Etymology of English Proverbs

Abstract

The article deals with the languages of origin and sources of English proverbs. The aim of this study is to identify and quantify the rankings (based on the proportion of paremiological units) of languages of origin, personal, functional and stylistic and genre affiliation with textual sources of English proverbs. The study determines two main factors that affect the formation of the paremiological fund of the English language: the broad international and intercultural contacts (every third English proverb has foreign origin) and the writing tradition (almost half of the English proverbs goes back to written sources, different in terms of productivity and very diverse in functional and stylistic and genre affiliation). More over It finds out that English paremiological fund hasn’t been subjected to significant influence of foreign languages in the new period (four out of five borrowed proverbs belong to classical languages and French, the influence of which was the most prominent on the English language in the ancient period and fully completed by the end of the middle period). The study also defines that the paremiological fund of the modern English possess a high proportion of the nationalcultural component (three out of the four authors of the English proverbs written sources turn out to be British or American).