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Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of aword into one language from another, often creating aneologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it withphonetically andsemantically similar words or roots from the adopting language. Thus the approximatesound andmeaning of the original expression in the sourcelanguage are preserved, though the new expression (the PSM – the phono-semantic match) in the target language may sound native.[1]
Phono-semantic matching is distinct fromcalquing, which includes (semantic)translation but does not include phonetic matching (i.e., retention of the approximate sound of theborrowed word through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word ormorpheme in the target language).
Phono-semantic matching is also distinct fromhomophonic translation, which retains the sound of a word but not the meaning.[1]
The term "phono-semantic matching" was introduced by linguist and revivalistGhil'ad Zuckermann.[2][non-primary source needed] It challengedEinar Haugen's classictypology of lexical borrowing (loanwords).[3] While Haugen categorized borrowing into either substitution or importation, camouflaged borrowing in the form of PSM is a case of "simultaneous substitution and importation." Zuckermann proposed a new classification of multisourced neologisms, words deriving from two or more sources at the same time. Examples of such mechanisms are phonetic matching, semanticized phonetic matching and phono-semantic matching.
Zuckermann concludes thatlanguage planners, for example members of theAcademy of the Hebrew Language, employ the very same techniques used infolk etymology bylaymen, as well as by religious leaders.[4] He urgeslexicographers andetymologists to recognize the widespread phenomena of camouflaged borrowing and multisourced neologization and not to force one source on multi-parentallexical items.
Zuckermann analyses the evolution of the wordartichoke.[5] Beginning in Arabicالخرشوف ('al-khurshūf) "the artichoke", it was adapted intoAndalusian Arabicalxarshofa, thenOld Spanishalcarchofa, thenItalianalcarcioffo, thenNorthern Italianarcicioffo >arciciocco >articiocco, then phonetically realised in English asartichoke. The word was eventuallyphono-semantically matched back into colloquialLevantine Arabic (for example inSyria andLebanon) asأرضي شوكي (arḍī shawkī), consisting ofأرضي (arḍī) "earthly" andشوكي (shawkī) "thorny".
Arabic has made use of phono-semantic matching to replace blatantly imported new terminology with a word derived from an existingtriliteral root. Examples are:
| Word | English meaning | Unarabicised import | Arabicised word | Pre-existing root (meaning) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| technologie (French) | technology | تكنولوجيا (teknolōjyā) | تقانة (taqānah) | t-q-n (skill) |
| mitochondrie (French) | mitochondria | ميتوكندريا (mītōkondriyah) | متقدرة (mutaqaddirah) | q-d-r (power) |
| macchina (Italian) | machine | مكينة (makīnah) | مكنة (makanah) | m-k-n (capacity) |
A number of PSMs exist inDutch as well. One notable example ishangmat ("hammock"), which is a modification of Spanishhamaca, also the source of the English word. Natively, the word is transparently analysed as a "hang-mat", which aptly describes the object. Similarly:
A few PSMs exist in English. The French wordchartreuse ("Carthusianmonastery") was translated to the Englishcharterhouse. The French wordchoupique, itself an adaptation of theChoctaw name for thebowfin, has likewise beenAnglicized asshoepike,[8] although it is unrelated to thepikes. The French name for theOsage orange,bois d'arc (lit. "bow-wood"), is sometimes rendered as "bowdark".[9]In Canada, thecloudberry is called "bakeapple" after the French phrasebaie qu'appelle 'the what-do-you-call-it berry'.[dubious –discuss]
The second part of the wordmuskrat was altered to matchrat, replacing the original formmusquash, which derives from anAlgonquian (possiblyPowhatan[10][better source needed]) word,muscascus (literally "it is red"), or from theAbenaki native wordmòskwas.
