A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient
language without translation. It is distinguished from a calque, or loan translation, where
a meaning or idiom from another language is translated into existing words or roots of
the host language. Examples of loan words in English include:
café, bazaar, and kindergarten. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German
term Lehnwort, while the term calque is a loanword from French.
Problems with the term 'loanword' Lexical adaptations are frequently in the
form of phrases, for which the term "loanword" is less apt, e.g. déjà vu, an English loan
from French. For simplicity, adopt/adoption, adapt/adaption, or lexical borrowing are thus
used by many linguists. Strictly speaking, the terms borrow and loanword,
although traditional, conflict with the ordinary meaning of those words since something is
taken from but nothing is returned to the donor languages. This metaphor is not isolated
to the concept of loanwords, but also found in the idiom "to borrow an idea," and even
in the mathematical term "borrowing" used in subtraction.
Loanwords entering a language Donor language terms frequently enter a recipient
language as a technical term in connection with exposure to foreign culture. The specific
reference point may be to the foreign culture itself or to a field of activity where the
foreign culture has a dominant role. External associations
A foreign loanword is arguably still outside the recipient language, and not yet a "loanword"
when it is fixed in the local culture. What is "exotic" varies from language to language.
Thus, English names for creatures not native to Great Britain are almost always loanwords.
Loanwords from a dominant field of activity Examples of loanwords from a dominant field
of activity: Arts – Most of the technical vocabulary
of classical music is borrowed from Italian, and that of ballet from French.
Business – English exports terms to other languages in business and technology.
Philosophy – many technical terms, including the term philosophy itself, derive from Greek
dominance in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, economic theory and political theory in Roman
times. Examples include democracy, theory and so on.
Religion – religions may carry with them a large number of technical terms from the
language of the originating culture. For example: Arabic – caliph, hajj, jihad, Qur'an
Greek – baptisma has entered many languages, e.g. English baptism.
Hebrew – Some terms in the Hebrew Bible have been carried into other languages as
borrowings rather than translated. For example Hebrew shabbat has been borrowed into most
languages in the world: in Greek the word is Σάββατο; Latin sabbatum; Spanish
and Portuguese sábado; and in English Sabbath. The major exceptions are languages like Chinese,
Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, where Chinese characters are used and words are often translated
rather than transliterated; for example, "Sabbath" is translated as "(peaceful) rest day" rather
than transliterated. Latin – missa and communio have entered
English as mass and communion. Sanskrit – guru
Science – medicine uses a large vocabulary of Latin terms, as a result of medieval advances
in medical science being conducted in Latin – even if some of the earliest Latin medical
texts were translations from Greek and Arabic. Loanword passing into general use
When a loanword loses foreign cultural associations it has passed into general use in the language.
This is the case with a vast number of English language terms for which a dictionary entry
will show that the etymology is French and not of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Loanword-resistant areas By contrast, function words such as pronouns,
and words referring to universal concepts, are the most static words within each language.
These function words are borrowed only in rare cases such as English they from Old Norse
þeir. Sometimes only one word from an opposite pair is borrowed, yielding an unpaired word
in the recipient language. Linguistic classification
The studies by Werner Betz, Einar Haugen, and Uriel Weinreich are regarded as the classical
theoretical works on loan influence. The basic theoretical statements all take Betz’s nomenclature
as their starting point. Duckworth enlarges Betz’s scheme by the type “partial substitution”
and supplements the system with English terms. A schematic representation of these classifications
is given below:
On the basis of an importation-substitution distinction, Haugen distinguishes three basic
groups of borrowings: “(1) Loanwords show morphemic importation without substitution.
[. . .]. Loanblends show morphemic substitution as well as importation. [. . .]. Loanshifts
show morphemic substitution without importation”. Haugen later refined his model in a review
of Gneuss’s book on Old English loan coinages, whose classification, in turn, is the one
by Betz again. Weinreich differentiates between two mechanisms
of lexical interference, namely those initiated by simple words and those initiated by compound
words and phrases. Weinreich defines simple words “from the point of view of the bilinguals
who perform the transfer, rather than that of the descriptive linguist. Accordingly,
the category ‘simple’ words also includes compounds that are transferred in unanalysed
form”. After this general classification, Weinreich then resorts to Betz’s terminology.
Models that try to integrate borrowing in an overall classification of vocabulary change,
or onomasiological change, have recently been proposed by Peter Koch and Joachim Grzega.
