1380984377.3491A History of English Language

A history of the english language 274
reached Australia. In both places he planted the British flag. A few years later the English
discovered a use to which this territory could be put. The American Revolution had
deprived them of a convenient place to which to deport criminals. The prisons were
overcrowded, and in 1787 it was decided to send several shiploads of convicts to
Australia. Soon after, the discovery that sheep raising could be profitably carried on in
the country led to considerable immigration, which later became a stampede when gold
was discovered on the continent in 1851.
The colonizing of Africa was largely the work of the nineteenth century, although it
had its start likewise at the close of the eighteenth century. Early in the Napoleonic Wars
Holland had come under the control of France, and in 1795 England seized the Dutch
settlement at Cape Town. From this small beginning sprang the control of England over a
large part of South Africa. This is not the place to pursue the complicated story of the
English penetration of Africa: how the missionary efforts and the explorations of
Livingstone played their part and had their culmination in the work of a visionary
financier and empire builder, Cecil Rhodes. Nor can we pause over the financial
embarrassments of Egypt and Britain’s acquisition of control over the Suez Canal which
led to the British protectorate over the region of the Nile. Our interest is merely in
sketching in the background for the extension of the English language and the effect that
this extension had upon it.
208. Some Effects of Expansion on the Language.
Apart from the greatly enlarged sphere of activity that the English language thus acquired
and the increased opportunity for local variation that has naturally resulted, the most
obvious effects of English expansion are to be seen in the vocabulary. New territories
mean new experiences, new activities, new products, all of which are in time reflected in
the language. Trade routes have always been important avenues for the transmission of
ideas and words. Contact with Na-tive Americans resulted in a number of characteristic
words such as caribou, hickory, hominy, moccasin, moose, opossum, papoose, raccoon,
skunk, squaw, terrapin, toboggan, tomahawk, totem, wampum, and wigwam. From other
parts of America, especially where the Spanish and the Portuguese were settled, we have
derived many more words, chiefly through Spanish. Thus we have in English Mexican
words such as chili, chocolate, coyote, tomato; from Cuba and the West Indies come
barbecue, cannibal, canoe, hammock, hurricane, maize, potato, tobacco; from Peru we
get through the same channel alpaca, condor, jerky, llama, pampas, puma, quinine; from
Brazil and other South American regions buccaneer, cayenne, jaguar, petunia, poncho,
tapioca. British contact with the East has been equally productive of new words. From
India come bandana, bangle, bengal, Brahman, bungalow, calico, cashmere, cheroot,
china, chintz, coolie, cot, curry, dinghy, juggernaut, jungle, jute, loot, mandarin, nirvana,
pariah, polo, punch (drink), pundit, rajah, rupee, sepoy, thug, toddy, tom-tom, and
verandah. From a little farther east come gingham, indigo, mango, and seersucker, the
last an East Indian corruption of a Persian expression meaning ‘milk and sugar’ and
transferred to a striped linen material. From Africa, either directly from the Africans or
from Dutch and Portuguese traders, we obtain banana, Boer, boorish, chimpanzee,
gorilla, guinea, gumbo, Hottentot, palavar, voodoo, and zebra. Australia later contributed