Assimilation of borrowing

There are words that are easily recognized as foreign. And there are others that have become so firmly rooted in the language that it is sometimes extremely difficult to distinguish them from words of Anglo-Saxon origin (e.g. pupil, master, city, river). The term 'assimilation of borrowings' is used to denote a partial or total conformation to the phonetical, graphical and morphological standards of the English language and its semantic system.

According to the degree of assimilation:

1. Completely assimilated words follow all morpholo­gical, phonetical and orthographic standards, take an active part in word-formation.(cheese,face, animal)

2. Partially assimilated- assimilated in some respects and unassimilated in others graphically (Fr. ballet, buffet);;some may keep a diacritic mark: café, phonetically (machine, police ) gram-ly (phenomenon – phenomena), semantically -they denote objects and notions peculiar to the country from which they come (sari, sombrero).

3. Unassimilated(barbarisms). This group includes words not assimilated in any way, and for which there are English equivalents, the Italian addio, ciao— 'good-bye'.

Unassimilated words differ from assimilated ones in their pronunciation, spelling, semantic structure, frequency and sphere of application. There are also words that are assimilated in some respects and unassimilated in others – partially assimilated words (graphically, phonetically, grammatically, semantically).

The degree of assimilation depends upon the time of borrowing: the older the borrowing, the more thoroughly it tends to follow normal English habits.Another factor -the way in which the borrowings were taken over into the language. Words borrowed orally are assimilated more readily; they undergo greater changes, whereas with words adopted through writing the process of assimilation is longer and more laborious.

The words shirt and skirt etymologically descend from the same root. Shirt is a native word, and skirt- a Scandinavian borrowing. Their phonemic shape is different, and there is a certain resemblance which reflects their common origin. Their meanings are also different but easily associated: they both denote articles of clothing. Such words originating from the same etymological source, but differing in phonemic shape and in meaning are called etymological doublets.