.
Sack? you said but e'en now it should be Sherry. Pvp. Io. Why so it is;
sherry, sherry, sherry.
Process
of nativization
§ immediately compounded with sack
§ used
figuratively (once)
fig. 1619 Pasquils
Palinodia title-p., A pleasant pynte of Poeticall Sherry.
§ more recently, generalized
to denote fortified wines similar to those of Xeres
o
made in Spain
o
made elsewhere
(usually signified with a prefixed word,i.e. Cape Sherry)
o
.
1967 Times 1 Aug. 6/5 ‘Sherry’ means a wine coming from the Jerez
district of Spain. The Court, giving judgment,..decided that it would be unjust
now to restrain Vine Products Ltd...from using the expressions ‘British
sherry’, ‘English sherry’, ‘Cyprus sherry’, ‘South African sherry’, and
‘Australian sherry’, used for certain wines in England.
-cf. champagne vs sparkling white wine,
cognac vs. brandy
Borrowing
more interesting with less concrete referents!
Let’s
look at hors d’œuvres
§ not thoroughly adapted to
English spelling! I had to use the ‘symbol’ chart to get the <oe>
ligature
§ italicized in all OED quotations:
still felt to be foreign?
o
marked with ||
as not naturalized (do you agree, though?)
o
certainly hard
to spell for many anglophones
Origin:
French phrase meaning ‘outside (the) work’
First
came in with a meaning closer to this ‘[something] out of the ordinary course
of things’
§ adverb: Addison’s Spectator
1714 “The Frenzy of one who is given up for a Lunatick, is a French hors
d’œuvre, something which is singular in its kind”
o
notice that
it’s glossed (for his wannabe audience?)
§ noun: Walpole, letter
(1783): “This is a hors d’œuvre, nor do I know a word of news”
But
that meaning has been superseded by the specific meaning we’re now familiar
with: “an item of food served as a relish to whet the appetite”
§ between the courses of a
meal or before it as an appetizer (c19th)
§ instead of a meal: at a
cocktail reception, etc.
OED
quotations imply pretension (and the second one perhaps anticipates inevitable
pejoration? need to see context)
1742 POPE Dunc. IV. 317 He..Try'd all hors-d'
uvres,
all liqueurs defin'd, Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd.
1771 SMOLLETT Humph. Cl. 8 Aug., I have seen turnips
make their appearance, not as a dessert, but by way of hors d'uvres,
or whets.
1898 Pall Mall Mag. Jan. 85 The more unpalatable is an
hors d'uvre
[to him], the more fashionable is the dinner which it precedes.
More elevated
than whet “something that whets the appetite; chiefly, light refreshment
taken as an appetizer or to stave off hunger till the next meal”
1769 MRS. RAFFALD Engl.
Housekpr. (1778) 139 To make a nice Whet before Dinner. Cut some slices of
bread.., fry them in butter, [etc.].
1852 W. JERDAN Autobiogr. I. xxiii. 189 He..swallowed
his two dozen of green oysters as a whet, and proceeded to dine.
But
whet mostly denoted an appetizer in the form of a small draught of
liquor; a dram, a drink (cf. wet).”
1688 SHADWELL Sqr. Alsatia II. 23 Let's
whett; bring some Wine. Come on; I love a Whett.
1741 RICHARDSON Pamela (1785) III. 360 They whipt
out two Bottles of Champaigne instantly, for a Whet, as they called it.
-interesting
that “sarvant” Pamela isn’t familiar with the concept: can we infer therefore
that whet isn’t a ‘low’ word?
Integration:
figurative use
fig. 1877 L. W. M. LOCKHART Mine is
Thine xiii, Art and literature were for him the hors d'uvres
of life.
Let’s
look at connoisseur
§ from French (now spelled connaisseur)
§ ultimately from Latin cognoscitor-em
(from cognoscere): “one who knows a subject thoroughly”
Cognate
with cognoscente (sg.), cognoscenti (pl.)
