Aloanword (also aloan word,loan-word) is aword at least partly assimilated from onelanguage (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process ofborrowing.[1][2] Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e., the loanword).[3]
Loanwords may be contrasted withcalques, in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished fromcognates, which are words in two or morerelated languages that are similar because they share anetymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other.
A loanword is distinguished from acalque (orloan translation), which is a word or phrase whosemeaning oridiom is adopted from another language by word-for-wordtranslation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language.[4] Loanwords, in contrast, arenot translated.
Examples of loanwords in theEnglish language includecafé (from Frenchcafé, which means "coffee"),bazaar (from Persianbāzār, which means "market"), andkindergarten (from GermanKindergarten, which literally means "children's garden"). The wordcalque is a loanword, while the wordloanword is a calque:calque comes from the French nouncalque ("tracing; imitation; close copy");[5] while the wordloanword and the phraseloan translation are translated fromGerman nounsLehnwort[6] andLehnübersetzung (German:[ˈleːnʔybɐˌzɛt͡sʊŋ]ⓘ).[7]
Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French termdéjà vu, are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings.[8][9]
Although colloquial andinformal register loanwords are typically spread by word-of-mouth, technical or academic loanwords tend to be first used in written language, often for scholarly, scientific, or literary purposes.[10][11]
The termssubstrate andsuperstrate are often used when two languages interact. However, the meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition or language replacement events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target language (the superstrate).[12][relevant?]
AWanderwort is a word that has been borrowed across a wide range of languages remote from its original source; an example is the wordtea, which originated inHokkien but has been borrowed into languages all over the world. For a sufficiently old Wanderwort, it may become difficult or impossible to determine in what language it actually originated.
Loanwords are adapted from one language to another in a variety of ways.[15]The studies byWerner Betz (1971, 1901),Einar Haugen (1958, also 1956), andUriel Weinreich (1963) are regarded as the classical theoretical works on loan influence.[16] The basic theoretical statements all take Betz's nomenclature as their starting point. Duckworth (1977) enlarges Betz's scheme by the type "partial substitution" and supplements the system with English terms. A schematic illustration of these classifications is given below.[17]
The phrase "foreign word" used in the image below is a mistranslation of the GermanFremdwort, which refers to loanwords whose pronunciation, spelling, inflection or gender have not been adapted to the new language such that they no longer seem foreign. Such a separation of loanwords into two distinct categories is not used by linguists in English in talking about any language. Basing such a separation mainly on spelling is (or, in fact, was) not common except amongst German linguists, and only when talking about German and sometimes other languages that tend to adapt foreign spellings, which is rare in English unless the word has been widely used for a long time.
According to the linguist Suzanne Kemmer, the expression "foreign word" can be defined as follows in English: "[W]hen most speakers do not know the word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called a foreign word. There are many foreign words and phrases used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and Schadenfreude (German)."[18] This is not how the term is used in this illustration:
On the basis of an importation-substitution distinction, Haugen (1950: 214f.) distinguishes three basic groups of borrowings: "(1)Loanwords show morphemic importation without substitution.... (2)Loanblends show morphemic substitution as well as importation.... (3)Loanshifts show morphemic substitution without importation". Haugen later refined (1956) his model in a review of Gneuss's (1955) book on Old English loan coinages, whose classification, in turn, is the one by Betz (1949) again.
Weinreich (1953: 47ff.) differentiates between two mechanisms of lexical interference, namely those initiated by simple words and those initiated by compound words and phrases. Weinreich (1953: 47) definessimple 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 (1949) terminology.
Some English loanwords remain relatively faithful to the original phonology even though a particularphoneme might not exist or have contrastive status in English. For example, theHawaiian wordʻaʻā is used by geologists to specify lava that is thick, chunky, and rough. The Hawaiian spelling indicates the twoglottal stops in the word, but the English pronunciation,/ˈɑː(ʔ)ɑː/, contains at most one. The English spelling usually removes theʻokina andmacron diacritics.[19]
Most English affixes, such asun-,-ing, and-ly, were used in Old English. However, a few English affixes are borrowed. For example, the verbal suffix-ize (American English) orise (British English) comes from Greek -ιζειν (-izein) through Latin-izare.
Pronunciation often differs from the original language, occasionally dramatically, especially when dealing withplace names. This often leads to divergence when many speakers anglicize pronunciations as other speakers try to maintain the way the name would sound in the original language, as in thepronunciation of Louisville.
Turkish also has taken many words fromFrench, such aspantolon fortrousers (from Frenchpantalon) andkomik forfunny (from Frenchcomique), most of them pronounced very similarly.
Word usage in modern Turkey has acquired a political tinge:right-wing publications tend to use more Arabic-originated words,left-wing publications use more words adopted from Indo-European languages such as Persian and French, while centrist publications use more native Turkish root words.[20]
Almost 350 years of Dutch presence in what is nowIndonesia have left significant linguistic traces. Though very few Indonesians have a fluent knowledge of Dutch, the Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch, both in words for everyday life (e.g.,buncis from Dutchboontjes for (green) beans) and as well in administrative, scientific or technological terminology (e.g.,kantor from Dutchkantoor for office).[21] The Professor of Indonesian Literature atLeiden University,[22] and of Comparative Literature atUCR,[23] argues that roughly 20% ofIndonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words.[24]
A large percentage of the lexicon ofRomance languages, themselves descended fromVulgar Latin, consists of loanwords (laterlearned or scholarly borrowings) from Latin. These words can be distinguished by lack of typical sound changes and other transformations found in descended words, or by meanings taken directly fromClassical orEcclesiastical Latin that did not evolve or change over time as expected; in addition, there are also semi-learned terms which were adapted partially to the Romance language's character. Latin borrowings can be known by several names in Romance languages: in French, for example, they are usually referred to asmots savants, in Spanish ascultismos,[25][26] and in Italian aslatinismi.
