English Past and Present | Page 7

'savannah',
'serenade', 'sherry', 'stampede', 'stoccado', 'strappado', 'tornado', 'vanilla',
'verandah'. 'Buffalo' also is Spanish; 'buff' or 'buffle' being the proper
English word; 'caprice' too we probably obtained rather from Spain
than Italy, as we find it written 'capricho' by those who used it first.
Other Spanish words, once familiar, are now extinct. 'Punctilio' lives on,
but not 'punto', which occurs in Bacon. 'Privado', signifying a prince's
favourite, one admitted to his privacy (no uncommon word in Jeremy
Taylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so too has 'quirpo' (cuerpo),
the name given to a jacket fitting close to the body; 'quellio' (cuello), a
ruff or neck-collar; and 'matachin', the title of a sword-dance; these are
all frequent in our early dramatists; and 'flota' was the constant name of
the treasure-fleet from the Indies. 'Intermess' is employed by Evelyn,
and is the Spanish 'entremes', though not recognized as such in our
dictionaries. 'Mandarin' and 'marmalade' are our only Portuguese words
I can call to mind. A good many of our sea-terms are Dutch, as 'sloop',
'schooner', 'yacht', 'boom', 'skipper', 'tafferel', 'to smuggle'; 'to wear', in
the sense of veer, as when we say 'to wear a ship'; 'skates', too, and
'stiver', are Dutch. Celtic things are for the most part designated among
us by Celtic words; such as 'bard', 'kilt', 'clan', 'pibroch', 'plaid', 'reel'.

Nor only such as these, which are all of them comparatively of modern
introduction, but a considerable number, how large a number is yet a
very unsettled question, of words which at a much earlier date found
admission into our tongue, are derived from this quarter.
Now, of course, I have no right to presume that any among us are
equipped with that knowledge of other tongues, which shall enable us
to detect of ourselves and at once the nationality of all or most of the
words which we may meet--some of them greatly disguised, and
having undergone manifold transformations in the process of their
adoption among us; but only that we have such helps at command in
the shape of dictionaries and the like, and so much diligence in their
use, as will enable us to discover the quarter from which the words we
may encounter have reached us; and I will confidently say that few
studies of the kind will be more fruitful, will suggest more various
matter of reflection, will more lead you into the secrets of the English
tongue, than an analysis of a certain number of passages drawn from
different authors, such as I have just now proposed. For this analysis
you will take some passage of English verse or prose--say the first ten
lines of Paradise Lost--or the Lord's Prayer--or the 23rd Psalm; you
will distribute the whole body of words contained in that passage, of
course not omitting the smallest, according to their
nationalities--writing, it may be, A over every Anglo-Saxon word, L
over every Latin, and so on with the others, if any other should occur in
the portion which you have submitted to this examination. When this is
done, you will count up the number of those which each language
contributes; again, you will note the character of the words derived
from each quarter.
{Sidenote: Two Shapes of Words}
Yet here, before I pass further, I would observe in respect of those
which come from the Latin, that it will be desirable further to mark
whether they are directly from it, and such might be marked L¹, or only
mediately from it, and to us directly from the French, which would be
L², or L at second hand--our English word being only in the second
generation descended from the Latin, not the child, but the child's child.

There is a rule that holds pretty constantly good, by which you may
determine this point. It is this,--that if a word be directly from the Latin,
it will not have undergone any alteration or modification in its form and
shape, save only in the termination--'innocentia' will have become
'innocency', 'natio' will have become 'nation', 'firmamentum'
'firmament', but nothing more. On the other hand, if it comes through
the French, it will generally be considerably altered in its passage. It
will have undergone a process of lubrication; its sharply defined Latin
outline will in good part have departed from it; thus 'crown' is from
'corona', but though 'couronne', and itself a dissyllable, 'coroune', in our
earlier English; 'treasure' is from 'thesaurus', but through 'trésor';
'emperor' is the Latin 'imperator', but it was first 'empereur'. It will often
happen that the substantive has past through this process, having
reached us through the intervention of the French; while we have only
felt at a later period our want of the adjective also, which we have
proceeded to borrow direct from the Latin. Thus, 'people' is indeed
'populus',