TOPIC 41 Romanisation and latin influence on the english language

TOPIC 41
ROMANISATION: THE INFLUENCE OF LATIN ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
BORROWINGS & CALQUES
English has been called a Germanic language with a romance vocabulary. Estimates of
native-AngloSaxon words in English range from 20% to 33%, with the rest made up of
foreign borrowings. A large number of these borrowings are Latinate, coming directly from
Latin, or from Latin through one of the Romance languages, particularly French, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish or from some other languages (such as Greek) into Latin and then
into English. The influence of Latin on English has been so remarkable and eduring that
nowadays some of its most commonly used terms for everyday objects come from this
ancient language such as street, table, wine or mile.
In this topic I´m going to deal with the Latin influence on English language throughout
different stages of its development. I have divided my topic into three main sections: first of
all I´ll give an account for the historical background of the Roman conquest and its effects on
culture, then, in the main section of my topic I´ll be looking at the influence of Latin
vocabulary and grammar on Old, Middle and Modern English, finishing with an explanation of
the traces of Latin on present day English.
Before I go any further, however, I´d like to say that to write this topic, I´ve consulted the
following works:
Baugh and Cable´s book A history of the English language published in 2002,
David Crystal´s The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language published in 2002, and
Web pages: AskOxford.com, EnglishClub.com, Anglik.net.
It is never easy to pinpoint when a specific language began, but in the case of English we
can say that there is little sense in speaking of English language before the Anglo-Saxon
came to Britain. Thus the history of English language really started with the arrival of the
three Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) who invaded Britain during the 5 th century.
Before the arrival of the Germanic tribes British Isles were populated by a race called the
Celts, whose language lives on in Celtic languages such as Gaelic and Welsh spoken in
Scotland and Wales. The Celts were superstitious people who believed in many Gods and
their priests, the Druids, were the custodian of knowledge and allow no written language in
order to protect the secrecy of their secret rites that´s why their language made very little

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impact on that of the following invaders. Quite a few English place names are of Celtic origin
(London, Dover, Avon and Thames) but hardly any other Celtic words remain in common
use.
The Celts were conquered by the Romans and from 43 BC to about AD 410 the areas which
are now England and Wales were part of the Roman Empire, and Latin was the language of
government, until the coming of the Germanic tribes.
In the summer of 55 BC Julius Caesar, having completed the conquest of Gaul, decided to
invade England after obtaining some information regarding their geographical and human
characteristics. This first expedition wasn´t successful because of the resistance of the native
tribes of Celts. Roman troops made a bloody landing and their progress inland was painfully
slow. Four weeks after landing he re-embarked his army for France, determined to return the
next year and gain Britain as a Roman province.
Accordingly the following summer he again invaded the island, after much more elaborate
preparations. He found that the Britons (the Celtic tribes) had joined in order to fight their
common enemy under the rule of an only leader called Cassivellaneous. Nevertheless
Caesar managed to desunite the Britons and to reach an agreement regarding the tribute
that Britain would pay to the Empire. After Julius´ death the contact between the Empire and
the Britons continued because of the constant come and go of sailors, traders and so on.
The next invasion, which was to lead to a period of almost 4 centuries of Roman rule, was
ordered by Emperor Claudius in 43 AD, who decided to undertake the actual conquest of the
island. They met a rather strong opposition, especially in the areas of Wales and Scotland.
Nevertheless, by the beginning of the 2nd century, the rich plain of the South had been
subdued.
The military conquest of Britain was followed by the Romanization of the province so the
Romans applied their system of occupation. The Romans brought the skills of reading and
writing to Britain because, contrary to the Celts’ approach, the Romans considered the
written word important for spreading ideas and also for establishing power. The most obvious

characteristic of Roman Britain was its towns, which were the basis of Roman administration
and civilisation. Many grew out of Celtic settlements, military camps or market centres. The
Romans left about 20 large towns and almost 100 smaller ones. Many of these towns were at
first army camps, and the Latin word for camps, castra, has remainded part of many town
names to this day (with the ending “...chester”, “...caster” or “...cester”): Gloucester, Leicester,
Winchester, Lancaster, Chester.
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The structure of the towns followed the Roman plan. All of them consisted of a FORUM or
quadrangular market to which all the streets led cutting in a right angle. They rose a great
number of public buildings such as baths or theatres and they provided the towns with
infrastructure. Many houses had central heating and in most of them there was runningwater. Towns were connected by roads which were so well built that continued to be used
long after the Romans left and became the main roads of modern Britain. London grew in the
times of the Romans and started to be considered the capital of the province because it was
the most important trading centre in the northern Europe. The best preserved Roman
vestiges in Britain can be appreciated in Saint Albans and Bath.
The Romans applied their system of penetrating peacefully into the country and this favoured
the acceptance of the new culture among the Celts. The arrival of Roman population to the
island was rather scarce and very soon the Imperial Army was constituted by the native
population. This led native people to take part in the Roman life-style. The Romans, in their
turn, accepted in some way the Celts culture. Regarding religion, for instance, they borrowed
some Celts Gods.
The Romans could not conquer “Caledonia”, as they called Scotland. The tribes from the
North, Picts and Scots, attacked the Roman territories, obtaining rich loots. At last the
Romans built a strong wall along the northern border, named after the Emperor Hadrian who
planned it.
By the end of the 4th century the Celto-Roman had to face a new menace: Germanic tribes
from what today are Denmark and the Low Countries crossed the North Sea and established
themeselves in the South and East of the island. By that time the whole Roman Empire was

