The Acceptance Of Foreign Terms And Phrases
THE ACCEPTANCE OF FOREIGN TERMS AND PHRASES
One of the most interesting features of the English language is its willingness to absorb words and phrases that have their origins elsewhere. The use of loanwords can be seen as early as the late fifteenth century, as a growing interest in classical learning led to pressure to “borrow” classical terms to enrich the English language. The Jacobean period was particularly important in this respect. Robert Cawdry's The Table Alphabetical of Hard Words (1604) listed 2,500 unusual or borrowed words, on the assumption that many of his readers—assumed, incidentally, to be primarily female—would not yet be familiar with them. John Bullokar's An English Expositor (1616) listed words that had now become archaic on account of the “loanwords” that had gradually displaced them.
This capacity for assimilation has led to modern English being an exceptionally rich medium of expression. In part, this willingness to naturalize foreign words rests on England's rise to global status as a trading nation in the late sixteenth century its economic and cultural relationships with other European nations, and its complex and checkered history as a colonial power. The large number of Hindi words and phrases that can be identified in late Victorian English reflect the intimate British involvement with the Indian subcontinent over many generations.
One of the most fundamental contributing factors to this willingness to accept and use verbal immigrants at this formative period was the influence of the King James Bible. Many phrases having their origins in a Hebraic, Hellenistic, or Latin context have been naturalized in English through the simple yet inexorable force of their regular use in biblical contexts. The public and private reading of the Bible in English created an atmosphere that encouraged and ensured their ready acceptance. One of the factors accelerating this process of naturalization of verbal immigrants was a subtle yet significant failure of many users of the King James Bible to realize that the Bible was originally written in any language other than English. “Biblical English” came to possess a cultural authority on the same level as that of Shakespeare. As a result of centuries of use, many Hebraic phrases and idioms have become so common in normal English use that most modern English speakers are unaware of their biblical origins. They have become assimilated into English, perhaps the global language that has been most welcoming to words whose origins lie elsewhere.
In part, the success of the King James Bible lies in the way in which a robustly Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is enriched by a judicious—and never intrusive—vocabulary deriving from Latin terms. Achieving the right balance between Anglo-Saxon and Latinate words was always a matter of debate in the sixteenth century, not least as English began to establish itself as a language in its own right. As the scope of the language developed, a debate emerged over how new words should be coined. Should they be formed from existing English roots—or should the classical languages be used as a source for new words?
This lexical anxiety can be seen in the biblical translations of the early modern period. Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1490–1546) produced an important treatise on what would now be termed “neologisms” (from the Greek for “new words”) in a deliberate attempt to develop and improve the English language. This was fiercely resisted by a group of writers. In 1587, Arthur Golding set out to develop a new English technical vocabulary capable of meeting the growing needs of the arts and sciences, which drew on Anglo-Saxon rather than classical roots. Some examples of his recommendations: “threlike” (for “equilateral triangle”); “likejamme” (for “parallelogram”); “endsay” (for “conclusion”); and “saywhat” (for “definition”). In every case, the classical alternative would pass into general use, despite Golding's vigorous rearguard action. His new words failed to catch on within the increasingly classically minded academic community.
Much the same concerns were expressed earlier in the writings of Sir John Cheke (1514–57), the first Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, who was strongly opposed to what his colleague Roger Ascham (1515–68) dismissively referred to as “inkhorn” terms—that is, words coined from Latin or Greek to make the resulting English words sound more sophisticated and dignified. Cheke set out his approach in a letter written to his friend Sir Thomas Hoby:
I am of this opinion that our own tongue should be written clean and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tongues; wherein if we take not heed by time, ever borrowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tongue naturally and praisably utter her meaning when she borroweth no counterfeitness of other tongues to attire herself withall, but useth plainly her own.
Cheke had no doubts that his principles could and should be applied to biblical translation. He produced translations of Matthew and Mark in which he attempted to avoid as many classical terms as possible, and replace them with Anglo-Saxon equivalents. This was far from easy; the Roman imperial context in which the gospel narratives are set led to a significant number of technical Roman terms appearing in the New Testament. Examples of Cheke's attempts to eliminate “inkhorn” religious terms include the following: “frosent” (for “apostle”); “hundreder” (for “centurion”); “crossed” (for “crucified”); “mooned” (for “lunatic”); “byword” (for “parable”); “uprising” (for “resurrection”); and “wizards” (for “wise men”). Cheke's translation languished, totally overlooked, until it was published in 1843 as a quaint intellectual curiosity.
Yet if one error in biblical translation was the systematic elimination of all Latin-based words, the other extreme was equally unsatisfactory. The Douai-Rheims translation aimed, as a matter of policy, to retain as much as possible of the traditional Latin vocabulary of the medieval Church. The result was as unsatisfactory as it was inevitable; the ensuing translation did not read as natural English. For example, the Douai New Testament's translation of a phrase in Philippians 2:8 reads as follows: “He exinanited himself.” This unintelligible Latinate phrase may be contrasted with the perfectly clear English of the King James Bible. “He humbled himself.” To illustrate this point further, we shall set side by side the Douai-Rheims and King James Bible translation of Ephesians 3:8–11, in which Paul sets out his understanding of his role as an apostle. Latinate terms in the Douai-Rheims version are underlined.