Gospel

[Cockroach]

Why didn't English follow almost all other European languages and adopt the word for 'gospel' from the Greek 'evangelion'?

[Aurora Rossa]

Because the British aren't Japanophiles or otaku? They do however like the religious music of African-American churches.

[catberry]

Because the British aren't Japanophiles or otaku?

Seconded.

[bulbaquil]

Why didn't English follow almost all other European languages

You're asking Britain to behave like the rest of Europe, Cockroach... that almost never ends well.

[Soap]

That is interesting. I moused over the language sidebar on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel and it was almost entirely derivatives of "evangelion". Still, I have to wonder if the other Germanic langs had native words at first, and then re-loaned them from Greco-Latin. Because I would expect a lot more sound changes in, for example, German, if they had borrowed the word from Greco-Latin in the early Middle Ages when Germany was being Christianized. (for example, compare church/Kirche/etc vs the original "kyriakos").

[Xephyr]

Why didn't English follow almost all other European languages and adopt the word for 'gospel' from the Greek 'evangelion'?

Cockroach, why are you wasting our time with trivial questions like this, when we could be trying to focus on the important things, like why English has "library"?

[Rui]

Etymonline says that "gospel" is derived from an older word that is the English translation of the Latin translation of "evangelion"...

[Cockroach]

The only exceptions are some African languages, Hebrew, Irish, and possibly Breton (and Chinese, but that's hardly surprising)

[Dewrad]

Still, I have to wonder if the other Germanic langs had native words at first, and then re-loaned them from Greco-Latin.

Spot on. OS godspell, OHG gotspell, ON guðspjall: all these countries were evangelised from England or Ireland, and so borrowed/calqued the OE godspell. Interestingly, the form of all these loans indicates that folk-etymologising had already rendered understanding of the first element to "God's news" rather than "good news". Icelandic retains the ON guðspjall, while the other Germanic languages have all replaced the original form with reflexes of ευαγγελιον. What's also interesting is that while Gothic lacked a similar native-formed noun, using the loan aiwaggeljo instead, it did havethe verb þiuþspillôn "to evangelise", from þiuþ "good" and spillôn "to announce", which is of course cognate to the -spel element in English gospel.

The Goidelic languages, to my knowledge, are the only other European languages to eschew a borrowing from Greek in favour of a native coining. Old Irish had soscél, from so- "good" and scél "news, story", which gives modern Gaelic soisgeul and Irish soiscéal. Welsh has efengyl, a reflex of ευαγγελιον, which by the word's form must have been borrowed rather late, most likely through the medium of French (borrowing Latin evangelium would have given Welsh **ewyngyl or similar). Welsh also uses pedwaredd which means "a fourth" to describe the individual books of the gospel.

[Khvaragh]

As an FYI, the Arabic word for gospel also derives from the Greek: الإنجيل /al ?indZ)i:l/, probably with the simplification of the original Greek initial syllables *eua- to /i/ because /iwa/ or /i:wa/ are not allowable in Classical Arabic. So: *euangelion> ing_ji:l>?indZ)i:l. lLanguages influenced by Arabic (such as Persian, /endZ)i:l/) typically use a form of the same word.