§ “a discerning expert”, “one
who knows a subject thoroughly; a connoisseur; chiefly in reference to the fine
arts”
o
1778: “The
cognoscenti allow that Ireland is a school of music”
o
1862: “Turner
neglected by the rich cognoscenti of the day”
Seems
to have come in with two senses
§ original “somebody well
versed in a subject” (OED obs.)
o
a1734: “no
ordinary connoisseur in the sciences”
§ specialized: “an expert
judge in matters of taste”, “a person knowledgeable in one of the fine arts and
competent to judge”
o
1719: “Two
Discourses on the Art of Criticism, as it relates to Painting and the Sciences
of a Connoisseur”
§ why not use critic or
judge?
· prestige of French
· association of France with
art, neoclassicism
Its
users’ knowledge of French made it easy to integrate?
§ early uses not glossed
§ spelling difficult but not
too variable
o
a few errors? connoissuers
(1796, in a quotation extending it from art to cider)
§ interesting that the error
is in this example!
o
can we infer
from the relative accuracy of the spelling that its users tend to know their
written French?
Has
generalized from art to “other matters of taste”
§ cider (1796), (1834) “Merton
was a connoisseur in ladies’ dress”
§ anything connoting
“refinement, culture”... (from web)
o
cannabis, Low-carb connoisseur,
cigars, wines
o
cars, Caribbean islands, cruises,
koi, sundials, Web connoisseur
Occasionally
used as a verb (more current in early 19th century?)
§ a1821: ‘a connoisseuring
look’
§ a1828: ‘connoisseured out of
his senses’
Rendezvous is from French, ultimately
from the imperative plural meaning ‘present or betake yourselves’
It
entered English in the 1590s
· as a military term, denoting
a place appointed for assembling troops (or ships)
o 1591 Our army
was marched, within a myle of Roan, where the rendevous was appointed
o 1732 It was
highly necessary to have a place of arms, a place of defence, and a rendezvous
· but also in more general use
denoting a place for meeting
o 1594 A tauerne
is the Randeuous, the Exchange, the staple for good fellows
o
1613
The bed is the best Rendevou of mankind
o
1711
Steele Spectator The Coffee-house is the Place of Rendezvous to all that
live near it
· ‘a meeting held by arrangement’ (i.e. not just the place)
[Dead-end
meaning of ‘place of retreat or refuge’ (not for meeting)
·
1596
A Randeuous, a Home to flye vnto]
Semantic
subtleties
· newer (but historical)
specialized sense: “pre-arranged meeting and docking of two or more spacecraft
o 1959 “Many
proposed space missions will require achieving rendezvous of two bodies in an
orbit about a planet”
· military origins of space
program?
· technological challenge:
positive focus on meetings?
· researchers’ involvement:
personification of spacecraft
Wildly
varying spellings
· oral borrowing
· general borrowing
o
ignorance of
French and its morphology
§ rende(z),vou(s)
· challenge of representing
the nasal vowel (Ran-, Ren-)
Foreign
affixes: a case study of –eer (engineer, volunteer)
You
can borrow
§ words
§ affixes: -eer is a
case study of one mildly productive one
Suffix
–eer an Anglicization of French –ier (itself from Latin
–iarius > -ary)
· forms nouns from other nouns
· sense “person concerned with
or engaged in”
o
except for a
few words like gazetteer and muffineer “device for putting sugar
on muffins”
First
found in loanwords from French in the C16th
· interchangeable with –ier:
muletier/muleteer (and tons of other forms: -er, -our...)
· though charioteer and
engineer come in earlier (ME engineour) and get assimilated to –ier,
-eer
In
C17th, -eer and –ier become distinct: brigadier, grenadier,
gondolier
And
–eer starts to be productive within English
· privateer “armed vessel (and its
commander) owned and officered by private individuals holding a government
commission and authorized for war service”
· though mostly with Romance
forms
Many
early examples have military connotations: cannoneer, volunteer
Extends
to non-physical forms of combat: pulpiteer, pamphleteer
o
derogatory
context
o
ironic
hyperbole?
And
can be derogatory without denoting combat : waistcoateer ‘prostitute’, profiteer
But
some words are neither derogatory nor agonistic: auctioneer, mountaineer
Tends
to occur with –ing (and occasionally to be backformed from these forms)
· engineering, pamphleteering
· parliamenteering, revolutioneering
(OED has no entry for revolutioneer)