1、On the Sources of the Rapid Development of Modern English VocabularyAbstract: Modern English, especially modern English vocabulary, develops very quickly. The sources of the rapid development of Modern English vocabulary are relatively obvious. This paper analyzes these sources from four aspects: th

2、e development of native words; the influence of other cultures and languages; the rapid development of modern science and technology; social, economic, and political changes. The four main sources can give us a better understanding of the development of Modern English vocabulary. Studying these sour

3、ces of the rapid development of Modern English vocabulary is good to English learner.Keywords: Modern English, vocabulary, development, native words, other culture, science and technology, social changes. According to the Ethnologue, there are over 1 billion speakers of English as a first or second

4、language as of 1999. English is spoken in a vast number of territories including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore and Southern Africa. There is no doubt that Modern English has already been an international langua

5、ge. Though there are so many reasons for Modern English to be the most commonly used language worldwide, one of the most important reasons that can not be denied is that Modern English has been developing so fast, especially Modern English vocabulary. The development of Modern English as well as its

6、 vocabulary helps Modern English to settle its position as an international language, while the common use of English around the world contributes a lot to the development of Modern English and especially its vocabulary.The modern English period extends from 1500 to the present day. We may divide th

7、is period into two parts: the early Modern English period and the Late Modern English period. There are four main sources of the rapid development of both the early Modern English and the Late Modern English: the development of native words; the influence of other cultures and languages; the rapid d

8、evelopment of modern science and technology; social, economic, and political changes.1. The Development of Native WordsThe development of native words is one of the sources that contributes a lot to the development of Modern English vocabulary. These native English words are usually the basic words

9、used to express the fundamental concepts dealing with everyday objects and things and have relatively strong stability, but they still have enriched Modern English vocabulary with its polysemic character, collocability and word-forming ability.Native words often possess more than one meaning because

10、 most of them have undergone semantic changes in the course of use and have become polysemous. One example will suffice for illustration. The word take may mean: move or carry from one place to another; to remove or use without permission or by mistake; to seize or capture; to get for oneself; to ge

11、t hold of (something) with the hands, to be willing to accept; to bear or endure; to need (a stated amount of time); to perform the actions connected with; to test or measure; to write down; to have the intended effect or to work successfully (Longman Dictionary Of Contemporary English).With strong

12、collocability, native English words can make up of some commonly-used expressions and phrases. For example, we have some phrases consisting of the word eye: an eye for eye-a punishment which hurts the criminal in the same way as he hurt someone else; to be in the public eye-to be often seen in publi

13、c or on television, or mentioned in newspapers; to catch someones eye-(of things) to be noticed or (of people) to draw someones attention to oneself; to do someone in the eye-to trick someone; easy on the eyes-(of people) attractive, pretty; have an eye for-to have the ability to see; in the eyes of

14、 the law-according to the law; to look someone in the eye-to look straight into someones face; to see eye to eye with-to agree completely; with half an eye-without looking closely.The word-forming ability of native words is also good for the development of Modern English vocabulary. Many native word

15、s can be root words and they can form a great number of derivatives. The word water, for instance, has brought such derivatives, as watery, watered, waterish, waterless, etc.In brief, native words have existed for a very long time, for centuries. Though they are not dominant in numbers, they have gr

16、eat influence on Modern English vocabulary. Undoubtedly, the development of native English words is one of the sources of the rapid development of Modern English vocabulary.2. The Influence of Other Cultures and LanguagesThe influence of other cultures and languages is also one of important sources

17、of Modern English vocabularys rapid development. English has been known as an language which is very compatible with another language. It has been absorbing new elements from other languages all over the world in its history of development.Early Modern English was in the period of Renaissance. In th

18、is period scholars paid much attention to the study of the Latin and Greek classics, so Latin and Greek had a great influence on English. Some Early Modern English words were even borrowed directly from Latin. Latin loan words were mostly connectedly with science and abstract ideas, such as area, ch

19、emist, education, emancipate, expectation, exist, function, irony, scientific, and so on. Greek borrowings were mostly literary, technical and scientific words, such as anonymous, astrology, astronomy, arithmetic, comedy, criterion, drama, geometry, lexicon, physics, system, tragedy,etc. In addition

20、, Greek prefixes like anti-, anthropo-, auto-, chrono-, geo-, hemi-, hetero-, hydro-, litho-, phono-, photo- and physio- and suffixes like -gram, -graph, -meter, -phobia, -phone and -scope have now become the main source of neo-classical compounds.Early Modern English borrowed words directly not onl

