The borrowing tag has no wiki summary.
1
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2answers
49 views
Are there any loanwords in Turkish / Armenian languages?
In the Ottoman Empire, both Turks and Armenians shared common social and cultural domains, but are there any loanwords in either language from either side - i.e. Turkish loanwords in Armenian or ...
3
votes
2answers
129 views
Is the similarity between the Arabic word Gayyid and the English word Good due to a borrowing?
Why is the Arabic word جید (jayyid) which is pronounced gayyid in Egypt and means good, so similar to the word good or the German word gut? Is it a borrowing? (since the word for good is very ...
5
votes
1answer
170 views
Why did English borrow more from Latin and Greek than, e.g., German did, in scientific and philosophical subjects?
Is there any known reason why the scholars of the time didn't think it easier to use calques, as for instance the Germans did for the names of some of the basic chemical elements?
5
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3answers
153 views
Do loanwords usurp existing words?
When a loanword enters a language, does it usually replace an existing native word or phrase? Or does it more often lead to an increase in the size of the language's vocabulary?
Regarding Japanese's ...
14
votes
6answers
369 views
In languages with grammatical gender, how do they determine the gender when a new word has been created?
In languages with grammatical gender that has (almost) no morphological relation between the words and the genders(e.g. French), how do they determine the gender of a new word that has been ...
5
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0answers
95 views
Mutual lexical borrowings between Arabic, Persian and Turkish: a reference request
As an occasional learner of these languages, I find the linguistic situation of Arabic, Persian and Turkish very interesting: they are three genetically unrelated languages (if you stick to ...
7
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0answers
203 views
Did Georgian ever have a native word for “dolphin”?
During my time in Georgia one word came to puzzle me and I'm still thinking about it:
დელფინი (delp'ini) "dolphin"
Wiktionary says this comes from Greek via Russian.
The thing is Georgia is on ...
4
votes
2answers
148 views
Are there any linguistic factors that influence the degree to which a language accepts loanwords?
Obviously, the degree to which loanwords enter a language is highly influenced by culture - for instance, a community which has a lot of contact with another culture, through which many new objects / ...
12
votes
1answer
192 views
How do tone languages assign phonemic tones to loanwords from non-tone languages?
How do tone languages assign phonemic tones to loanwords from non-tone languages? For example, does such assignment vary according to the phonological context in each loanword? Alternatively, does ...
3
votes
1answer
205 views
Is the word, “problem,” new to non-English languages?
I've been listening to radio broadcasts lately where a person will be speaking German or Pashtun or Russian or whatever and a translator will be supplying an English rendition, in a format which makes ...
6
votes
1answer
371 views
Are English 'butterfly', German 'Butterfliege' and Dutch 'botervlieg' cognates?
Yesterday the question was raised why many languages do not share a root for 'butterfly'. When we look at the etymology of the English word, parallels are drawn to Dutch and German forms (OED):
OE ...
12
votes
1answer
190 views
What's this loanword phenomenon called?
I've noticed that loanwords often take on more specific meanings in the target language than in the source language. To give two very common examples, sake just means alcohol in Japanese and salsa ...
4
votes
3answers
140 views
What are some reasons languages get picked as source languages for neologisms
For example, Latin is a source language for new words in English and other European languages, and I know English, Sanskrit and Arabic are also source languages in many other languages.
What are the ...
