INDIAN INFLUENCE

-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In the XV century appeared in the south-west some hunters that spoke in

*athabascana language , that was from the family of some languages from Alaska and

the west of Canada, that had emigrated to the south through the *Great Plains of the

west. They sacked the villages, looking for food and then, they sold their prisoners.

They lerned from the indians to cultivate the earth. In the present day, thse indians

are the Navahos and several groups of *Apaches.

SOUTH-WEST ZONE

Some of the South-west's groups are the*Cherokees, the *Choctaw, the

*Chickasaw, the *Creek, etc... This zone includes Arizona, New Mexico, the

meridional part of Colorado and the states of Sonora and Chihuahua.

THE GREAT PLAINS ZONE

They are meadows from the centre of Canada to Mexico (through the suth),

and from the mid-west to the Rocky Mountains ( through the west). The habits of

these indian groups are the most famous from them: feathers and *“tepee” kind of

housing.

During the XIX century, when the settlers invaded their territories, these indian

groupsbecame famous by the newspapers, magazines and photographies.

Between the first groups from the plains are the “blackfoot” indians ( bison hunters),

the *mondans and the *hidatsa.

(The ilustrations are at the pages:10,11 , and 12 ).

-LEXICAL ADOPTION, BORROWINGS, ETYMOLOGIES

The english-speaking settlers came into contact with a large number of

different languages. Some of the more famous groups of influence were clasificated in

this way: the Algoquian, the Iroquoian, the Siouan, the Uto-Aztecan and Petunian.

We have to know something about the nature of these languages to study the process

of borrowing. Some of the most important characteristics of their languge are:

nasalized vowels and carious kinds of pharyngealized and glottalized consonats. The

english speakers would tend to approximate to these sounds rather than to reproduce

them. There were some combinations of consonants , such as mtik, pshikye,etc that

were impossible to pronunciate to the english speakers, so yhey tend to eliminate

consonants or maybe to introduce vowels.. So it's not surprising that indian words

would be changed considerably. Some of the words that remain nowadays are only

said in certain regions, only where the objet or animal is given, for example:

scuppernong and cayuse and menhaden are likely to be better known in the coastal

south, the west and New England than in other parts of the country.

The most part of remain words are the names of plants, animals and foods which the

colonists fuond in the New World and were new to them.

There were a list of 132 words adopted from the indian. In 1958, no more than 37 of

them were in use.In the intervening twenty-odd years, others on the list have become

even less familiar. Word borrowing from the Indians began very early. Moose,

raccoon, opossum, terrapin and persimmon are all recorded prior to the the landing

of the Pilgrims.

The etymologies come from a popular or unlearned effort to resolve a strange or unusual word into understandable elements.For example, the muskrat, a rodent with a musky odor,called muskwessu or muscassus, in the Algoquian languages.

Another example is the virginian pawcohiccora, the original form of hickory, was a term applied to a hickory or walnut kernel mush, and the word which gave rise to present day moose meant “he strips or eats off”.

Most languages tend to change or reform the borrowed forms, sometimes because they found difficult to pronunciate them in the way it is pronaunced, usually in the direction of simplification or shortening.

CHANGES IN MEANINGS, PRONUNCIATION AND OR SPELLING.

Loan words are liable to change after they have become a naturalized part of the english language.For example, tribal names , such as Catawba, meaning “separated”, was applied in turn to a Siouan tribe living in Carolina, then to a grape grown in that particular area, next to the wine made from the grape, and finally to the red color characteristic of the wine. Chinook, also original a tribal label, has become the name of a language (and, in Chinook Jargon, of a contact variety), two different kinds of winds, and a variety of salmon. These examples are sufficient to make the point that once a foreing word is adopted into a language, it is liable to the application of all the forces making for semantic development and alteration in that language.

In Pidgin English and in other contact languages words ghange their grammatical functions. Many of the indian loan words has been used as verbs:caucus, pwwwow, tomahawk, hickory, skunk, wigwam, potlach and mugwump are rarely used as verbs, as, in general, verbal use is attested not long after the original noun adoption.

Another significant change is the fact that nost of the borrowed nouns entered into compuond-word combinations.. Webster's New International Dictionary listed fifteen compounds for hickory, fourteen for squaw and twelve for skunk.

The change in pronunciation was very frequent, as the indian language was a particular one, that was very difficult to be pronounced to the English speakers. The indian words had a large combination of consonants that English language didn't have, and that's the reason for eliminating some of these consonants or sometimes inserting vowels to be able to pronounce it.

