What is the contribution of other languages to English language?

Answer 1

Chaucer - usually reckoned to be the first important poet in modern English - was a well-known translator from the French. Indeed, there is a famous French poem by Eustache Deschamps praising 'Noble Geoffrey Chaucer, the great translator'.

Spenser - the earliest of the great Elizabethan authors - modeled his first book of poetry (The Shepheards Calendar) on the Eclogues of the Italian poet Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuanus. A little later Shakespeare borrowed the stories of some of his best plays from Italian sources (Romeo and Juliet comes from Bandello - via Arthur Brooke), and in one case even a Danish history (Hamlet comes from Saxo Grammaticus' History of the Kings of Denmark).

Much later Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyyat - a crucial work in the formation of modernism - is a very loose translation of some poems written in medieval Persian.

Other langauges have made an immeasurable contribution to English literature - and English literature in turn has made an immeasurable contribution to other languages.

Answer 2

Other languages have contributed to English through borrowing words, phrases, and grammatical structures. For example, Latin contributed many scientific and academic terms, while French influenced English vocabulary related to law, government, and cuisine. Overall, these linguistic borrowings have enriched English and made it a more diverse and dynamic language.