in danger: the barbarian tribes from North and Central Europe were trying to invade the
Roman territories. Rome sought help from Britain, which sent a great number of soldiers,
thus remaining Britain with few defenders. The Romanised Celts were left to fight alone
against the Scots, the Picts and the Saxon raiders from Germany. The following years Rome
itself fell to raiders and the empire began to collapse. In some districts, the Anglo-Saxons
probably settled down beside the Celts in more or less peaceful contact, in others the
invaders met with resistence and succeeded in establishing after much fighting. Most of
Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by invaders mainly in Wales, Scotland and
Ireland. The Roman civilization in Britain was largely destroyed by the new invaders and
Roman towns were burnt and abandoned. Latin language completely disappeared both in its
spoken and written form.

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Having dealt with the historical background of the Romans in Great Britain, I am going
to review the influence of Latin vocabulary on English language. Before starting with the main
develpment of the topic it is important to bear in mind that the adoption of Latin vocabulary
into English falls into two categories: borrowings (those words adopted with a slight
modification in meaning, context of use, phonetic or spelling) and calque (those expressions,
phrases or compound words translated literally from another language). The nature of this
influence has varied throughout every stage of the English language development, thus it is
important to focus on the peculiarities of every stage: Old English period (450-1150),
Middle English period (1150-1500) and Modern English (1500-

).

Regarding the Old English period, we should distinguish three different ways in which Latin
enterred the English language. These, according to Baugh, are the Zero Period or
Continental, the First Period or Celtic Transmission and the Second Period or Christianity.



During the Continental Period we cannot speak about an English language yet. Anglo-

Saxons were still settled in the Continent where they had various contacts with the Romans,
through which they borrow words for everyday objects and concepts. These first contacts
were mainly commercial and military so the borrowings adopted by the Germanics are
mostly found in this field. In this period we have borrowings related to war such as CAMP
(battle), WEALL (wall), MIL (mile), STRAET (street). Regarding trade they borrowed PUND
(pound), CEAP (bargain), WIN (wine), MUST (new wine). Connected with domestic life they
took MESE (table), CUPPE (cup), TEPED (curtain). Some foods are named after the Roman
words such as CIESE (cheese), BUTERE (butter) or PIPAR (pepper).


During the First Period or Celtic Transmission, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes

invaded Britain. At that time the British population (the Celts) was Romanized. Celtic
peasantry remained illiterate and only Celtic speaking, but town dwellers and the richer
landowners in the country spoke Latin and Greek with ease. The Celts are thought to have
adopted over six hundreds of Latin words in their languages, but probably due to the
disorders between Celts and Anglo-Saxons and their slight contact no more than half a
dozen Latin words entered the English language in this period. It is probable that the use of
Latin as spoken language did not long survive the end of Roman rule in the island thus there
was no opportunity for direct contact between Latin and Old English in England. Among the
few Latin words that the Anglo-Saxons seem to have acquired upon settling in England, one
of the most likely seems to be CEASTER, which represents the Latin CASTRA (camp) and
started to form a familiar element in English place-names such as Chester, Manchester, ... as

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I said above. A few other words are thought to be for one reason or another to belong to this
period: PORT (from Latin “portus”) meaning mountain, TORR (from Latin “turris”) meaning
tower, WIC (from Latin “vicus”) meaning village.


During the Second Period or Christianity Period, St Augustine and his 40 monks

introduced Christianity into Britain in 597. They firstly found the support of a small number of
Christians but the total process of conversion of the rest of England was completed within a
hundred years. The introduction of Christianity meant the building of churches and the
establishment of monateries such as Canterbury and York where the monks developed a lot
of work related to grammar, prosody and science and mostly about the books of the Old and
New Testament. Thus Latin was once more heard in England. Thanks to the church England
held the intellectual leadership of Europe and, in like manner, vernacular literature and the
arts received a new impetus.
The flourishing state of the church was interrupted by the invasion of the Danes who at the
end of the 8th century began their ravages upon the country, burning and destroying churches
and monasteries. By the end of 10 th there seemed to be no remembrance of Christian
Culture in England.
By that time King Alfred and later King Edgar, trying to spread education in the kingdom,
restored the monastic life by the observance of the Bendictine Rule. This reform brought
about a religious revival and monasteries were once more centres of literary activity. When
speaking about the influence of Latin upon OE by means of Christianity, we should
distinguish, according to Baugh, two separate periods: the one of the reintroduction of
Christianity and the one of the Benedictine Reform.
- Regarding the “Reintroduction of Christianity”, the most typical and numerous classes of
words introduced by the new religion have to do with the church and its services. Thus the
great majority of words having to do with religion were borrowed at this time and most of
them have survived in only slightly altered form in Modern English. Some of them are

