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Проблема интернациональных слов
The problem of international words /lecture/
They present specific interest for foreign language teaching. They comprise a special stock common to many languages as a result of simultaneous or successive processes form one and the same source. Such words usually convey notions which are significant in the field of communication. Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. International are: most names of sciences, terms of art — theatre, tragedy, artist, political terms — progress, revolution, democracy, scientific and technological terms — atomic, radio, TV.
The English language contributed a considerable part of international words to world languages (especially sport terms): football, hockey, baseball, tennis.
Fruits and foodstuffs imported from exotic countries, became international: coffee, chocolate, banana, grapefruit.
It is important to note that international words are mainly borrowings.
International words /Arnold/
As the process of borrowing is mostly connected with the appearance of new notions which the loan words serve to express, it is natural that the borrowing is seldom limited to one language. Words of identical origin that occur in several lan-guages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words. Expanding global contacts result in the considerable growth of international vocabulary. All languages depend for their changes upon the cultural and social matrix in which they operate and various contacts between nations are part of this matrix reflected in vocabulary.
International words play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science, industry and art. The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the history of world culture. Thus, for example, the mankind’s cultural debt to Italy is reflected in the great number of Italian words connected with architecture, painting and especially music that are borrowed into most European languages: allegro, andante, aria, arioso, barcarole, baritone (and other names for voices), concert, duet, opera (and other names for pieces of music), piano and many many more.
The rate of change in technology, political, social and artistic life has been greatly accelerated in the 20th century and so has the rate of growth of interna-tional wordstock. A few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will suffice to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorithm, antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics, cybernetics, entropy, gene, genetic code, graph, microelectronics, microminiaturisation, quant, quasars, pulsars, ribosome, etc. All these show sufficient likeness in English, French, Russian and several other languages.
The international wordstock is also growing due to the influx of exotic borrowed words like anaconda, bungalow, kraal, orang-outang, sari, etc. These come from many different sources. International words should not be mixed with words of the common Indo-European stock that also comprise a sort of common fund of the European languages. This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher not only be-cause many words denoting abstract notions are international but also because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference between such words as control : : контроль; general : : генерал; industry : : индустрия or magazine : : магазин, etc. usually called ‘translator’s false friends’.
The treatment of international words at English lessons would be one-sided if the teacher did not draw his pupils’ attention to the spread of the English vocabu-lary into other languages. We find numerous English words in the field of sport: football, out, match, tennis, time. A large number of English words are to be found in the vocabulary pertaining to clothes: jersey, pullover, sweater, nylon, tweed, etc. Cinema and different forms of entertainment are also a source of many international words of English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz.
At least some of the Russian words borrowed into English and many other languages and thus international should also be mentioned: balalaika, bolshevik, cosmonaut, czar, intelligentsia, Kremlin, mammoth, rouble, sambo, soviet, sputnik, steppe, vodka.
To sum up this brief treatment of loan words it is necessary to stress that in studying loan words a linguist cannot be content with establishing the source, the date of penetration, the semantic sphere to which the word belonged and the circumstances of the process of borrowing. All these are very important, but one should also be concerned with the changes the new language system into which the loan word penetrates causes in the word itself, and, on the other hand, look for the changes occasioned by the newcomer in the English vocabulary, when in finding its way into the new language it pushed some of its lexical neighbours aside. In the discussion above we have tried to show the importance of the problem of conformity with the patterns typical of the receiving language and its semantic needs.
Гибридные слова
Words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages are called hybrids. English contains thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various combinations of morphemes coming from Latin, French and Greek and those of native origin.
Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed through French. Moreover, it is not an isolated case, but rather an established pattern that could be represented as English stem+-able. Cf. answerable, eatable, likable, usable. Its variant with the native negative prefix un- is also worthy of note: un-+English stem+-able. The examples for this are: unanswerable, unbearable, unforeseeable, unsayable, unbelievable. An even more frequent pattern is un-+Romanic stem + -able, which is also a hybrid: unallowable, uncontrollable, unmoveable, unquestionable, unreasonable and many others. A curious example is the word unmistakable, the ultimate constituents of which are: un-(Engl)+mis-(Engl)+-tak-(Scand) +-able (Fr). The very high valency of the suffix -able [эbl] seems to be accounted for by the presence of the homographic adjective able [eibl ] with the same meaning.
The suffix of personal nouns -ist derived from the Greek agent suffix -istes forms part of many hybrids. Sometimes (like in artist, dentist) it was borrowed as a hybrid already (Fr dentiste <— Lat dens, dentis ‘a tooth’ + -ist). In other cases the mixing process took place on English soil, as in fatalist (from Lat fatalis) orviolinist (from It violino, diminutive of viola), or tobacconist ‘dealer in tobacco’ (an irregular formation from Sp tabaco).
When a borrowed word becomes firmly established in English this creates the possibility of using it as a stem combined with a native affix. The phenomenon may be illustrated by the following series of adjectives with the native suffix -less: blameless, cheerless, colourless, countless, doubtless, faceless, joyless, noiseless, pitiless, senseless. These are built on the pattern that had been established in the English language and even in Old English long before the corresponding French loans were taken up. Prof. B.A. Ilyish mentions the following adjectives formed from noun and verbal stems: slæpleas ‘sleepless’;zeliefleas ‘unbelieving’; arleas ‘dishonest’; recceleas ‘reckless’. It goes without saying that there are many adjectives in which -less is combined with native stems: endless, harmless, hopeless, speechless, thankless.
The same phenomenon occurs in prefixation and inflection. The noun bicycle has a Latin prefix (bi-), a Greek root (cycle <— kyklos ‘a wheel’), and it takes an English inflection in the plural: bicycles. There are also many hybrid compounds, such as blackguard (Engl+Fr) or schoolboy (Gr+Engl); сf. aircraft in which the first element came into English through Latin and French about 1600 but is ultimately derived from the Greek word aēr, whereas the second element is Common Germanic.Observation of the English vocabulary, which is probably richer in hybrids than that of any other European language, shows a great variety of patterns. In some cases it is the borrowed affixes that are used with native stems, or vice versa. A word can simultaneously contain borrowed and native affixes.