Latin is usually the most common source of loanwords in these languages, such as in Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.,[27][28] and in some cases the total number of loans may even outnumber inherited terms[29][30] (although the learned borrowings are less often used in common speech, with the most common vocabulary being of inherited, orally transmitted origin from Vulgar Latin). This has led to many cases of etymologicaldoublets in these languages.
For most Romance languages, these loans were initiated by scholars, clergy, or other learned people and occurred in medieval times, peaking in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance era[28]- in Italian, the 14th century had the highest number of loans.[citation needed] In the case of Romanian, the language underwent a "re-Latinization" process later than the others (seeRomanian lexis,Romanian language § French, Italian, and English loanwords), in the 18th and 19th centuries, partially using French and Italian words (many of these themselves being earlier borrowings from Latin) as intermediaries,[31] in an effort to modernize the language, often adding concepts that did not exist until then, or replacing words of other origins. These common borrowings and features also essentially serve to raise mutual intelligibility of the Romance languages, particularly in academic/scholarly, literary, technical, and scientific domains. Many of these same words are also found in English (through its numerous borrowings from Latin and French) and other European languages.
In addition to Latin loanwords, many words of Ancient Greek origin were also borrowed into Romance languages, often in part through scholarly Latin intermediates, and these also often pertained to academic, scientific, literary, and technical topics. Furthermore, to a lesser extent, Romance languages borrowed from a variety of other languages; in particular English has become an important source in more recent times. The study of the origin of these words and their function and context within the language can illuminate some important aspects and characteristics of the language, and it can reveal insights on the phenomenon of lexical borrowing in linguistics as a method of enriching a language.[32]
According toHans Henrich Hock and Brian Joseph, "languages and dialects ... do not exist in a vacuum": there is always linguistic contact between groups.[33] The contact influences what loanwords are integrated into the lexicon and which certain words are chosen over others.
In some cases, the original meaning shifts considerably through unexpected logical leaps, creatingfalse friends. The English wordViking became Japaneseバイキング (baikingu), meaning "buffet", because the first restaurant in Japan to offerbuffet-style meals, inspired by the Nordicsmörgåsbord, was opened in 1958 by the Imperial Hotel under the name "Viking".[34] The German wordKachel, meaning "tile", became the Dutch wordkachel meaning "stove", as a shortening ofkacheloven, from GermanKachelofen, acocklestove. The Indonesian wordmanset primarily means "spandex clothing", "inner bolero", or "detachable sleeve", while its French etymonmanchette means "cuff".
^Chesley, Paula; Baayen, R. Harald (2010). "Predicting New Words from Newer Words: Lexical Borrowings in French".Linguistics.48 (4):1343–74.doi:10.1515/ling.2010.043.S2CID51733037.
^Thomason, Sarah G. (2001).Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
^Fiedler, Sabine (May 2017). "Phraseological borrowing from English into German: Cultural and pragmatic implications".Journal of Pragmatics.113:89–102.doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.002.
^Weinreich, Uriel (1979) [1953],Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems, New York: Mouton Publishers,ISBN978-90-279-2689-0
^Elbert, Samuel H.; Pukui, Mary Kawena (1986).Hawaiian Dictionary (Revised and enlarged ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. p. 389.ISBN978-0-8248-0703-0.
^Lewis, Geoffrey (2002).The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. London: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-925669-3.
^"Hendrik Maier".IDWRITERS. 26 April 2017. Retrieved10 October 2021.
^UCR; Department of Comparative Literature and Languages."Faculty: Hendrik Maier".UCR Faculty. Retrieved10 October 2021.
^Maier, Hendrik M. (8 February 2005)."A Hidden Language – Dutch in Indonesia".UC Berkeley: Institute of European Studies. Retrieved29 March 2015 – via eScholarship.
^Hock, Hans Henrich; Joseph., Brian D. (2009). "Lexical Borrowing".Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (2nd ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 241–78..
Betz, Werner (1949):Deutsch und Lateinisch: Die Lehnbildungen der althochdeutschen Benediktinerregel. Bonn: Bouvier.
Betz, Werner (1959): "Lehnwörter und Lehnprägungen im Vor- und Frühdeutschen". In: Maurer, Friedrich / Stroh, Friedrich (eds.):Deutsche Wortgeschichte. 2nd ed. Berlin: Schmidt, vol. 1, 127–147.
Cannon, Garland (1999): "Problems in studying loans",Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 25, 326–336.
Duckworth, David (1977): "Zur terminologischen und systematischen Grundlage der Forschung auf dem Gebiet der englisch-deutschen Interferenz: Kritische Übersicht und neuer Vorschlag". In: Kolb, Herbert / Lauffer, Hartmut (eds.) (1977): Sprachliche Interferenz: Festschrift für Werner Betz zum 65. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Niemeyer, p. 36–56.
Gneuss, Helmut (1955):Lehnbildungen und Lehnbedeutungen im Altenglischen. Berlin: Schmidt.
Koch, Peter (2002): "Lexical Typology from a Cognitive and Linguistic Point of View". In: Cruse, D. Alan et al. (eds.):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 (1996): "The history of contact linguistics as a discipline". In: Goebl, Hans et al. (eds.):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.
Stanforth, Anthony W. (2002): "Effects of language contact on the vocabulary: an overview". In: Cruse, D. Alan et al. (eds.) (2002): 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.
