The English Vocabulary Vocabulary is a complete inventory of the words in a language. It can be divided into active vocabulary

In this lecture, we’ll discuss English vocabulary. First, let’s define the term "vocabulary". What is vocabulary.’? It usually refers to a complete inventory of the words in a language. But it may also refer to the words and phrases used in the variants of a language, such as dialect, register, terminology, etc. The vocabulary can be divided into active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. The active vocabulary refers to lexical items which a person uses. The passive vocabulary refers to the words which he understands.
  The English vocabulary is characterized by a mixture of native words and borrowed words. First, about the native words. Most of the native words are of AngloSaxon origin. They form the basic word stock of the English language. In the native stock, we find words denoting the commonest things necessary for life, such as those words denoting natural phenomena, divisions of the year, parts of the body, animals, foodstuffs, trees, fruits, human activity. And also other words denoting the most indispensable things. The native stock also includes auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns, most numerals, prepositions and conjunctions. Though they are small in number, these words play no small part in linguistic performance and communication.
  Next, we come to borrowed words. Borrowed words are also known as loan- words. They refer to linguistic forms taken over by one language or dialect from another.
  The English vocabulary has replenished itself by continually taking over words from other languages over the centuries. The adoption of foreign words into the English language began even before the English came to England. We know that the Angles and Saxons formed a part of the Germanic people. Long before the Anglo Saxons came to England, the Germanic people had been in contact with the civilization of Rome. Thus, Words of Latin origin denoting objects belonging to the Roman civilization gradually found their way into the English language. For example, wine, butter, cheese, inch, mile, mint, etc.
  When the English, or the Anglo-Saxons, were settled in England, they continued to borrow words from Latin, especially after Roman Christianity was introduced into the island in the sixth and seventh centuries. A considerable number of Latin words were adopted into the English language. These Words chiefly signify things connected with religion or the services of the church, such as bishop, candle, creed, monk, priest, and a great many others.
  The English vocabulary also owes a great deal to the Danes and Northmen. From these settlers, English adopted a surprising number of words of Scandinavian origin that belong to the core-vocabulary today. Such as they, them, their, both, ill, die, egg, knife, low, skill, take, till, though, want, etc.
  The Norman Conquest in 1066 introduced a large number of French words into the English vocabulary. French adoptions were found in almost every section of the vocabulary. For example, in the section of law, there are such words as justice, evidence, pardon; in the section of warfare, there are conquer, victory; in religion, there are grace, repent, sacrifice; in architecture, there are castle, pillar, tower; in finance, there are pay, rent, ransom; in rank, there are prince, princess; in clothing, there are collar, mantlet; in food, there are dinner ,feast, sauce, etc. In the first 43 lines of the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, there are 39 words of French origin. We can see the English vocabulary takes in so many words from French.
  And in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance swept Europe. It was a revival of art and literature based on ancient Greek learning. The Renaissance opened up a new source for the English vocabulary to enrich itself. And English borrowed many words from Greek through the medium of Latin, such as crisis, topic, coma, etc. a wide range of learned affixes are also from Greek, such as bio-, geo- , hydro-, auto-, homo-, para- ,-ism ,-logy ,-graph , -meter, -gram and many others.
From the sixteenth century forward, there was a great increase in the number of languages, and English borrowed many words from these languages. French continued to provide a considerable number of new words, for example, trophy, vase, moustache, unique, soup. English borrowed a lot of words from Italian in the field of art, music and literature, for example, model, sonnet, opera, quartet, etc. there was also a Spanish element in English, for example, potato, cargo, parade, cigar. Besides, German, Portuguese and Dutch were also fertile sources of loan words, for example, dock, zinc and plunder are from German; cobra, buffalo and pagoda are from Portuguese; tackle, buoy and skipper are from Dutch.
  At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a growth of international trade and the urge to colonize the known world, English made a number of direct adoptions from languages spoken outside Europe. Some examples are: sultan and ghoul from Arabic, lichi and typhoon from Chinese, shah and shawl form Persian, yoghurt from Turkish, czar from Russian.
  Since the end of the Second World War, still more loan words have been incorporated into the English vocabulary. For example, cuisine from French, sushi from Japanese, mao tai from Chinese, and many others.
  In tile twentieth century, it should be observed that English has created many words out of Latin and Greek elements, especially in the field of science and technology, such as antibiotic, astronaut, auto-visual, autolysis, etc. Although all these Latin and Greek derived words are distinctly’ learned or technical, they do not seem foreign, and, in this respect, they are very different from the recent loanwords from living languages, such as cappuccino, angst, and sputnik. Thus, for the Modem English period a distinction must be made between the adoptions from living languages and the formations derived from the two classical languages.
  That’s the end of today’s lecture. Next time we’ll concentrate on English word formation. Thank you for your attention !