ABBOT, MASS, TEMPLE, CANDLE. But the church also exercised a profound influence on
the domestic life of the people. This is seen in the adoption of many words as names of
clothing and household such as PURPLE or CHEST, words denoting food LENTIL and
PEAR, names of trees PINE or ALOE, words related to education and learning SCHOOL,
GRAMMAR, or any other matter ANCHOR, FEVER, ELEPHANT.
- Regarding the “Benedictine Reform”, a considerable number of words have to do with
religious matters, but these differed from the previous ones in being less popular and
expressing ideas of scientific and learned character such as CLOISTER or PROPHET,
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literary and learned words such as HISTORY or TITLE, plans and trees such as CYPRESS
and FIG, medical terms such as PLASTER or PARALYSIS, and animals as CAMEL or
TIGER.
In 1066 the Norman invasion changed the course of the English language by bringing to
England both Norman French and Latin, thus dividing the country linguistically between the
educated classes who spoke French and Latin and the common people who spoke only
English. These historical events marked the beginning of the Middle English Period (11501500). In this stage Latin entered the English language mainly through French although there
was a big deal of words borrowed directly from Latin which were characterized by being less
popular and by entering generally through written language.
When William the Conqueror invaded England he led a politically well-organized power, built
on strong feudal base with an outstanding law and political organization, but the Normans
were not so civilized in scholarship and literature. At this time Paris replaced England as the
centre of European intellectual life and Latin was the spoken language among ecclesiatics
and men of learning. Latin was not used as a spoken language by the common English
population any longer but it continued to be used in written documents in England at different
levels: in official texts and documents, in social communication and literature, and in
educational and religious contexts. Basically in the first century and a half after the Norman
Conquest, written Latin replaced English for the formal communication. From the end of the
12th century until the 13th century, French gradually began to replace Latin as the official

language for charters, wills and in educational contexts. Because French resembles Latin in
many ways, it made borrowings from Latin to French very easy. This is why it is often difficult
to decide whether a word was borowed directly from French or directly from Latin. One of the
sources of Latin vocabulary was the so-called “Wycliffe translation of the Bible”. Wycliffe and
his associates are credited with more than one thousand Latin words not previously found in
English. As these words have been retained in subsequent translations they have passed
into common use. Most of these terms are related to law, medicine, theology, science and
literature. These words were justified in the beginning by technical or professional use and
later acquired a wider application such as GENIUS, INDEX, LEGAL, SPACIOUS or SCRIPT.
As far as all three English, French and Latin were used in England during the Middle English
Period it is easy to find three different words conveying the same idea in Modern English with
some difference in tone, being English more popular, French more literary and Latin more
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learned such as ASK – QUESTION – INTERROGATE or TIME – AGE – EPOCH, or HOLY –
SACRED – CONSECRATED.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, English began to re-emerge as an accepted standard language
(rather than being just for the peasants) but at the same time it became fashionable among
some poets and prose writers to embellish the texts with Latin borrowings as DIURNE,
PALESTRAL or RECLINATORY. This tendency came to be known as “aureate diction”. Most
of these terms were lost in later language development but some of the “aureate terms”
become part of the common speech such as LAUREATE, MEDITATION or ORIENTAL which
were firstly found in Chaucer´s poems.
The beginning of the Modern English Period is placed at 1500, which was the starting point
of the Renaissance, an important period for culture and science which was going to last until
1650. As I said above in the 14 th century English had re-emerged as an accepted standard
language while Norman French was decreasing in importance. At the same time in the 16 th
century there were new circumstances affecting English language: the invention of the
printing press, the rapid spread of popular education, the increased communication and