In English
The English language has often borrowed words from other cultures or languages. For example:
Some English loanwords remain relatively faithful to the donor language's phonology, even though
a particular phoneme might not exist or have contrastive status in English. For example,
the Hawaiian word ʻaʻā is used by geologists to specify lava that is relatively thick,
chunky, and rough. The Hawaiian spelling indicates the two glottal stops in the word, but the
English pronunciation, or , contains at most one. In addition, the English spelling usually
removes the ʻOkina and macron diacritics. The majority of English affixes, such as un-,
-ing, and -ly, were present in older forms in Old English. However, a few English affixes
are borrowed. For example, the agentive suffix -er, which is very prolific, is borrowed ultimately
from Latin - arius. The English verbal suffix -ize comes from Greek -ιζειν via Latin
-izare. In languages other than English
English loanword exports to other languages Direct borrowings, calques, or even grammatical
constructions and orthographical conventions from English are called anglicisms. This leads
to a virtual pseudo-dialect where language consists of words from two vocabularies. In
French, for example, the result of perceived over-use of English words and expressions
is called franglais. Some English terms in French include le week-end, le bifteck, and
le job or la job. Spanglish is the English influence on the Spanish language, while Denglisch
is the English influence on German, and Dunglish is the English influence on the Dutch language.
Conversely, words are oftentimes borrowed from other languages by English speakers.
For example, a straight clone from Swedish into English – like the word smörgåsbord
– is called a sveticism. Loanword transmission in the Ottoman Empire
During more than 600 years of the Ottoman Empire, the literary and administrative language
of the empire was Turkish, with many Persian, and Arabic loanwords, called Ottoman Turkish,
considerably differing from the everyday spoken Turkish of the time. Many such words were
exported to other languages of the empire, such as Albanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek,
Hungarian and Ladino. After the empire fell in World War I and the Republic of Turkey
was founded, the Turkish language underwent an extensive language reform led by the newly
founded Turkish Language Association, during which many adopted words were replaced with
new formations derived from Turkic roots. This was part of the ongoing cultural reform
of the time, in turn a part in the broader framework of Atatürk's Reforms, which also
included the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet. Turkish also has taken many words
from French, such as pantolon for trousers and komik for funny, mostly pronounced very
similarly. Word usage in modern Turkey has acquired a political tinge: right-wing publications
tend to use more Islamic-derived words, left-wing ones use more adopted from Europe, while centrist
ones use more native Turkish root words. Dutch words in Indonesian
Almost 350 years of Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia have left significant linguisitic
traces. Though only a small minority of present-day Indonesians have a fluent knowledge of Dutch,
the Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch, both in words for everyday life,
and as well in scientific or technological terminology. One scholar argues that 20% of
Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words.
Cultural aspects In order to provide a more well-rounded understanding
of the complexities of loanwords, certain historical and cultural factors must be taken
into account. According to Hans Henrich Hock and Brian Joseph, "languages and dialects
... do not exist in a vacuum"—there is always linguistic contact between groups. This contact
influences what loanwords are integrated into the lexicon and why certain words are chosen
over others. Using the example of Plautdietsch/Mennonite Low German, the influence of many historical
and cultural factors can be seen in the loanwords adopted by this unique language. For example,
as Mennonites were pushed from the lowlands of Germany into Poland and then on to Russia
due to religious persecution, Plautdietsch took vocabulary from Dutch, Frisian, Russian,
and Ukrainian and integrated it into their own language. Mennonites also emigrated worldwide,
where they took their language with them to four continents and over a dozen countries.
Some examples of Plautdietsch loanwords are given below:
Loanword transmission patterns Changes in meaning when loaned
Words are occasionally imported with a different meaning than that in the donor language. Among
the best known examples of this is the German word Handy, which is a borrowing of the English
adjective handy, but means mobile phone. Conversely, in English the prefix über-, taken from German,
is used in a way that it is rarely used in German. An abundance of borrowed words taking
on new meaning can be found in Rioplatense Spanish. For example, the English gerund camping
is used in Argentina to refer to a campsite, and the word wok, borrowed from the Cantonese
word meaning pan, is used to mean stir-fry. Idiomatic expressions and phrases, sometimes
translated word-for-word, can be borrowed, usually from a language that has "prestige"
at the time. Often, a borrowed idiom is used as a euphemism for a less polite term in the
original language. In English, this has usually been Latinisms from the Latin language and
Gallicisms from French. If the phrase is translated word-for-word, it is known as a calque.
Changes in spelling when loaned Words taken into different recipient languages
are sometimes spelled as in the donor language. Sometimes borrowed words retain original pronunciation,
but undergo a spelling change to represent the orthography of the recipient language.
