Tomilova O.B., Stegnitska L.V.

Bukovinian State Medical University, Ukraine

The Influence of Modern European Languages on the Formation of the English Medical Terminology

Medicine is now advancing with remarkable rapidity on many fronts, and the language of medicine is also continually evolving with remarkable rapidity, commensurate with the changes. In the current health care environment, patients and their physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals must be able to discuss the ever-changing aspects of health, disease, and biotechnology. An accurate understanding of medical terminology can assist communication and improve care for patients, and it can help to alleviate the concerns of family members and friends.

Today, there is constant need for communication between and among consumers and providers of health care. There is consequently a need for a high-quality, contemporary medical terminology. No limit exists to the number of words that can be generated in any language but still, whenever the need for a new term arises, due to the contact between people from different cultures, the formation of a neologism, composed of elements of the own language, is only rarely done. One reason for borrowing a suitable word from another language is the need to find a term for an unfamiliar concept. Then borrowing seems to be the easiest solution to this problem.

Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is far from being homogenous. It consists of two layers – the native stock of words and the borrowed stock of words. Numerically the borrowed stock of words is considerably larger than the native stock of words. Over the years, the English language has borrowed a great number of foreign words and expressions. Although a large majority of medical terms have been borrowed from classical languages, i.e. Greek and Latin, there are some words borrowed from modern European languages, such as German, French, Italian, etc. Some of this vocabulary has been so completely absorbed by English that speakers might not realize its origins.

Contemporary English is a unique mixture of Germanic and Romanic elements. This mixing has resulted in the international character of the vocabulary. In the comparison with other languages English possesses great richness of vocabulary. All languages are mixtures to a greater or lesser extent, but the present day English medical vocabulary is unique in this respect.

Borrowing – 1) (process) resorting to the word-stock of other languages for words to express new concepts, to further differentiate the existing concepts and to name new objects, etc.; 2) (result) a loan word, borrowed word – a word taken over from another language and modified in phonemic shape, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of the English language.The following types of borrowings can be distinguished: loan words proper, translation loans, semantic borrowings, and morphemic borrowings.

· loan words proper – words borrowed from another language and assimilated to this or that extent; phonetic borrowings are most characteristic in all languages. Words are borrowed with their spelling, pronunciation and meaning.  Then they undergo assimilation, each sound in the borrowed word is substituted by the corresponding sound of the borrowing language meaning of the borrowed word are also changed. Such words as: bruit: is the term for the unusual sound that blood makes when it rushes past an obstruction (called turbulent flow) in an artery when the sound is auscultated with the bell portion of a stethoscope (French); tamponade: is the closure or blockage (as of a wound or body cavity) as if by a tampon especially to stop bleeding (French); pellagre: a disease primarily caused by niacin deficiency (Italian); gegenhalten: an involuntary resistance to passive movement, as may. In some cases the spelling is changed. The structure of the word can also be changed. The position of the stress is very often influenced by the phonetic system of the borrowing language. The paradigm of the word, and sometimes the occur in cerebral cortical disorders (German).

· loan translation – 1) (process) borrowing by means of literally translating words (usually one part after another) or word combinations, by modelling words after foreign patterns; 2) (result) translation loans (calques) – words and expressions formed from the material already existing in the English language but according to patterns taken from another language by way of literal word-for-word or morpheme-for-morpheme translation; in such cases the notion is borrowed from a foreign language but it is expressed by native lexical units, e.g. thoughts-out-loud: patient’s sensation that all his thoughts are spoken within his chest, or that these are repeated or cried out loudly, or that these resonate within some accidental rustling sound in the external world (German: Gedankenlautwerden); chain smoker: a person who smokes continually, as by lighting the next cigarette from the previous one (German: Kettenraucher).

· semantic borrowings/loans – the term is used to denote the development in an English word of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in another language, e.g. jaw: is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food (French: joue which previously had the meaning of cheek).

· morphemic borrowings are borrowings of affixes which occur in the language when many words with identical affixes are borrowed from one language into another, so that the morphemic structure of borrowed words becomes familiar to the people speaking the borrowing language, e.g. we can find a lot of Romanic affixes in the English word-building system, that is why there are a lot of words – hybrids in English where different morphemes have different origin, e.g. jaundice: is a yellowish pigmentation of the skin, the conjunctival membranes over the sclerae (whites of the eyes), and other mucous membranes caused by hyperbilirubinemia (French).

Thus, the tendency of the English language to borrow extensively can be traced during the centuries and one can confidently claim that borrowing is one of the most productive sources of enrichment of the English vocabulary. Though, most of the medical terms are coined from affixes and roots of Latin and Greek origin, the influence of European languages on formation of bulk of medical vocabulary is considerable.