21、y from Latin but also from French, Spanish, Italian and other European languages in the period of Renaissance. French loans have been enriching the English vocabulary for a long time. These French words are connected chiefly with arts, food and fashion, politics and science: machine, moustache, pilo

22、t, promenade, rendezvous, vase, and volley were borrowed in the 16th century; ballet, champagne, detail, group, parole, rapport, and sound were borrowed in the 17th century; brochure, critique, liqueur, picnic, police, and regime were borrowed in the 18th century; chauffeur, fiancee, menu, prestige,

23、 renaissance, resume and restaurant were borrowed after 18th century. Borrowings from Italian were particularly dominant in the fields of art and music, such as allegro, andante, concert, concerto, duet, libretto, opera, oratorio, piano, sonata, soprano, tenor, trio and violins. In the field of arch

24、itecture , there are some words like balcony, dome, grotto and piazza borrowed from Italian. Some words like banana, canyon, cargo, cigar, cocoa, embargo, guerrilla, hurricane, mosquito, potato, vanilla came from Spanish. Other European languages also have made great contributions to the development

25、 of Modern English vocabulary. German contributed hamburger, hinterland, kindergarten, nickle, quartz, sauerkraut, wanderlust, and zinc; from Dutch came many nautical terms such as deck, dock, freight, keel, orlop, skipper, sloop and yacht; buffalo, cobra, fetish, joss, junk, pagoda, port and verand

26、a were borrowed from Portuguese; from Russian came ruble, sputnik, stepper, troika and vodka.It is indeed that European languages have great effects on the development of Modern English vocabulary. However, non-European languages also make a great significance to the expansion of Modern English voca

27、bulary. alcohol, alcove, amber, cotton, gazelle, giraffe, magazine, mosque, minaret, sultan and syrup were borrowed from Arabic; azure, bazaar, caravan, divan, jasmine, khaki, pajama and shawl from Persian; amen, manna, sabbath, Sabra, Satan and seraph were borrowed from Hebrew; bangle, bungalow, co

28、olie, cot, loot, pundit, rajah, and thug from Hindi; gorilla and zebra were borrowed from African. Modern English also borrows words from Chinese and Japanese. Words like paper-tiger, big-pot-rice, four modernizations, dragon-boat festival, jiaozi, kungfu, chopsuey, kowtow, lichi, loquat, yamen were

29、 borrowed from Chinese. Kanban, kaizen, karoshi, kimono, rickshaw, samurai were also among the words which Modern English borrowed from Japanese.There are still many other words which Modern English has borrowed from other languages or cultures. These loan-words are uncountable and contributes a lot

30、 to the enlargement of Modern English vocabulary. 3. The Rapid Development of Modern Science and TechnologyThe rapid development of modern science and technology is the most important source of new words. In the second half of the 20th century, with the rapid development of science and technology, n

31、ew inventions emerge in endlessly. Every field needs relevant words to describe new techniques, material and equipment at a certain stage of development. Therefore, new words come out as well as old words are given new meanings.The development and extensive use of computer science, the birth of the

32、Internet and the popularization of computer have greatly enriched Modern English vocabulary. There are some daily English words relating to computer, such as CPU (Center Processor Unit), mainboard, RAM (random access memory), ROM (Read Only Memory), Hard Disk, monitor, keyboard, etc.With American as

33、tronauts successful landing on the moon and the development of technology about satellites and outer space, a large number of new words associated with this area come out. These new words are used to describe new things or novel experience. For example, moonwalk is used to described an action of wal

34、king on the surface of moon; softlanding means that spacecrafts slow down and land in a relatively safe way. There are still some other new words in this field, such as moonrock, earthrise, command module, black hole, moonflight, moonfall, mooncraft, lunar rover, space shuttle, spacemen, spaceport,

35、space sickness and so on. Not only modern technology and science of computer and space but also medical science contributes a lot to the development of Modern English vocabulary. The development of science and technology is the driving force of the development of medical science. Therefore, the rapi

36、d development of science and technology leads to the boom of medicine. At the same time, researches on medicine and disease prevention have made a great progress. The most distinctive point of these progress is that a large number of new technology, new material and new methods are introduced into t

37、his area. There is no doubt that these development and progress directly result in the use of new English words in the medical area. These new words mainly include some technical terms, names of new drugs, newly discovered bacteria and viruses. Some of these new words are very familiar to us, such a

38、s hot-scanning, open heart surgery, microcirculation, transsexual operation, clone and so on. However, some medical terminology is very complex for people to spell and write. In the process of popularization of medical knowledge, many abbreviations of medical terms come out for the convenience of wr

