ABSTRACT
The division between everyday words mainly of Anglo-Saxon origin and learned words mainly of Latin origin was made more pronounced by the importation of over 10,000 words during the Renaissance, mostly from Latin, some from Greek. After the large-scale importation of words from Latin during the Renaissance, English continued to borrow words but from a variety of languages. English has imported some hundreds of words from Italian since the fifteenth century mainly to do with the arts. English has imported quite a number of Arabic words over the last millennium, words such as algebra, orange,cotton and sugar. In Middle English words such as algebra and alkali were introduced via Latin and alchemy and almanac via French. Among the sources of loan-words coming from the Continent is Arabic. With the spread of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, Arabic became the lingua franca of Iberia, the Middle East and North Africa.
