CHAPTER XII

COGNATES AND BORROWED WORDS

IN studying a language like our own, which has enriched its native stock by adopting thousands of words from foreign tongues, the difference between cognate' and 'borrowed' words is of great moment. Thus we say that fraternal is borrowed' from the Latin fraternalis. Brother, however, is not borrowed from the Latin frater, but cognate with it or akin' to it. The distinction is particularly important in judging the relations between English and German. Every educated Englishman knows that a large part of his vocabulary is borrowed from Latin or French; but he is aware of a great residuum of words that he does not associate with those languages, such as bread, fiend, friend, book, wife. When he is first introduced to German, and meets with Brod, Feind, Freund, Buch, Weib, he is of course struck with their resemblance to these hitherto unexplained native words, and, since he knows that much of his native language is borrowed, he jumps at the conclusion that the same is true of bread, friend, and so on. Hence the popular error, which it seems almost impossible to eradicate in England, that words like this were borrowed by English from the German. The fact is, our actual borrowings from that language are almost nil. The resemblances that mislead the uninstructed reader are due to the fact that the English and the German words are cognate.

The meaning of 'cognate in this etymological use may easily be seen in the Romance languages. We know that French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are all descended from a single language, the Latin. This is not a matter of inference, but of settled historical fact. When, therefore, we find the word for 'son' appearing as fils in French, figlio in Italian, hijo in Spanish, filho in Portuguese, and remember that the Latin word for son is filius, we have no difficulty in accounting for the similarity between the various forms without supposing that Italian has borrowed from French, or Portuguese from Italian. The French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese words resemble each other because they all come from the same mother-language, Latin. Thus we explain the likeness of Fr. mère, Ital. madre, Sp. madre, Pg. mãi, as due to their common origin (L. mater, matrem), and so on with almost the whole vocabulary of the Romance languages. That is, the ancestors of the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese peoples once had substantially the same words for the same things; but these words have gradually changed their forms, whether much or little, with changing conditions of government and society. Such languages, then, are cognate, or related languages, and the words which they possess in common, by virtue of their descent from a common mother-speech, are called cognate words.

In the case of the Germanic languages, as English, German, Danish, Dutch, we find a similar state of things. Thus we have son (A.S. sunu) in English, Sohn in German, sön in Danish, zoon in Dutch, and so on with a large part of our vocabulary. This leads us to infer that there was once a Germanic mother-language from which these words have descended independently in different tribes;

and this is established by much historical evidence, though we have not (as in the case of the Romance tongue) the mother-language actually preserved (as Latin is) in The Gothic, a Germanic dialect which was reduced to writing in the fourth century, affords us much assistance in reconstructing the primitive Germanic forms.

ancient documents.

Similar processes with other groups of related languages enable us to postulate a number of similar motherlanguages, as Celtic (whence Irish and Welsh), Slavic (whence Russian and Bulgarian), Greek (whence various dialects like Attic and Ionic), and so on.

But we can carry our investigations still farther by this method of observing cognate words.

Thus the English mother (a Germanic word) is certainly not derived from the Latin mater, though it strongly resembles that word, and the same is true of Gr. μTNP (méter), Celt. mathair, Russ. mate, and Skt. matr. No one of these words can be borrowed from any other; yet their similarities are too great to be accidental, and the words must be related in some way. The natural inference is that they are cognates, and that Germanic, Latin, Greek, Celtic, Slavic, and Sanskrit are all descended from a single mother-language (the so-called 'Indo-European'), as French, Italian, and Spanish are descended from Latin. Such an inference is established beyond cavil by the multitude of correspondences which these languages show.

Where this Indo-European mother-language was first spoken nobody knows. The home of the Aryans' was once thought to be somewhere in Asia, but this is extremely doubtful. Nor is the question important. We are only certain that the family which it has produced

M

extended from Ireland in the West to India in the East, including almost all the languages of Europe, and several important Asiatic tongues. The nature of the movements which spread the Indo-European over so large an area is also obscure enough. We may be sure, however, that they were excessively complicated, including almost every possible means by which one tribe may influence another. Collectively, they are often styled the Indo-European Migration, but we must take care not to accept all that this term may seem to imply. Identity of language does not always mean identity of race. We know of many instances in which a whole people has given up its language the Celts, for example, in Gaul; the Iberians in Spain; the Franks and the Normans in France; the Normans in England; the Danes in East Anglia. Sometimes the conqueror communicates his speech to the conquered; at other times (as with the Normans), the victors adopt the language of those whom they have subdued. There are 'migrations of culture,' as well as migrations of tribes, and sometimes a very little leaven suffices to leaven a large lump. No schematic account of the Indo-European migration can be right in all its details, and however complicated the scheme which scholarly ingenuity may devise, the truth, if we could discover it, would be much more complicated. Still, we can tabulate the Indo-European Family of Languages as follows:

I. Indian. (Sanskrit, Pali, etc.)

II. Iranian. (Avestan, Old Persian, etc.)

III. Armenian.

IV. Greek.

V. Italic. (Latin, with its descendants the Romance languages, Italian, French, Spanish, etc.; Oscan, Umbrian, etc.)

VI. Celtic. (Irish and Highland Gaelic, Welsh and Armorican.)

VII. Slavonic. (Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Bohemian, etc.)
VIII. Baltic. (Lithuanian, Lettish, Old Prussian.)

IX. Teutonic or Germanic.
A. East Germanic

B. Scandinavian.

C. West Germanic.

(Gothic.)

(Icelandic, Dano-Norwegian, Swedish.)

a. High Germanic. (German.)

b. Low Germanic.

(Old Frisian, Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, Old Frankish; Frisian, English, Plattdeutsch, Dutch, Flemish.)

The position of our own language in this table should be carefully observed. It belongs to the Low or Coast division of the West Germanic dialects, as German belongs to the High or Inland division of these dialects. Thus it is more closely related to Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, and Plattdeutsch1 than to German. Besides the West Germanic dialects, the Teutonic branch includes East Germanic (Gothic) and Scandinavian, to both of which English is allied, but less closely than to the West Germanic languages. Finally, the Germanic group as a whole is akin to every other branch of the Indo-European family. We must, therefore, expect to find in any Germanic language -English, for instance-a multitude of native words which show similarities to Latin and Greek, for example, not because they are taken from the classic tongues (as so many of our words are), but by virtue of the common descent of all these from the Indo-European parent speech. Thus our word guest, which once meant 'stranger,' and the Latin hostis, enemy,' are the same word, but neither is borrowed from the other; they are cognates. Similarly, six and seven are akin to sex and septem, knee to genu, fish to piscis, father to pater, yoke to

Low German' in the special sense.