39、iting and spelling. And these kinds of abbreviations are usually in the form of an acronym. For example, SARS is an acronym of severe acute respiratory syndrome; AIDS is an abbreviation of human immunodeficiency virus; SIDS is an abbreviation of sudden infant death syndrome. The development of techn

40、ology also makes a great contribution to the improvement of transportation. Varieties of means of transportation are changing peoples life. The emergence of new means of transportation stimulates the production of new English words. New words like airbus, air-taxi, jet set, ACV(air cushion vehicle),

41、 ATV(all terrain vehicle), hovercraft, freight-liner, bullet train in the area of transportation are becoming more and more popular.Apart from fields of medicine, transportation, space technology and computer science, new English words also come out in other areas like biology, phytochemistry, ecolo

42、gy, biotelemetry, exobiology, genetic engineering, ocean engineering and so on. The present century has witnessed tremendous advances in all these fields of science and technology and this leads to the creation of tens of thousands of new words in the English language. Obviously, these new English w

43、ords has enriched Modern English vocabulary and are good for the development of Modern English vocabulary. There is no doubt that the rapid development of modern science and technology is one of the most important sources of the development of Modern English vocabulary.4. Political, economic and soc

44、ial changesPolitical, economic and social changes are another important source of new Modern English words. The recent decades have seen considerable political and social ferment. And their influence on the English vocabulary is as great as that of science and technology. So we should not neglect th

45、e importance of this source.Besides hippies and flower people, we have yippies, groupies “teen-age girls who are fans of rock nroll singing groups” and teenyboppers “girls or boys in the early teens who follow the current fashions and fads in clothing, music, etc”.The Womens liberation movement in t

46、he U.S. Has brought a great impact on Modern English vocabulary. Words with the element man are regarded especially by the feminists as “sexist words” or words connoting male chauvinism. Consequently, neologisms such as chairperson, congressperson, spokesperson, mail person, salesperson, newspeople,

47、 camera operator are invented. Some people even go so far as to prefer person-eating animal to man-eating animal. We wonder whether we may one day read personcott, person-of-war, ottoi and highthing instead of the well-accepted boycott, man-of-war, ottoman, and highboy. New social habits and new liv

48、ing conditions necessitate the introduction of new words. Now we are already familiar with pressure cooker, microwave oven, air-conditioner, vacuum cleaner and spin-drier. Sometimes we do not cook at our kitchenette, but go to a supermarket to buy ready-mixed cakes or instant food.Education is anoth

49、er source of new vocabulary, giving us open classroom “a classroom in which open discussions and individualized activities replaced the traditional subject-centered studies”; open enrollment “ a policy of unrestricted admission to a college or university that permits poor or unprepared students to m

50、atriculate”; and computer-assisted- instruction (CAT), grade point average, underachiever, overachiever, and so on.New entertainment has brought into such new expressions as Sitcoms “situation comedies”, soap opera, simulcast “simultaneous transmission”, guerrilla or street theater “drama or mime us

51、u. performed in an informal setting outdoors as on streets or in parks”, acid rock, hard rock, folk rock and call-in (of a radio program). Sports continued its steady production of vocabulary with new sports such as skateboarding, surfriding, body surf, roller-hockey, skydiving (“ the sport of jumpi

52、ng from an airplane and executing various tumbles and dives before pulling the rip cord of a parachute”) and snowmobiling (“ sport of riding a snowmobile”).The changes of peoples idea about society, life, ethics also have great effects on Modern English vocabulary. New words like flash mob, surrogat

53、e mother, dinky, prenup, empty-nester, gay marriage are widely accepted by people. According to the word white-collar, people have invented a series of words like blue-collar, pink-collar and grey-collar. New words like downshifting, ringxiety, staycation, chick lit, Strawberry Generation are more a

54、nd more popular in recent years.The rapid development of global economy has added many new elements to Modern English vocabulary. The global economy is developing towards globalization and regional economic integration, thus leading to the production of many new words, such as World Trade Organizati

55、on, Organization of Petrol Exporting Countries, European Union, and so on. Moreover, world economic crises, currency inflation and the development of industry and commerce have brought so many new words like stagflation, added value tax, revenue sharing, and so on.After the 9/11 incident in the US,

56、many new terms about terrorism were invented: plane (nv to use planes as missiles), theo-terrorism (terrorism resulting from religious extremism), talibanize ( the takeover of a government by Islamic fundamentalists ), ground zero ( the rubble left behind where the twin towers once stood ), Debris surge ( massive clouds of dus