It has borrowed words for cultural institutions (e.g. opera, ballet ). Person – This comes from the Latin “ persona”. It was adopted by the French language and then eventually made its way into English. Others have become so embedded in the English language that you might be surprised to learn they were borrowed.
Here are some examples : 1. Leg: If English hadn’t borrowed the Old Norse “leggr,” we might still call our lower limbs “shanks. Skin: “Skin” comes from Old Norse, too. The Anglo-Saxon synonym is “hide.
The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimite and can overlap. For example , the Norse influence on English began already in the 8th century A. Norman Conquest brought a large influx of Norman French to the language. Borrowing in the English language Already in Old English times, many Celtic loans were used to describe place names, e. Cumberland is ‘the land of the Cymry or Britons’.
Latin loans were mainly used for terms associated with Christianity, for instance munuc ‘monk’ or mæsse, ‘mass’. English , for example , draws from Latin for a lot of medical and legal terms. It’s not always that cut and dry, though. Sometimes it’s harder to see the line between popular and learned loanwords.
These words are also called a borrowed word or a borrowing.