TOPONYMIES

It is well known that large numbers of place names in the United States come from the Indian languages, such as names of cities, states, counties, islands, rivers and lakes. Chicago, for example, come from an Algoquian word that means “garlic field”.

Some of these place names later developed an interesting type of meaning change. Mackinaw, the name of the island at the junction of lakes Huron and Michigan, was a shortening of Michilimackinac, meaning “great turtle”.

FRENCH INFLUENCE

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The english speakers colonists soon met the French. Explrers, trappers, traders, and misionaries had streamed into the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, following hard upon the trail of Champlain and La Salle. By 1700, the French has all the strategic points along these rivers, and a number of vital points on the shores of the Great Lakes as well.

Since 1599, they established stalls of commerce with furs along the St. Lawrence river. This was one of the most important economic support for the French.

New Orleans was, in that period, the most europian city of the american cities. It boasted a prosperous theatrer which catered to wealthy arisocrats from all over the South. But New Orleans was a port city too, with saliors of all nationalities who corresponded to the frontier rowdies. In New Orleans, a Creole French alternated with standard French.

LEXICAL ADOPTIONS, BORROWINGS, ETYMOLOGIES

Standard French was more pretigeous than any other language that came into contact with the Anglo-saxons.

The french loan words are considerably fewer that the indian ones, but many of the same problems present themselves in the compilation of what might be considered an authentic list. In the same regions, words like bidet are familiar to at least some groups in the population, but hardly part of the vocabulary of the general populace.

Like the American Indian loan words, many Frech borrowings have long since ceased to be an active part of the language. In 1902 Sylva Clapin listed 102 French loan words in his New Dictionary of Americanisms.

The French loan words are divided in two groups:

-The words concerning to exploration and travel, or descriptive of features of the landscape. These terms come fron the contact between English and French in the central states, as did, undoubtedly, such miscellaneous items as charivari, calumet and lacrosse.

-The words concerning to the food, like jambalaya, praline and sazarac suggest the superb chefs, confectioners, and bartenders of the New Orleans area.

The borrowings from the French appear chiefly during the eighteenth and nineteenth ceturies. The earliest citation for caribou is 1672; that for portage is 1698. In the ninetennth century the english language in general, borrowed more words from continental French that at any time since the period of Norman French influence.

In general, Frech borrowings were terms dealing with art, literature, dress, textiles, furniture and cooking in the main.

Some of the French loan words had originated in other languages. An example of etymology is bayou. It was a Chotaw word meaning river or creek. In Texas and the West the word means a deep inlet which affords a channel for the water in times of flood but remains dry or nearly so at other seasons.

Not all the etymologies are clear. For exapmle, Chowder appears to have been takenfrom breton chaudière, “cauldron”. Bust the most etymological problem is refered to the word shanty, which is ascribed by some scholars to Canadian French chantier, “shed for storing timber”, and by others to Irish sean “old” and tigh, “house”.

CHANGES IN MEANINGS, PRONUNCIATION AND/OR SPELLINGS

The French loan words weren't so difficult to pronounce to the English speakers than Indians words were. The French loan words weren't as violenty distored. Even though, the spelling have been considerably alterd at times, as in the case of gopher from gaufre “honeycomb”; a radical change in pronunciation is not implied.

The most pronounced tendency is to stress the first syllable, or at any rate to shift it foward, as evidenced in coulee, bureau, depot, picayune, and many others in the list, but this has always been characteristic of the English treatment of French loan words. English does not have a sound like French u; consequently the stressed vowels of butte, flume and bureau were dealt with according to English phonetic patterns.

The changes in meaning in the French loan words are more complex than the changes in the Indian loan words, partly, because many of the words are a second borrowing of the same term. Portage, for example, have existed in English with a number of meanings, some of which were archaic when the word was borrowed in the present. Dime, in general, means “one-tenth”, and came into British English in 1377,but it has dropped out the language altogether pior to its revival as part of their monetary terminology.

One of the most interesting series of changes has ocurred in connection with depot (pronounced dee-po in the South prior to World War II, but reverting under military influence to something closer to the French pronunciation. In the late XVIII century, it meant the act of depositing, then the deposit of collection itself, and later a place where virtually something may be deposited. Later, depot came to be used for a passenger satation. And came into its own again in connetion with transcontinental bus travel.