The use ofrunagates inPsalm 68 of theAnglicanBook of Common Prayer derives from phono-semantic matching between Latinrenegatus and Englishrunagate.[citation needed]
TheFinnish compound word for "jealous,"mustasukkainen, literally means "black-socked" (musta "black" andsukka "sock"). However, the word is a case of a misunderstood loan translation from Swedishsvartsjuk "black-sick". The Finnish wordsukka fit with a close phonological equivalent to the Swedishsjuk. Similar cases aretyömyyrä "hardworking person", literally "work mole", fromarbetsmyra "work ant", matchingmyra "ant" tomyyrä "mole"; andliikavarvas "clavus", literally "extra toe", fromliktå <liktorn "dead thorn", matchingliika "extra" tolik "dead (archaic)" andvarvas "toe" totå <torn "thorn".[11][12]
Mailhammer (2008) "applies the concepts of multisourced neologisation and, more generally, camouflaged borrowing, as established byZuckermann (2003a) to Modern German, pursuing a twofold aim, namely to underline the significance of multisourced neologisation for language contact theory and secondly to demonstrate that together with other forms of camouflaged borrowing it remains an important borrowing mechanism in contemporary German."[13]
Sapir & Zuckermann (2008) demonstrate how Icelandic camouflages many English words by means of phono-semantic matching. For example, the Icelandic-looking wordeyðni, meaning "AIDS", is a PSM of the English acronymAIDS, using the pre-existent Icelandic verbeyða, meaning "to destroy", and the Icelandic nominal suffix-ni.[14] Similarly, the Icelandic wordtækni, meaning "technology, technique", derives fromtæki, meaning "tool", combined with the nominal suffix-ni, but is, in fact, a PSM of the Danishteknik (or of another derivative of Greekτεχνικόςtekhnikós), meaning "technology, technique".Tækni was coined in 1912 by Dr Björn Bjarnarson from Viðfjörður in the East of Iceland. It had been in little use until the 1940s, but has since become common, as a lexeme and as an element in new formations, such asraftækni, lit. "electrical technics", i.e. "electronics",tæknilegur "technical" andtæknir "technician".[15] Other PSMs discussed in the article arebeygla,bifra – bifrari,brokkál,dapur – dapurleiki -depurð,fjárfesta -fjárfesting,heila,guðspjall,ímynd,júgurð,korréttur,Létt og laggott,musl,pallborð – pallborðsumræður,páfagaukur,ratsjá,setur,staða,staðall – staðla – stöðlun,toga – togari,uppi andveira.[16]
In modern Japanese, loanwords are generally represented phonetically viakatakana. However, in earlier times loanwords were often represented bykanji (Chinese characters), a process calledateji when used for phonetic matching, orjukujikun when used for semantic matching. Some of these continue to be used; the characters chosen may correspond to the sound, the meaning, or both.
In most cases the characters used were chosen only for their matching sound or only for their matching meaning. For example, in the word寿司 (sushi), the two characters are respectively read assu andshi, but the character寿 means "one's natural life span" and司 means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food – this isateji. Conversely, in the word煙草 (tabako) for "tobacco", the individual kanji respectively mean "smoke" and "herb", which corresponds to the meaning, while none of their possible readings have a phonetic relationship to the wordtabako – this isjukujikun.
In some cases, however, the kanji were chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is倶楽部 (kurabu) for "club", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together-fun-place" (which has since been borrowed into Chinese during the early 20th century with the same meaning, including the individual characters, but with a pronunciation that differs considerably from the original English and the Japanese,jùlèbù). Another example is合羽 (kappa) for thePortuguesecapa, a kind ofraincoat. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointedcapa resembles a bird with wings folded together.
