The influence of Latin to affixes of the English language (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Anglistik), course: History of English, language: English, abstract: The English language changed throughout its periods of existence. This development was, for example, influenced by other languages. The Latin language contains specific lexical and morphological features which the English language inherited. In order to understand which and why the features were taken from Latin and therefore influenced the English lexis and morphology, this paper will give a general overview about the development of the English language and the relationship to and influence of Latin. The morphological and lexical features of affixes will be examined in detail.

The English language encountered other languages like Celtic or Scandinavian as well, but the strong relationship between Latin and English is undeniable, which marks the relevance for this paper. A reason English borrowed features of Latin, is the importance of the language in the past. Latin was a Lingua Franca, such as English is a Lingua Franca now. But Latin disappeared as a first language in the past. Nevertheless, several languages which are called "Latin variants" took over the language features of Latin. Such languages are Spanish, French, or Italian, which are Romance languages. These Latin stemmed languages came in contact with English and therefore influenced its development. The most prominent language contact in the Latin stemmed field of languages is French.