Assimilation – is the process of adapting of the borrowed word to grammatical,
phonetic, graphic and semantic properties of the language which
accept these words.
Types of assimilation
1. Completely assimilated loan words
2. Partially assimilated loan words
3. Non-assimilated loan words (barbarisms)
1. Completely assimilated loan words (when a word is assimilated completely into another language it means that it has adapted itself graphically, phonetically, semantically, grammatically)
nation, face, pen, husband, ball, want, take, die, roof
ü The French suffix –age,-ance and –ment and the English modification of French –esse and –fier which provide speech material to produce hybrids (shortage, goddess, speechify)
ü Free forms are readily combined with native suffixes. (painful, painless, painfully)
2. Partially assimilated loan words
a. loan words not completely assimilated graphically (taxi, ballet, cafe)
b. loan words not completely assimilated phonetically (Machine, cartoon, prestige) (borrowed)
i. [ ] in the initial position of a word
ii. ph, kh, eau
iii. ch [ ] borrowed from Greek
iv. ch [ ] borrowed from French
c. loan words not completely assimilated grammatically (crisis-crises; phenomenon- phenomena; formula-formulae; index-indices)
d. loan words not completely assimilated semantically (the words denoting objects or phenomenon which is foreign to the English language and the English style life) (pilav; sambreror, rajah, rouble)
3. Non-assimilated loan words (barbarisms) (they have not been assimilated at all so foreign words haven’t enter the word-stock of English and are used for some specific purposes)