PSM is frequently used inMandarin borrowings.[17][18] An example is theTaiwanese Mandarin word威而剛wēi'érgāng, which literally means "powerful and hard" and refers toViagra, the drug for treatingerectile dysfunction in men, manufactured byPfizer.[19]
Another example is the Mandarin form ofWorld Wide Web, which iswàn wéi wǎng (simplified Chinese:万维网;traditional Chinese:萬維網), which satisfies "www" and literally means "myriad dimensional net".[20] The English wordhacker has been borrowed into Mandarin as黑客 (hēikè, "dark/wicked visitor").[21]
Modern Standard Chinese声纳/聲納shēngnà "sonar" uses the characters声/聲shēng "sound" and纳/納nà "receive, accept". The pronunciationsshēng andnà are phonetically somewhat similar to the two syllables of the English word. Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been a better phonetic fit thanshēng, but not nearly as good semantically – consider the syllablesong (cf.送sòng 'deliver, carry, give (as a present)',松sōng 'pine; loose, slack',耸/聳sǒng 'tower; alarm, attract' etc.),sou (cf.搜sōu 'search',叟sŏu 'old man',馊/餿sōu 'sour, spoiled' and many others) orshou (cf.收shōu 'receive, accept',受shòu 'receive, accept',手shǒu 'hand',首shǒu 'head',兽/獸shòu 'beast',瘦shòu 'thin' and so forth).[22]
According to Zuckermann, PSM in Mandarin is common in:
From a monolingual Chinese view, Mandarin PSM is the 'lesser evil' compared with Latin script (indigraphic writing) orcode-switching (in speech). Zuckermann's exploration of PSM in Standard Chinese andMeiji-periodJapanese concludes that theChinese writing system is multifunctional:pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g.,logographic),cenemic ("empty" ofmeaning, e.g., phonographic - like asyllabary), andphono-logographic (simultaneously cenemic and pleremic). Zuckermann argues thatLeonard Bloomfield's assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used"[25] is inaccurate. "If Chinese had been writtenusing roman letters, thousands of Chinese words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms".[26] Evidence of this can be seen in theDungan language, a Chinese language that is closely related to Mandarin, but written phonetically inCyrillic, where words are directly borrowed, often from Russian, without PSM.[27]
A related practice is thetranslation of Western names into Chinese characters.
Often in phono-semantic matching, the source language determines both the root word and the noun-pattern. This makes it difficult to determine the source language's influence on the target languagemorphology. For example, "the phono-semantic matcher ofEnglishdock withIsraeli Hebrewמבדוקmivdók could have used – after deliberately choosing the phonetically and semantically suitablerootb-d-qבדק meaning 'check' (Rabbinic) or 'repair' (Biblical) – the noun-patternsmi⌂⌂a⌂á,ma⌂⌂e⌂á,mi⌂⌂é⌂et,mi⌂⌂a⌂áim etc. (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted). Instead,mi⌂⌂ó⌂, which was not highly productive, was chosen because its [o] makes the final syllable ofמבדוקmivdók sound like Englishdock."[28]
Old High Germanwidarlōn ("repayment of a loan") was rendered aswiderdonum ("reward") inMedieval Latin. The last part corresponds to the Latindonum ("gift").[29][30]: 157
Viagra, a brand name which was suggested by Interbrand Wood (the consultancy firm hired by Pfizer), is itself a multisourced neologism, based onSanskritव्याघ्रvyāghráh ("tiger") but enhanced by the wordsvigour (i.e. strength) andNiagara (i.e. free/forceful flow).[19]
Other than throughSinoxenic borrowings,Vietnamese employs phono-semantic matching less commonly than Chinese. Examples includema trận ("matrix", from the words for "magic" and "battle array"),áp dụng ("apply", from the words for "press down" and "use"), andHuỳnh Phi Long (Huey P. Long, from "yellow flying dragon", evoking theHuey P. Long Bridge).
According to Zuckermann, PSM has various advantages from the point of view of apuristiclanguage planner:[2]
Other motivations for PSM include the following:
An expressive loan is a loanword incorporated into the expressive system of the borrowing language, making it resemble native words oronomatopoeia. Expressive loanwords are hard to identify, and by definition, they follow the common phonetic sound change patterns poorly.[31] Likewise, there is a continuum between "pure" loanwords and "expressive" loanwords. The difference to a folk etymology (or aneggcorn) is that a folk etymology is based on misunderstanding, whereas an expressive loan is changed on purpose, the speaker taking the loanword knowing full well that the descriptive quality is different from the original sound and meaning.
South-easternFinnish, for example, has many expressive loans. The main source language,Russian, does not use the vowels 'y', 'ä' or 'ö' [y æ ø]. Thus, it is common to add these to redescriptivized loans to remove the degree of foreignness that the loanword would otherwise have. For example,tytinä "brawn" means "wobblyness",[clarification needed] and superficially it looks like a native construction, originating from the verbtutista "to wobble" added with a front vowel sound in thevowel harmony. However, it is expressivized fromtyyteni (which is a confusing word as-ni is apossessive suffix), which in turn is a loanword from Russianstúden'.[32] A somewhat more obvious example istökötti "sticky, tarry goo", which could be mistaken as a derivation from the onomatopoetic wordtök (cf. the verbtökkiä "to poke"). However, it is an expressive loan of Russiand'ogot' "tar".[33]
