Borrowed words, kinds of borrowed words

Borrowed words are words taken over from other languages. Many linguists consider foreign influence plays the most important role in the history of any language.

But the grammar and phonetic system are very stable and are not often influenced by other languages.

For example, in its 15 century long history recorded in written manuscripts the English language happened to come in long and close contact with several other languages mainly Latin, French and Old Norse. The great influx of borrowings from these sources can be accounted for by a number of historical causes. Due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse was the language of the conquerors who were on the same level of social and cultural development and who nudged rather easily with the local population in the 9^th, 10^th and the first half of the 11^th century. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors. Who brought with them a lot of new nations of a higher social system developed feudalism it was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11^th century to the end of the 14^th century.

Uzbek language also developed under the influence of Persian, Arabic and later Russian languages. Persian language spread in our territory in 500–300BC, since that time peoples of Central Asia have been in close contact with Iran, the birthplace of Persian language. Till 15^th century it was «Fashion» and desirable to write poems and prosaic works in Persian, though old Turkic language was also used among nation, mainly by ordinary people. In the VII century Arabs conquered Central Asia, carrying their religion and language to the peoples. Thus, Arabic language was predominant till XI–XII centuries. Books were written in Arabic language too. e.g. outstanding scientists and scholars Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Farabi, Beruni created their works in Arabic language. Only in XV century Alisher Navoi, great writer and statesman proved the beauty and importance of the Turkic language, starting to write his best masterpieces in this language, though he knew Persian and Arabic languages very well. And starting with XVIII century Uzbek language was under the influence of Russian language. In the study of the borrowed element in English the main emphasis is as a ruled placed on the middle English period and in Uzbek it is middle Turkic language.

Borrowings of later periods became the object of investigation only in resent years. These investigations have shown that the flow of borrowings has been steady and uninterrupted. They refer to various fields of social – political, scientific and cultural life. A large portion of them (41%) is scientific and technical terms.

When we speak about the role of native and borrowed words in the language we must not take into consideration only the number of them but their semantic, stylistic character, their word building ability, frequency value, collocability (valency) and the productivity of their word-building patterns.

If we approach to the study of the role of native and borrowed words from this point of view we see, though the native words are not numerous they play an important role in the English and Uzbek languages. They have value, great word – forming power, wide collocability high frequency, many meanings and they are stylistically neutral. Almost all words of native origin belong to very important semantic groups. The number and character of the borrowed words tell us of the relations between the peoples, the level of their culture, etc. It is for this reason that borrowings have often been called the milestones of history.

The well known linguist Shuchard said «No language is entirely pure», that all the languages are mixed.

It must be pointed out that while the general historical reasons for borrowing from different languages have been studied with a considerable degree of through the purely linguistic reasons for borrowings are still open to investigation. The number and character of borrowings do not only depend on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts, but also on the degree of the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the languages the deeper and more versatile is the influence.

Borrowed words enter the language as a result of influence of two main causes or factors: linguistic and extra-linguistic. Economic, cultural, industrial, political relations of speakers of the language with other countries refer to extra-linguistic factors.

For example, due to the great influence of the Roman civilization Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse of the Scandinavian tribes was the language of the conquerors. French (Norman dialect) was the language of the other conquerors who brought with them a lot of new notions of a higher social system, developed feudalism. It was the language of upper classes, of official documents and school. The same is in Uzbek language. Due to the expansion of Islam religion, Arabic was used for centuries in Central Asia as the language of science and religion[1]. For about two centuries Russian language hold a dominant position in the nations of former Soviet Union. It was priority to know Russian and it was a language of communication and friendship. These factors are extra-linguistic ones.

The absence of equivalent words in the language to express new subjects or a phenomena makes people to borrow words. E.g. the words football, volleyball, pitchman in Uzbek; to economize the linguistic means, i.e. to use a foreign word instead of a long native expressions and others are called linguistic causes.

The closer the two interacting languages are in structure the easier it is for words of one language to penetrate into the other.

Borrowings enter the language in two ways through oral speech (by immediate contact between the people) and through written speech by indirect contact through books) Words borrowed orally are usually short and they undergo more changes in the act of adopter. Written borrowings are often rather long and they are unknown to many people, speaking the language.

We distinguish translation loans, borrowings proper and semantic loans. Translation loans are words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the language but according to patterns taken from another language, by way of literal morpheme – for – morpheme translation, e.g. wall-newspaper – деворий газета.

The term «semantic loan» is used to denote the development in a word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language. The English word pioneer meant «explorer» and «one who is among the first in new fields of activity.» now under the influence of the Russian word «Пионер» it has come to mean «a member of the Young Pioneers’ Organization»

Borrowings proper are words which are taken from another language with their sound graphic forms and their meaning.