The Influences of Latin

testing. While that statement ignores completely its other benefits, it does have truth: English vocabulary is derived from Latin. But how much do we understand about when, why, and how Latin words appeared in English, and what else Latin has given the Modern English language? The English language has drawn from Latin mainly in its vocabulary, but also in its grammar. These loans are grouped, by time and substance, into four periods -- the Zero, First, Second, Third, and Modern. Each of these have distinctive characteristics, both of the Latin words adopted and the process of assimilation undergone. Latin words have also been adopted to English through Modern French and Modern Italian (grouped under the Modern Period) and Norman French (the Third Period). The Zero PeriodThe Zero Period includes all English words whose etymology traces back to Germanic tribes in contact with Romans on the continent. These are all short words, easily adaptable to the inflectons of early Germanic languages. The tribes' dealings with the Romans were centered in military matters, cooking, trade, and commerce, especially with wine merchants. Words current in Modern English with recognizable forms include camp (L campus), kettle (OE cytel, L catillus, catinus), cheap (OE ceap), and wine (OE win, L vinum). The First PeriodThis period includes words borrowed during Julius Caesar's English adventures (55 BC) and the Roman Conquest (43-449 AD), but almost none of these1 survived the Teutonic and Norman invasions. In fact, most Celtic words in Modern English either were borrowed recently (slogan, shillelagh) or continued as place names (Kent, Devon, Cumberland). The most interesting Latin-Celtic-Old English path is that of -chester, with its variants -cester and -caster, as found in Manchester, Gloucester, and Lancaster. In Celtic, it is ceaster, from the Latin castra (encampment). The Second PeriodThe Second Period, dating from Augustine's mission of 597, is divided into two main sub-periods, the Early and the Benedictine. The Early Second Period includes words taken by the English to describe their new religion (mass, pope; from the Old English maesse, papa; and the Latin missa, papa), but also household words (cap, plant; from the Old English caeppa, plante; and the Latin cappa, planta) and those relating to education (Latin and school; from the Old English scol; and the Latin Latinus, schola). The amount and miscellany of the borrowings show the extent of Christianity's immediate impact on seventh-century Britain. In this part of the Second Period, direct translation of Latin terms is characteristic. Thus, the Late Latin trinitas (three) is the Old English prines (literally, three-ness), and the Late Latin resurrectio (resurrection) is the Old English aerist, from arisan (to arise). The Benedictine Second Period began in the late 900's when religious reform was sweeping England's monasteries. The words still include religious and learned vocabulary, but are no longer related to everyday life. Antichrist, history, and decline (the grammatical meaning) all date from this period. Many words were not fully assimilated (cathedra, biblithece, prologus), and most those that have been passed down to Modern English (cathedral, prologue) were reinforced by later loans. The Third PeriodThe Third Period begins in 1066 with William the Conqueror. With the Norman invasion came their language, Norman French, which was related more closely to Latin than was English. Because of this closeness, words adopted from French (usually of a more colliquial character) are considered along with those drawn from Latin itself (often more learned, and first found in written language). The dual sources of Middle English vocabulary are still apparent today: word pairs such as example/exemplary and machine (sh)/machinate (k) show the differences between words with Norman and Latin roots. This period is the first time that untranslated Latin words are introduced wholesale, in both prose (Trevisa's translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum) and poetry (Dunbar et al.). As one Latin-English translator complained in the early 1400s, 'There ys many wordes in Latyn that we have no propre Englysh accordynge therto.'2 Almost all of these aureate terms passed into general use only after being reintroduced. Others still current were from Wycliffe's Bible, and gained currency through constant use. The Modern PeriodThe Modern Period begins with the advent of Modern English, usually dated to 1500.3 By the time of Thomas Elyot, the classical languages were entering English mostly as compounds, either with English or previously-assimilated words, or with other classical roots. An incomplete list of widley used classical roots includes -ation, -ana, -ite, -ism, ex-, co-, -ist, and de-, while scientific English uses many more specialized ones : mille-, matri-, menti-, and reticul-, though these often come ultimately from the Greek. Latin roots are also apparent in commercial names, especially of high-tech companies (Sun Microsystems, from the Greek mikro, as in the Late Latin microcosmus), but also in many from the early days of this century (Bovril, from the Latin bovis)4. Classically derived names seem to give credence to claims to knowledge and capability5. Words from Latin roots have also entered Modern English through the modern Romance languages, especially French and Italian. We English-speakers have lost the boldness that our ancestors had in their creation of English words and their assimilation of foreign ones. Where they dropped endings and Anglicized spelling without a thought, we now retain the foreign characters (umlauted vowels, the