Loanword

A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word adopted from one language (the donor language) and incorporated into a different, recipient language without translation.

Examples and related terms

A loanword is distinguished from a calque (aka a loan translation), which is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language.

Examples of loanwords in the English language include café (from French café, which literally means "coffee"), bazaar (from Persian bāzār, which means "market"), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten, which literally means "children's garden").

Ironically, the word calque is a loanword from the French noun, derived from the verb calquer (to trace, to copy),^[1] while the word loanword is itself a calque of the German word Lehnwort,^[2] and the phrase "loan translation" is a calque of the German Lehnübersetzung.^[3]

Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu, are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings.^[4][5]

Strictly speaking, the term loanword conflicts with the ordinary meaning of loan in that something is taken from the donor language without it being something that is possible to return.^[6]

From the arts

Most of the technical vocabulary of classical music (such as concerto, allegro, tempo, aria, opera, and soprano) is borrowed from Italian,^[7] and that of ballet from French.^[8]

Linguistic classification

The studies by Werner Betz (1949, 1939), Einar Haugen (1950, also 1956), and Uriel Weinreich (1953) are regarded as the classical theoretical works on loan influence.^[9] 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.^[10]

The expression "foreign word" used in the illustration below is, however, an incorrect translation of the German term Fremdwort, which refers to loanwords whose pronunciation, spelling, and possible inflection or gender have not yet been so much adapted to the new language that they cease to feel foreign. Such a separation of loanwords into two distinct categories is not used by linguists in English in talking about any language. In addition, basing such a separation mainly on spelling as described in the illustration is (or, in fact, was) not usually done except by 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 in wide use for a very 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)."^[11] This is however not how the term is (incorrectly) 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) 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 (1949) terminology.

In English

The English language has often borrowed words from other cultures or languages:

Spanish definition English definition sombrero "hat" "a wide-brimmed festive Mexican hat" Other examples of words borrowed by English from Hindi from Afrikaans from Malay jungle dacoit loot juggernaut (from Sanskrit 'Jagannath') syce/sais dinghy chutney pundit wallah bangle cheetah cot blighty shampoo thug karma (from Sanskrit) sari bungalow jodhpurs [from Persian origin] pajama/pyjamas bazaar trek aardvark laager wildebeest veld orangutan shirang amok [via Afrikaans from Malay] sjambok

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, /ˈɑː.ɑː/ or /ˈɑːʔɑː/, contains at most one. In addition, the English spelling usually removes the ʻokina and macron diacritics.^[12]

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 English verbal suffix -ize (American English) or ise (British English) comes from Greek -ιζειν (-izein) via Latin -izare.

In languages other than English

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 after 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. That 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 (from French pantalon) and komik for funny (from French comique), mostly of them pronounced very similarly. Word usage in modern Turkey has acquired a political tinge: right-wing publications tend to use more Arabic or Persian originated words, left-wing ones use more adopted from European languages, while centrist ones use more native Turkish root words.^[13]

Dutch words in Indonesian

Almost 350 years of Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia 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 and as well in scientific or technological terminology.^[14] One scholar argues that 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words.^[15]

Cultural aspects

According to Hans Henrich Hock and Brian Joseph, "languages and dialects ... do not exist in a vacuum": there is always linguistic contact between groups.^[16] The contact influences what loanwords are integrated into the lexicon and which certain words are chosen over others.

Changes in meaning and pronunciation

In some cases, the original meaning shifts considerably through unexpected logical leaps:

buffet → バイキング baikingu (Viking): derived from the name of the restaurant "Imperial Viking", the first restaurant in Japan which offered buffet style meals.^[17]

dress shirt → ワイシャツ waishatsu: derived from the words white shirt and shortened.

See also

• Cognate
• Hybrid word
• Inkhorn debate
• Language contact
• Semantic loan
• Lists of English words by country or language of origin

Notes

1. Calque, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
2. Carr, Charles T. (1934). The German Influence on the English Language. Society for Pure English Tract No. 42. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 75. Retrieved 25 February 2016.
3. Robb: German English Words germanenglishwords.com
4. Chesley, Paula; Baayen, R. Harald (2010). "Predicting New Words from Newer Words: Lexical Borrowings in French". Linguistics 48 (4): 1343–74.
5. Thomason, Sarah G. (2001). Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
6. Jespersen, Otto (1964). Language. New York: Norton Library. p. 208. ISBN 0-393-00229-2. Linguistic 'borrowing' is really nothing but imitation.
7. Shanet 1956: 155.
8. Kersley & Sinclair 1979: 3.
9. Compare the two survey articles by Oksaar (1996: 4f.), Stanforth (2002) and Grzega (2003, 2004).
10. The following comments and examples are taken from Grzega, Joachim (2004), Bezeichnungswandel: Wie, Warum, Wozu?, Heidelberg: Winter, p. 139, and Grzega, Joachim (2003), “Borrowing as a Word-Finding Process in Cognitive Historical Onomasiology”, Onomasiology Online 4: 22–42.
11. Loanwords by Prof. S. Kemmer, Rice University
12. Elbert, Samuel H.; Pukui, Mary Kawena (1986). Hawaiian Dictionary (Revised and enlarged ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. p. 389. ISBN 0-8248-0703-0.
13. Lewis, Geoffrey (2002). The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-925669-1.
14. Sneddon (2003), p.162.
15. "A Hidden Language – Dutch in Indonesia [eScholarship]". Repositories.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2015-03-29.
16. 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..
17. Archived January 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.

References

• Best, Karl-Heinz, Kelih, Emmerich (eds.) (2014): Entlehnungen und Fremdwörter: Quantitative Aspekte. Lüdenscheid: RAM-Verlag.
• 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.
• Bloom, Dan (2010): "What's That Pho?". French Loan Words in Vietnam Today; Taipei Times,
• 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.
• Grzega, Joachim (2003): “Borrowing as a Word-Finding Process in Cognitive Historical Onomasiology”, Onomasiology Online 4, 22–42.
• Grzega, Joachim (2004): Bezeichnungswandel: Wie, Warum, Wozu? Heidelberg: Winter.
• Haugen, Einar (1950): “The analysis of linguistic borrowing”. Language 26, 210–231.
• Haugen, Einar (1956): “Review of Gneuss 1955”. Language 32, 761–766.
• Hitchings, Henry (2008), The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, London: John Murray, ISBN 978-0-7195-6454-3.
• Hayakawa, Isamu (2014), A Historical Dictionary of Japanese Words Used in English, Revised and Corrected Edition, Amazon, Tokyo: Texnai, ISBN 978-4907162313.
• Kersley, Leo; Sinclair, Janet (1979), A Dictionary of Ballet Terms, Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80094-2 External link in |title= (help).
• 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.
• Shanet, Howard (1956), Learn to Read Music, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-671-21027-4 External link in |title= (help).
• 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.
• Weinreich, Uriel (1953): Languages in contact: findings and problems. The Hague: Mouton.
• Zuckermann, Ghil’ad (2003), ‘‘Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew’’, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

External links

• World Loanword Database (WOLD)
• Discussion on how loan words exacerbate Future Shock (Streaming audio & mp3)