Loanword

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A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort and/or the Dutch Leenwoord.

Words which a language inherits from an ancestral language from which it develops are not borrowed words. Inherited words usually constitute most of the vocabulary of a language.

Although loanwords are typically far fewer than the native words of most languages (creoles and pidgins being exceptions), they are often widely known and used, since their borrowing served a certain purpose, for example to provide a name for a new invention.

1 Classes of borrowed words
2 Beyond words
3 Loanwords in English
- 3.1 Affixes
4 Other languages
5 Reborrowing
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Classes of borrowed words

Certain classes of words are more commonly borrowed than others, usually words for exotic concepts or ideas. What is "exotic" varies from language to language. Thus, English names for creatures not native to Great Britain are almost always loanwords, and most of the technical vocabulary referring to classical music is borrowed from Italian.

By contrast, function words, such as pronouns, numbers, and words referring to universal concepts, are usually not borrowed, but have been in some cases.

[edit] Beyond words

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.

[edit] Loanwords in English

See also: Lists of English words of international origin

English has many loanwords. In 1973, a computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff. Their estimates for the origin of English words were as follows:

French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Germanic languages, including Old and Middle English: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given or unknown: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%

However, if the frequency of use of words is considered, words from Old and Middle English occupy the vast majority.

The reasons for English's vast borrowing include:

(to a relatively small extent) the existence of other languages native to Britain;
the invasion of England by the Vikings and the Normans;
its modern importance;
its being a scientific language;
its development as a trade language in the 18th century; and
the flexibility of its syllable structure.

This lack of restrictions makes it comparatively easy for the English language to incorporate new words. Compare this with Japanese, where the English word "club" (itself originally from Old Norse) was turned into "kurabu" because of Japanese's inflexible syllable structure. However, the English pronunciations of loanwords often differ from the original pronunciations to such a degree that a native speaker of the language it was borrowed from is not be able to recognize it as a loanword when spoken.

English often borrows words from the cultures and languages of the British Colonies. For example there are at least 20 words from Hindi, including syce/sais, dinghy, chutney, pundit, wallah, pajama/pyjamas, bungalow and jodhpur. Other examples include trek, aardvark, laager and veld from Afrikaans, shirang, amok (Malay) and sjambok (Malay via Afrikaans).

[edit] Affixes

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. The verbal suffix '-ize' comes (via, Old French, via Latin) ultimately from Ancient Greek and was used liberally in America, often to the chagrin of the British.

[edit] Other languages

Direct loans, expressions translated word-by-word, or even grammatical constructions and orthographical conventions from English are called anglicisms. Similarly, loans from Swedish - like the word smörgåsbord - are called sveticisms or svecisms. In French, the result of perceived over-use of English loanwords and expressions is called franglais. English loanwords in French include 'le weekend', 'le job' and 'le biftek' (beefsteak). This has so outraged French purists that various French institutions spend much time and energy to keep the language pure. Denglish is English influence on German.

During the Ottoman period, Turkish literature became heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic borrowings. During more than 600 years of the Ottoman Empire, the literary and official language of the empire was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, which is now called Ottoman Turkish, considerably differing from the everyday spoken Turkish of the time. Many words were loaned to the languages of the people of the empire, such as Bulgarian and Serbian. After the empire fell in World War I and the Republic of Turkey was founded, Turkish language underwent an extensive language reform led by the newly founded Turkish Language Association, during which many loanwords were replaced with equivalent words derived from Turkic roots. The language reform was a part of the ongoing cultural reform of the time, in turn a part in the broader framework of Atatürk's Reforms, and included the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet. Turkish also has many loanwords derived from French, such as pantalon - 'trousers', comique(Fr)/komik(Tr) - 'funny', all of them pronounced very similarly (except for the French pronunciation of the letter 'r').

The Italian government has recently expressed its displeasure over the borrowing of English words and syntax in Italian. English words are often used where they are more convenient than a longer Italian expression, as in "computer" for elaboratore elettronico or "week-end" for finesettimana; but also where equally convenient Italian words already exist, as in "fashion" for moda and "meeting" for conferenza.

[edit] Reborrowing

Main article: Reborrowing

It is possible for a word to travel from one language to another and then back to the original language in a different form, a process called reborrowing. A specific example of this is anime which is borrowed from the Japanese アニメ, which is a shortened version of アニメーション (animēshon), which is in turn borrowed from the English animation. Another example is the French 'le biftek', which is borrowed from the English 'beefsteak', while the English 'beef' is originally from the French 'le boeuf'.