Impact of Greek on Old English Vocabulary

Introduction

During the Old English or Anglo-Saxon Period (400.AD-1100.AD), mainly four languages influenced the vocabulary of the English Language. They were Celtic, Latin, Greek and Scandinavian languages. Of them, the Greek Language played a prominent and outstanding role in contributing to the expansion of the vocabulary of the English Language. Greek Language is an Indo-European Language, which was primarily spoken, in Greece. It has been found that Greek Language had been in existence for approximately 3400 years.[1] It was also proved to be the longest of any other Indo-European languages. It is confirmed the fact that the relevant information is available about the origin of the Greek Language (Dawkins, R.M:1916). It is also reported that Greek originated with a migration of proto-Greek speakers into the Greek peninsula. Moreover, it was found that for many centuries Greek was the lingua franca[2] of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. It is also estimated that around 6% of English vocabulary has derived from Greek. These words specifically include technical and scientific terms and in addition to that, it seems that a lot of English words have been borrowed from Greek. And also, the Greek alphabet[3] was the most considerable asset Old English had ever inherited from Greek. It is also found that many letters in English have been borrowed from ancient Greek, for instance, the English letters “a” and “b” are variations on the Greek letters “alpha” and “beta."

 [1] Professor of Ancient Greek Linguistics, University of Amsterdam, 1969–95. Author of Études sur la grammaire et le vocabulaire du grec mycénien.

[2] A language, that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet-04.10.2013.