French c, and the German B), and have even added them back as we become more conscious of languages other than our own. (Facade -- now commonly spelled facade -- is a case in point.) Words from Romance languages are often borrowed because we (North Americans, British, and Australian) see the continent as more accomplished in a certain sphere. Thus, ballet terms are French, music is marked in Italian, and cookbooks (as well as restaurant menus) prefer foreign terms to our own (gateau du chocolat over the more prosaic chocolate cake). In many of these, a classical root is more apparent than in our Saxon word: the Italian forte (strong, loud) is clearly from the Latin fortis (brave), but the English loud comes from the Old English hlude, possibly derived from the Dutch luid6. Even when our vocabulary can be traced back to a Latin root, the Italian is more faithful to the Latin (Italian con spirito, Latin cum spirito, English with spirit). A final type of borrowing especially common during the Modern Period is that of whole phrases as mottoes: Novus Ordo Seclorum7, Ipsa scienta potestas est8, Veritas9, and Semper Fidelis10. Assimilation of Latin words into EnglishHaving treated when, how, and why Latin words are used in English, the next question is "how have these Latin words assimilated into English?" English words like harp, cousin, chime, chesnut, prove, and truck certainly don't advertise their Latin roots (Late Latin harpa, Latin consobrinus, Latin cymbalum, Latin castanea, Latin probus, and the Latin trochaicus, respectively)11. Yet, linguists and etymologists can somehow trace the history and forms of English words, and recognize patterns in the changes they undergo. Grimm's Law was the first observation of one of these patterns. Jacob Grimm, better known as a collector of folk-tales, took Rask's observation that most European languages and some Asian have similar forms for basic words -- father, brother, and others. He suggested that a simple pattern of sound changes was the source of many of the dicrepancies. In his theory, words with voiced initial consonants (p, t, and k) in Latin had spirants (f, p, and h respectively) as the initial consonant in English (Latin pater -- English father12). It also explains other changes to initial sounds. Other patterns have been recognized that not only reveal an English word's source, but can also help date its adoption. The two most important of these were palatal diphthongization, in which some vowels preceded by palatal consonants were changed to diphthongs, and the i-umlaut (or i-mutation), in which the value of some accented vowels was changed. The other promiment area of change in adopted words was in their accenting, which sometimes led to more vowel mutations. These changes all took place in English, so their presence can tell us only by when a word must have been adopted; other changes can tell us before what time a word must have been used in English. The most important of these was in the Latin itself, and is the change that took place when a word was simplified by speakers of Vulgar Latin13. Others were changes in the forms adopted by other Germanic languages, but these are often only speculation. The other major change words underwent after adoption was simplification, either dropping a case ending (Latin cornu -- English horn14) or dropping syllables. Syllables were especially likely to be lost from words of the Zero Period (learned by continental Germanic tribes), who found it hard to decline even shortened words from Vulgar Latin in their heavily-inflected Old High and Low Germans. Latin's Impact on English GrammarLatin's contribution to modern English has not been based soley on derivatives. The very ideas of grammar also came from the artificial structure of Classical Latin (the Latin used for poetry, oratory, and by the upper classes). Early English was in no way an artificial or learned language, and had no grammar, no rules, nothing but conflicting precedent15 in everything: spelling, word order, declension, and conjugation. In this structural vacuum, those who wanted order were forced to create it, which they did by imposing classical grammar on the language16. These early grammarians are the source of the stigma on ending a phrase with a preposition, of the choice we have today between who/which (identified with the Latin qui) and that as a relative pronoun17, and with the absolute participle, whose first use in English was direct translation from the Latin. While the last is a benefit, the first two lead to unnaturally worded phrases, and have no justification other than classical grammar. Latin's Overall ImpactLatin is so large a part of English that, even if we wanted to, we could not purge ourselves of even one tenth of our words derived from it. Even our grammar, which has been influenced less than our vocabulary, would be amazingly different without its Latin base. But, is all that we have recieved from Latin useful? Our grammar has been turned on its head by classical scholars, and our vocabulary does not need the amount of words that it has. If one idea has just one word derived from each language contributing the most to Modern English (Greek, Latin, Saxon (Germanic), and Norman French), we would still have useless synonyms. "Everything in moderation," though a cliche, is still true; Modern English would be simpler and more efficient if there had been less of a Latin influence. But, the flip side of the phrase is that everything is neccesary, if only in (relatively) small doses. What would English be like without our Latin-derived vocabulary, or our knowledge of the classics? Without this most crucial components, English would not be English.