Talk:Internationalism (linguistics)

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I don't think "file" is a good example for an internationalism. Although some words such as "clipboard" and "inbox" (well, in the context of e-mail) have made their way into everyday use in German, "file" is hardly ever used (probably because it sounds a bit like "Pfeil" -- "arrow" -- or "Feile" -- the steel instrument you also call "file" in English -- and thus can be misleading or hard to adapt to). I don't know whether this is a common internationalism in other European languages, but seeing how its suposedly a German concept, that struck me as weird. --Ashmodai 11:34, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

The content of this article seems to have been totally invented by its author. It is true that European languages share many Latin and Greek words that are almost universally found in European languages (although there are always a few exceptions, languages such as Basque or Finnish for instance, which sometimes do not use these Greek or Latin words found in most other European languages). However, to extend this to all the languages in the world is totally bogus. To my knowledge, there is not one single word in the world that we can find in all the languages of the world, not even the word Internet, which is 互联网 (Hulianwang) in Chinese, not even the word Microsoft, which is 微软 (Weiruan) in Chinese!! As a matter of fact, to my knowledge, there is absolutely no Latin or Greek word in Chinese. There are a few English words in Chinese, such as the word "bus" (Chinese: 巴士, pronounced bashi), but these English borrowings are extremely rare. Let us all remember that the Chinese languages are spoken by about 25% of mankind. So much for the so-called "internationalism" of the article! Also, the same could probably be said about Arabic, which also uses few foreign words. So I'm afraid to say that the article was probably just born out of the imagination of its author. Hardouin 00:00, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and I add this to finish debunking the thesis defended in the article. These are the words the article claims are trully "international": international, positive, microscope, taboo, tomahawk, computer, disk, and file. And this is the translation of these words in Chinese:

  • international: 国际 (guoji), from the character guo meaning "country", and the character ji meaning "in the sphere of", "in the domain of"
  • positive: 积极 (jiji), from the character ji meaning "to accumulate", and the character ji meaning "pole". 积极 originally refered to the positive pole in electricity.
  • microscope: 显微镜 (xianweijing), litterally meaning "lens" (jing) that makes "very small things" (wei) "appearant" (xian)
  • taboo: 禁忌 (jinji), where jin means "forbid", and ji means "abstain"
  • tomahawk: the word simply doesn't exist in Chinese. If referring to Native Indians, Chinese will simply write "war axle", and if reffering to the US missiles, I believe the Chinese will probably make a phonetic transcription in Chinese (although I am not an expert at Chinese military translation)
  • computer: 电脑 (diannao), where dian means "electrical", and nao means "brain"
  • disk (in computer science): 盘 (pan), whose original Chinese meaning is "plate" (in which you eat, or on which you put tea cups)
  • file (in computer science): 文件 (wenjian), where wen means "writing" and jian means "piece of". File is not even widespread among European languages by the way. In French it is called dossier, in Spanish it is called archivo, and so on.

Hardouin 00:31, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just as a transitory prove that the term was not invented by me, see the article Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia where a link to "interntionalism" in this sense existed before I created this article. And a google search for "internationalisms vocabulary" will provide plenty of pages that use the term "internationalism" in this sense. Actually, it provided even a reference to a book which I have now put on the article.
Maybe the use of this term is not common in Anglosaxon linguistics. And "international" is clearly not meant in the sense of "global" but in the sense of "in many different countries". However, I wouldn't have coined the term in this way, it seems too Eurocentric to me, but that's how it is.
The term was not invented by me. Therefore, there is no reason why this page should be disputed. J. 'mach' wust 08:42, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ok. But the fact that the word predates you, or that it can be found on Google or in books does not make it any more serious. There are lots of silly concepts and theories that take a lot of space on Google or clutter bookshelves in libraries. Take creationism for instance. There are thousands of books that were written on creationism, and yet the theory is totally bogus. Next thing there'll be an anonymous user who will edit the "internationalism" article and say that these "internationalims" originiated in Babel and were the words given by God to men. Let's come back to reality!!
Instead of this stupid article, we could write a much more interesting article that would discuss areas of language influence in the world. Broadly speaking, the world can be divided into four linguistic influence areas. One area is the Latin/Greek influence area. In this area, most neologisms and new words coined are based on Greek and Latin root words. This area covers the whole of European languages, as well as most of African languages, native American languages, and Oceanian languages. Another area is the one influenced by Classical Arabic: this is the whole Islamic world (with notable exceptions, such as Turkish). A third area is the Indian area: these are the languages of the Indian sub-continent (with the exception of Urdu and Sindhi), as well as a good part of South-East Asia (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and also historically Indonesia). In this area new words are coined based on Sanskrit and Pali. Finally, the fourth area is the Chinese influenced area (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and to some extent Mongolia), where new words are coined based on Classical Chinese roots. An emerging fifth area could be mentioned, namely the English influenced area, and area that overlaps the previous four areas, as English is now replacing Latin and Greek in the coining of new words, and is also starting to replace Classical Arabic, Sanskrit, and Pali. Classical Chinese is resisting though! "Internationalism" would come closest to that English influenced area.
This is a rapid sketch of what could be a very nice article. We would have to think carefully about how we phrase it though, and which title to choose for the article. Hardouin 11:49, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I see you don't like the word, but that gives you no right to discredit the respected linguist Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h. c. Peter Braun (have a look at his curriculum vitae). The comparison with creationism could not be wronger; this is about serious linguistics.
I like the article you've sketched. Perhaps Anglosaxon linguistics provide another term for it than internationalism. J. 'mach' wust 12:17, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Maybe we could add some comment about how the definition could be considered Eurocentric, fitting better for certain (larger, modern Indo-European) languages like Germanic/Romance/Slavic, and how it isn't suitable for languages whose ortography/pronunciation/(isolation)/politics make them less prone to borrowings. This also would include Icelandic.
The first thought that comes to my mind is "isn't this a lot like just... widely-used loanwords?". Perhaps it should be connected to the loanwords entry, if it hasn't already? Because it really sounds as if it's just a term for loanwords that are adapted by more than one language, like "OK" (also spelled "okay"). Or relating to that, at least.

--Runa27 22:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, yes it is. An internationalism is a widely used loanword. I don't think that it should be connected to the loanwords entry, a number of things about them are different, such as modes of their spreading. Nikola 12:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Indian examples

I'm not sure about if the Indian examples are due to emigration, English (British) trade seems more probable. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 10:09, 31 August 2007 (UTC)