means of communication and the growth of social consciusness. All of these factors made
possible the creation and absortion of a more or less standard English. Regarding the
printing press, more than 35,000 books were printed in Europe, the majority of which were in
Latin. Around 1640 over 20,000 titles in English appeared in England, which was a powerful
force for promoting a standard uniform English.
From a cultural point of view Renaissance was a period of increased activity in almost every
field: the discovery of America, the reform of the church, the Copernican theory, the
revolution of thought and the revival of classical learning. There was a healthy desire for
knowledge and Latin and Greek was the key to the world´s knowledge and the languages in
which much highly esteemed literary works were to be read. By contrast it was felt that
vernacular languages such as English could not express the abstract ideas and the range of
thought embodied in the ancient languages. Under these circumstances English translators
felt the temptation to transfer and borrow from Latin important terms they considered English
language lacked. Many new Latin words were introduced in English particularly in various
technical and scientific fields, where English was notably weak. Among the borrowings which
were introduced in this period were nouns such as EXCURSION, ACCEPTANCE and
EXPECTATIONS, adjectives such as EXTERNAL, FRIVOLOUS or APPROPRIATE and
verbs such as ADAPT, MEDITATE or ANTICIPATE.
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Some words, in entering the language, retained their original form; other underwent change.
The adaptation of Latin words to English was affected by a simple process of cutting off the
Latin ending: consultore = CONSULT or excursionem = EXCURSION. But it was not always
so. More often a further change was necessary to bring the word in accordance with the
usual English spelling. Thus Latin ending –us in adjectives was changed into –ous as in
conspicus – CONSPICUOUS or was replaced by –al as in external externus – EXTERNAL.
Latin nouns ending in –tas were changed into –ty as in celeritas – CELERITY; -antia –entia
appear in English with the ending –once, -ence or –ancy, -ency as in consonantia –
CONSONANCE, constantia – CONSTANCE, concurrentia – CONCURRENCE or frequentia

– FREQUENCY.
To fulfil the demand of new technological and scientific terms English had to coin new words
by using borrowed prefixes and suffixes, many of them taken from Latin. Among the prefixes
we find Auto- as in AUTPBIOGRAPHY, Post- as in POSTGRADUATE, Super- as in
SUPERHEATED, or Bi- as in BILINGUAL. Regarding the suffixes we find –an as in
AFRICAN, -ant/-ent as in ASSISTANT/PRESIDENT, -ian as in AUSTRIAN or –ician as in
MUSICIAN.
It is interesting to point out that the borrowing of Latin words met with the opposition of many
scholars as Sir John Cheke who believed that English could very well develop new words
from old roots or revive expressions that had gone out of use. The same attitude was found
in other scholars who considered the use of learned words pedantic and tried to drive them
out by ridicule, calling them “inkorn terms”. Cheke was so strongly opposed to the borrowing
of Latin and Greek words that he sought whenever possible for English equivalents. He
proposed to use FLESHSTRING for MUSCLE, MOONED for LUNATIC or CROSSED for
CRUCIFIED.
Regarding grammar, there are few traces of Latin grammar on English language. To
understand the lack of influence it must be pointed out that Latin is a synthetic language,
that is say, a language which indicates the relationship of words in a sentence by means of
inflections. Most words chage their endings or forms to show their relationship to other words
of the sentence according to number, gender, case and tense. By contrast English language
is an analytic language, that is, it makes extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs,
and depends on word order to show other relationships. Some modern English words still
inflect, much less so than in other European languages. Old English was a fully inflected
language as were most of the languages from the Germanic branch of IndoEuropean
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languages, but English has suffered a notable process of simplification up to the present day,
showing an almost complete absence of inflections. The most noticeable trace of Latin
grammar is the extensive use of prefixes and suffixes of Latin origin to coin new words, as I

have

already

explained,

most

of

them

adopted

after

1500. (TRANSATLANTIC,

ULTRASONIC, OBLIGATORY).
Latin influence is still growing in Modern English, as the extensive use of Latin calques
demonstrates. It is not difficult to find expressions such as COMMONPLACE which calques
Latin locus communis, DEVIL´S ADVOCATE from Latin advocatus diaboli (referring to an
official appointed to present arguments against a proposed beatification in the Catholic
Church), WISDOM TOOTH which calques Latin dens sapientiae, MILKY WAY from via
lactea, REST IN PEACE from requiescat in pace, or IN A NUTSHELL which calques Latin in
nuce.
To sum up, I have made an account of Latin influence on English throughout different
historical stages, reaching the conclusion that Latin tracks on present day English is mainly
appreciated on vocabulary. We must remind our students that the English vocabulary of Latin
origin is basically restricted to learned and scholarly contexts. This vocabulary makes an

important contribution to the richness of English but they must know that the bulk of
vocabulary used in everyday conversation is from Anglo-Saxon origin, as the case of phrasal
verbs, whose use is difficult for Spanish students to assimilate. Many English students of
Spanish origin are tempted to use words of Latin origin in everyday conversations producing
a striking effect on English speaking people (for instance saying “I have constructed a
sentence” instead of “I have made a sentence”). In conclusion the simplicity of form together
with the flexibility towards the assimilation of words borrowed form other languages and the
spontaneous creation of new words have made English what is today, an effective medium of
international communication.

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