Many words in English change meaning by shifting the stress, or accent, even though the spelling stays the same.
There is a big difference between the “defense” in a court case, as in the expression “the deFENSE rests,” and the crowd pleas for “DEfense!” in a football game.
The same is true of “offense”—we call it OFFense in a football game, but we want to know what oFFENSE we have committed if the police detain us.
It’s an UPset if the lesser team upSETS the favored team.
Likewise, we proDUCE food in America, but we may buy farm PROduce at the farmers market.
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English belongs to the Germanic family of languages — German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and others — but because so much of its vocabulary comes from Latin and French, in many cases it has two words for the same thing.
We can say, for example, that we speak the English language (derived from French langue, meaning “tongue”) or that English is our “mother tongue.”
Ghost is the old English, or Germanic, word for spirit. Earlier versions of the English Bible used the expression “Holy Ghost” (Heilige Geist in German). Later, it became more acceptable to speak of the “Holy Spirit.”
Germanic root words in English are usually more powerful but often sound less elegant to the ear than their Latin or French counterparts.
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Spanish, like the other Romance languages — or tongues — derived from Latin — French, Italian, Portuguese and others — presents a peculiar case of reborrowing words that were already a part of its original Latin vocabulary.
For example, Spanish raudo, meaning rapid or swift, especially when describing water, started out as rapidus in Latin and was worn down over time. It was then borrowed again in modern times as rápido, meaning swift or rapid.
The same was true of caudal, which was capitalis in Latin. In modern Spanish, it means a lot of money, or a full body of water in a river or creek. Modern Spanish reborrowed it from Latin. It means, as it does in English, money or capital.
I invite you to send me questions or comments at harold raley(at)sbcglobal.net.
Harold Raley is a linguist, professor and writer who lives in Friendswood.
