Etymology
In the beginning of our research project the main subject was to be differences in the vocabularies of Middle English and Modern English, the emphasis being on etymology. The initial research method 21421p1524v was to compare Wyclif's Bible and The New English Bible word by word to find out to what extent the vocabulary had changed and what the changes were. We assumed that many new loan words from various languages would have been adopted to english language after John Wyclif's Middle English Bible translation which appeared between 1380-1384 (Kenyon 1909) However, the etymologies of the words and their historical backround were less varied than we expected. Checking the etymology of each content word in the texts led to surprising results. All new loans that occur in The New English Bible (1970) but not in Wyclif's Bible are borrowed from French or Latin. Also, the amount of new loan words is not as considerable as we assumed: 21% of the words in the Modern English text are new loans. The percentage of words borrowed from French and Latin has increased from Wyclif's translation's 24 to New English translation's 34. According to Finegan, in the Middle English period (vuosiluku), after the Norman Conquest, a lot of new loans from French established into English, which is clearly visible in our results. As Finegan states, the influence of Latin was also considerable during this period: " As english came to be used for functions Latin had previously served, a great many words were borrowed from Latin". This also shows in our results, though it was hard to determine whether some words were loans from French or Latin. There are five words that were identified as clear Latin loans.
(https://www.sbible.boom.ru/wyc/wycle.htm).
|