With respect to compuond formations, the most profilic of the borrowed words are prairie, that has more than eighty combinations. Gopherhas fourteen, but there is a tipically American bit of verbal humor in its figurative uses

TOPONYMIES

Because of the several colonies that France got in the colonial period, there are several names of cities and states names in The United Satates, like Lousiana, that was called in this way in the honour of Luis XIV.

There are other toponymics words like: bayou, butte, chute, coulee, crevasse,etc...

DUTCH INFLUENCE

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Holland developed a mode of life and a culture in the settlement in the Houston Valley. Its industrious burghers and powerful patroons became a part of the English colonial empire, in the trade referred to above, in 1664, but its sailors had been in contact with the New World.

This was the world of Walter the Doubter, William the Testy, and hard-headed Peter Stuyvesant, known to many mainly through Washington Irving's Knickerbocker History.. Irving give us a picture of the general culture of the area.

Holland didn't get much colonies, because it wasn't a great empire, and it had to dedicate to the commerce (it had a big furs commerce).

LEXICAL ADOPTIONS, BORROWINGS, ETYMOLOGIES.

Although there are only twenty-seven words listed, their use is more extended and general that the Spanish or French loan words. Six of them are refered to food names, but aside from these there are few which represent any particular class of idea or sphere of activity.

Some of the terms are wholly or in part translations rather than direct appropiations from the Dutch lexicon. These are some examples: Pot cheese is modeled on Dutch pot kes. Saw buck cuold have been formed either on the basis of Dutch zaagbock or German Sägebock.

A stronger case for language-contact origins can be made for Yankee, for which Dutch Jan Kees (“John Cheese”), is only one posibility.

About etymologies, we find that a number of words took only one meaning from the language of the Low countries, but have other meanings which already existed in English, for example pit, in the sense of the hard kernel of a peach or cherry. It's the only meaning that was taken from the Dutch, other meanings of this word were already common to both languages.

CHANGES IN MEANING, PRONUNCIATION AND/OR SPELLING.

The word caboose presents the most unusual example of change in meaning. At the outset, it was used with reference to a ship's galley, and it is still employed in Great Britain. Some of the American meanings are: outdoor oven, hut, and finally its present meaning of a car serving as the headquarters for a freight train crew. In the wagon trains that carried the prisoneers westward, the caboose was the wagon for the provisions.

Some of the changes in pronunciation come from the fact that American English didn't have the [a] vowel of father, the vowel, as in log, developed as the closets approximation. A good many of the words now spelled with oo, some of them are spelled with the vowel of food, were spelled oe in Dutch, and pronounced with the vowel of pull. This was true of hoek, snoepen, and stoep, that corresponded to English hook, snoop, and stoop, respectively.

There were also chages in functions, like: pit, boss, and sleigh, that were all changed into verbs. Boodle, perhaps, the outstanding illustration of the tendency to form derivates. The Oxford English Dictionary lists boodleize, boodleism, boodler, boodlerism, and boodling, and the Dictionary of Aericanisms adds boodlery to the list.

TOPONYMY

There are names of places that come from the Dutch, such as Hellegat.

And some toponymics like: bush (“back country”) and hook (of land).

GERMAN INFLUENCE

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The German migrations to America were given in three or four major waves. The most imporatant are:

-1683: the first migrations,from the southwest part of Germany. They begun to settle in Pennsylvania. By 1775, they were abuot 90.000, largely from the Rhenish Palatinate. These Germans developed a language consisting in a mixture of several dialects of their own and English words and constructions.

-1830 (reached its crest in 1849). It was after the collapse of the liberal movement in the fatherland, when some patriots like Carl Schurz came to this country. Although many German rural communities sprang up as a result of the movement, much of the settlement was metropolitan. In Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit, Buffalo, and New York, Germans were gathered together in groups large enough to mantain their own language and a cultural traditions for a considerable lengh of time.

German had also their own schools, and they maintained their church and fraternal organizations. After the First World War, the German still formed the largest body of nonEnglish-sepeaking stock in the United States, with the possible exception of Spanish-sepeaking Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans.

Though dying out more rapidly now than in former times, it is still spoken by about 25% of the inhabitants of Lehigh, Lebanon, and Berks counties in Pennsylvania, and understood by 60 to 65 per cent.

LEXICAL ADOPTIONS, BORROWINGS, ETYMOLOGIES.

In general, the German borrowings came into English during the nieteenth century. Noodle, first cited by the Dictionary of American English in 1812, and Sauerkraut, in 1813, seem to have been used in England earlier, that's a reason to believe that the American use of these words represents an independent borrowing.

