Folk EtymologyAytan Gahramanova

•The term “folk etymology” comes from German “Volksetymologie”. People sometimes try to make a strange or foreign word over so that it will be easier to pronounce.

Folk etimology is usually used in borrowed words.

• So, the people contrast such borrowed words with difficult pronunciation to the understandable words, which are already known them. For ex.:

Onbarmaq -------Başbilet ----------Yelsəbet ----------

UnivermaqPasportVelosiped

Asparagus -------- sparrow-grass

Folk etymology is the formation of a new word due to the wrong analysis of already existing root the ending of which coincide with some well-known suffixes. These endings are taken away and new words appear. For ex.:

To burgleTo begTo edit

has been created from

•burglar•beggar•editor

Etymology• Etymology is a branch of

linguistics concerned with the facts relating to the origin, formation and primary meaning

of words.• The term etymology is derived from the Greek word “etymon”

--- “the true, original meaning of a word”.

According to the etymological principle the English vocabulary is usually divided into the following

groups:• Native words • Denizens • AliensThe native words make up about

30%, the borrowed or loan words make up more than 70% of the English vocabulary.

• The term borrowing is used to denote the process of adopting words from other languages.

• In linguistic literature the term native is used to denote words of Anglo-Saxon origin brought to the British Isles from the continent in the 5th century by the Germanic tribes – the Angles, the Saxons

and the Jutes.

The native words• Anglo-Saxons word-stock is about 25-30%.

There include most of auxiliary and modal words, pronouns, prepositions, numerals,

conjuctions, such groups as words denoting parts of body, members of the family and the closest relatives, natural

phenomena and planets, animals, qualities and properties, common actions.

In Azebaijani native words have the following characteristic features:

• If the initial letter is a consonant vowel sound or vice versa: qanad, odun, etc.

• They are mainly onesyllabic or twosyllabic: papaq, qum, etc.

• Stress falls on the last syllable: qar’pız, ba’dam

• Vowels and consonants follow each other: qazan,etc.

• Two vowels cannot be used at the beginning of the words;

• Two consonants cannot be used together in the middle and at the behinning of the words, but the word: srarağagün

• Most of the English native words have undergone great changes in their semantic structure and as a result are nowadays polysemantic.

For e.g.: the word finger denotes:

a part of a hand;the part of a glove that covers the finger;a fingerlike part in various machines;a hand of a clock;an index;a unit of a measurement;

• Denizens are words of foreign origin which have been

accomodated to the English language by the substitution of English sounds for the unusual

foreign ones.• Aliens are words which

borrowed from foreign languages without change of the foreign spelling and which are immediately recognised as

foreign words

Thanks for your

attention!!!