An important cause of lexical change is borrowing. Referring to the importance of borrowings in the study of language history and history of civilisation, Otto Jespersen remarks that "... in a great many instances they permit us to fix approximately the dates of linguistic changes. Languages change gradually because of various reasons. The rapidity with which these changes take place: may differ. Sometimes, the speakers are hardly aware of changes, while in other periods of time these take place so fast that even during the lifetime of a single generation the differences are easily noticeable.
Military organisation and life is shown by such terms as admiral, armour, arms, army, assault, battle, company, danger, enemy, force, guard, lieutenant, march, navy, officer, peace, sergeant, siege, soldier, troops, war.
The legal vocabulary is made up of such terms as attorney, crime, damage, defendant, felony, judge, jury, justice, plaintiff, property, session, to accuse, to plead, to sue, to summon.
Religious terms are: abbey, altar, angel, baptism, clergy, cloister, friar, parish, religion, saint, saviour, sermon, to blame, to preach, to save, to tempt, trinity, virgin.
Terms describing moral values or their lack are charity, chaste, cruelty, grace, mercy, pity, sacrifice, vice, virtue.
Other words are: bistro, boutique, cinema verite, couchette, danseur, discotheque, haute couture, magicienne, messagerie, regisseur, repetiteur.
From Japanese there have been borrowed fewer words, with a rather restricted circulation, e.g.
bonsai "the art of growing dwarfed ornamental varieties of trees or shrubs in small shallow pots or trays by selective pruning" and " a tree or shrub grown by this method";
haiku "an epigrammatic Japanese verse form in 17 syllables";
hara-kiri or hari-kari "ritual suicide by disembowelment with a sword when disgraced or under sentence of death";
Not all words of foreign origin have been assimilated (adapted to the phonological, graphical and morphological tradition of English) to the same extent. Such words as
the Latin bottle, candle, cherry, rule, use, very, wine,
the Greek blame, card, cinema, dialect, dragon, drama, grammar, idiom, radio, telescope,
the Scandinavian fellow, knee, knight, to hit, plough, to ride, and
the French words army, country, crime, crown, damage, government, judge, etc. have been completely assimilated.
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