Welsh is a language where this is done with some consistency, with words like gêm, cwl,
and ded-gifawe. The French expression "cul de sac" is used in English as is, with the
same meaning but a spelling pronunciation: the 'l' is mute in French but enunciated in
English. Changes in pronunciation when loaned
In cases where a new loanword has a very unusual sound, the pronunciation is frequently radically
changed, a process sometimes referred to by the archetypal name of the law of Hobson-Jobson;
this is particularly noted in words from South Asian and Southeast Asian languages, as in
this example. Some languages, such as Jèrriais, have a tendency to apply historical sound-shift
patterns to newly introduced words; while Jèrriais speakers would have little difficulty
pronouncing "parki", partchi is the word used, displaying the typical Norman ki → tchi
shift. Most languages modify foreign words to fit
native pronunciation patterns. Whether or not a change in pronunciation occurs depends
on multiple factors such as: if the sounds occur in both the original and target languages
and the level of contact between cultures. An excellent example is Japanese, which has
an enormous number of loanwords. Japanese often denotes gairaigo in the writing system
with the use of カタカナ(katakana). There was a massive ancient influx from China, and
then a flow of new words came from European languages, particularly from Portuguese, which
was spoken by the first European people whom Japanese encountered in the transition from
the Middle Ages to Early modern period. Recently, most gairaigo have come from English, though
there have been numerous loanwords borrowed from Dutch, German, French and other languages.
There are almost always significant pronunciation shifts.
Longer gairaigo are often shortened:
In some cases, the original meaning shifts considerably through unexpected logical leaps:
buffet → バイキング baikingu: derived from the name of the restaurant "Imperial
Viking", the first restaurant in Japan which offered buffet style meals.
dress shirt → ワイシャツ waishatsu: derived from the words white shirt and shortened.
There are other cases where words are borrowed, seemingly at random, and used in totally inexplicable
contexts. This is often the case in the names of small businesses and in anime and manga
series such as Bubblegum Crisis. Gairaigo is so large a part of the modern Japanese
vocabulary that there are specialized dictionaries for it.
Reborrowing
It is possible for a word to travel from the recipient language to another and then back
to the original donor language in a different form, a process called reborrowing. Some examples
are:
See also Cognate
Hybrid word Inkhorn debate
Language contact Semantic loan
Notes
References Betz, Werner: Deutsch und Lateinisch: Die
Lehnbildungen der althochdeutschen Benediktinerregel. Bonn: Bouvier.
Betz, Werner: “Lehnwörter und Lehnprägungen im Vor- und Frühdeutschen”. In: Maurer,
Friedrich / Stroh, Friedrich: Deutsche Wortgeschichte. 2nd ed. Berlin: Schmidt, vol. 1, 127–147.
Bloom, Dan: "What's That Pho?". French Loan Words in Vietnam Today; Taipei Times, [1]
Cannon, Garland: “Problems in studying loans”, Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistics Society 25, 326–336. Duckworth, David: “Zur terminologischen
und systematischen Grundlage der Forschung auf dem Gebiet der englisch-deutschen Interferenz:
Kritische Übersicht und neuer Vorschlag”. In: Kolb, Herbert / Lauffer, Hartmut: Sprachliche
Interferenz: Festschrift für Werner Betz zum 65. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Niemeyer, p. 36–56.
Gneuss, Helmut: Lehnbildungen und Lehnbedeutungen im Altenglischen. Berlin: Schmidt.
Grzega, Joachim: “Borrowing as a Word-Finding Process in Cognitive Historical Onomasiology”,
Onomasiology Online 4, 22–42. Grzega, Joachim: Bezeichnungswandel: Wie,
Warum, Wozu? Heidelberg: Winter. Haugen, Einar: “The analysis of linguistic
borrowing”. Language 26, 210–231. Haugen, Einar: “Review of Gneuss 1955”.
Language 32, 761–766. Hitchings, Henry, The Secret Life of Words:
How English Became English, London: John Murray, ISBN 978-0-7195-6454-3 .
Hayakawa, Isamu, A Historical Dictionary of Japanese Words Used in English, Revised and
Corrected Edition, Amazon, Tokyo: Texnai, ISBN 978-4907162313 .
Kersley, Leo; Sinclair, Janet, A Dictionary of Ballet Terms, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80094-2 .
Koch, Peter: “Lexical Typology from a Cognitive and Linguistic Point of View”. In: Cruse,
D. Alan et al.: Lexicology: An International on the Nature and Structure of Words and Vocabularies/Lexikologie:
Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen. Berlin/New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1142–1178. Oksaar, Els: “The history of contact linguistics
as a discipline”. In: Goebl, Hans et al.: Kontaktlinguistik/contact linguistics/linguistique
de contact: ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung/an international handbook of contemporary
research/manuel international des recherches contemporaines. Berlin/New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1–12. Shanet, Howard, Learn to Read Music, New York:
Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-671-21027-4 . Stanforth, Anthony W.: “Effects of language
contact on the vocabulary: an overview”. In: Cruse, D. Alan et al.: Lexikologie: ein
internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen/Lexicology:
an international handbook on the nature and structure of words and vocabularies. Berlin/New
York: Walter de Gruyter, p. 805–813. Weinreich, Uriel: Languages in contact: findings
and problems. The Hague: Mouton. Zuckermann, Ghil’ad, ‘‘Language Contact
and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew’’, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
External links World Loanword Database
Discussion on how loan words exacerbate Future Shock