Kris Kringle in 1830, loafer in 1835, poker in 1836, and ouch in 1839, must have come from Pennsylvania or its derivate settlements.

There is a perseverance on food terms, and words reflecting pleasant but commonplace social contacts. Even such commonplaces of presentday American life as pretzel, hamburger, and frankfurter, do not appear until 1874, 1884, and 1899, repectively.

In general, German borrowings have been nouns. The loan words are about fifty in number, but again is the difficulty of knowing what to include and what to omit. Is turnverein obssolescent, how about Turners, or Turner Hall, which may linger on somewhat more tenaciously?.

Several German words that were a part of the every day vocabulary during the World War II, have been ommited because they were equally or more widely used in England. Blitzkrieg (“lightning warfare”), and its shortened form Blitz; Flak (“anti-aircraft guns or the fire therefrom”); Luftwaffe (“Air Force”); Panzer (“armored division”), and Gestapo (“secret police”) have dissapeared along with German military might.

About the etymologies, we have to observe these intejections: nix, ouch, phooey (some of them are Yiddish) come from the German, and it has been assumed that hurrah was an early importation from the German, as well. Another probles is that if rainworm, cookbook, and back country are translations of Regenwurm, Kockbuch, and Hinterland, repectively.

CHANGES IN MEANIG, PRONUNCIATION, AND/OR SPELLING.

There is a large number of compound names made with the suffixes -fest and -burger. The first oneappears in some colloquial words, such as: gabfest, talkfest, swatfest, and slugfest. The second one is the one who has more compound names, like: cheeseburgers, chickenburgers, turkeyburgers, lamburgers, riceburgers, fishburgers, shrimburgers, pizzaburgers, ham-and-egg burgers, ect...

The changes in pronunciation are not so clear, but it is true that German words represent a difficulty in pronunciation, as they have sounds that Engilsh doesn't have, such as oe <ö>, y <ü>,( that are the same as the French ones) and it's possible that they tended to simplify them.

CONCLUSION/PERSONAL OPINION

Reading the article, I've realized that there's a large number of foreing words, from several nationalities, but I wonder why, if there were so many languages altogether, the English language were at the end the most important one, and the most spokend, moreover when the German is still spoken by so many people.I supose that it has to do very much with the power, the politic power, because if it were because of the number of people that speak a language, it may wouldn't have been english the most important.

It's also important, the way a language developes, becauseI can't imagine how a word or words can become so popular to be adopted by a language,I supose that it's because in the New World there were many new things and it had to be called in any way. Whatever it is,I think that it's something beatiful to create a language with several languages ( well, they didn't created it, but in some kind of way, it's a different language, although it's English).

Finally, I think that this grate phenomenon that was the colonization of the new world, particulary, The United States, has been undervalued, because there's a genereal opinion that the United States has no history or at least a few history, and I think that it's as important as the French Revolution, because it was not only a language mixture, but a culture, society, and ways of thinking mixture, and it wolud have made from America a better country, because I think that in the variety is the wisdom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALL THE ADITIONAL INFORMATION HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM THE ENCARTA `98 ENCYCLOPEDIA

NOTE: ALL THE WORDS MARKED WITH THIS SYMBOL: *, ARE SPANISH WORDS, AND I DON'T KNOW THE TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH.

CONTENTS

CONTENT PAGES

*INDIAN INFLUENCE.........................................................1-2

-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND.................................................1

-LEXICAL ADOPTIONS, ETC..................................................1-2

-CHANGES IN MEANING, ETC................................................2

-TOPONYMIES..........................................................................2

*FRENCH INFLUENCE.........................................................3-4

-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND..................................................3

-LEXICAL ADOPTIONS,ECT....................................................3-4

-CHANGES IN MEANING, ETC.................................................4

-TOPONYMIES...........................................................................4

*DUTCH INFLUENCE..........................................................5-6

-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND..................................................5

-LEXICAL ADOPTIONS,ETC......................................................5

-CHANGES IN MEANING,ETC................................................5-6

-TOPONYMIES...........................................................................6

*GERMAN INFLUENCE.......................................................6-7

-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND..................................................6

-LEXICAL ADOPTIONS,ETC....................................................6-7

-CHANGES IN MEANING,ETC..................................................7

*CONCLUSION......................................................................8

*BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................9

*ILLUSTRATIONS.............................................................10-11-12