Languages preserving loanword inflections

Question

Erudite English has an interesting practice where the plural form of loanwords may follow the inflectional grammar of the source language. Thus "campi" as well as "campuses", "minima" as well as "minimums", "these kanji were" as well as "these kanjis were". Though this is likely a conscious, artificial scholarly invention, many of these word-forms have been absorbed into the living language, to the point where some plurals all but only occur in the Latin style (algae/??algas, larvae/??larvas, desiderata/??desideratums, nuclei/??nucleuses).

Since speakers are normally unfamiliar with the source grammar, this practice sometimes generates putatively "foreign" plurals that wouldn't be part of the source language: "virii" for what in Latin would be *vira, or "octopi" rather than Greek octopodes (though some people do use the latter). The so-called "fake" or "spurious" plurals might be argued to be evidence of productivity, and thus of an English mini-grammar (in the construction-grammar sense). The implication is that "Latin-style plurals" (at least) are now part of the natural English language, if peripherally (with productive rules like "if a word end in -us, its erudite plural is -i").

I've heard that German, a language with four cases, used to go a step further; I don't know anything about old German practices, but apparently erudite texts used to inflect Latin loans in the corresponding cases whenever appropriate in a German context. It seems that Catholic liturgy still declines Jesus, for example: „daß ihr einerlei gesinnt seid untereinander nach Jesu Christo…“ (where the German preposition nach, which governs the dative, causes the Latin Jesus Christus to be declined in the Latin dative).

Are there more examples of languages where loanwords keep their source-language inflection, even if only in erudite or literary usage?

Answer 1

A great number of loanwords from Ancient Greek have been integrated into Czech with great attention to the original forms. For instance, many Ancient Greek nouns from the third (athematic) declension preserve their stem consonants when declined in Czech.

Consider the proper name Paris (the Greek mythological prince). In the table given on the linked page, the forms on the right (Paris, Parise, ...) demonstrate what the regular Czech declension would be, but the ones on the left (Paris, Parida, ...) are the ones that are actually used, to correspond with the original Greek declension Πάρις, Πάριδος, ...

Another common example are loanwords that were originally dental stem neuters, such as δρᾶμα (drama). Such Czech nouns are commonly declined with the irregular interfix -at- (drama, dramatu, ...), so as to approximate the Greek declension δρᾶμα, δράματος, ...

Of course, the prime example is the Greek name Ζέυς, in Czech Zeus. In Ancient Greek, it was declined irregularly as Ζέυς, Δίος, Δίι, Δία, Ζέυ. The Czech loanword faithfully replicates this irregularity and declines as Zeus, Dia, Diovi, Dia, Die, Diovi, Diem.

Answer 2

This is more likely to happen when the original language is fairly well known amongst the community of writers–speakers of the adopting language.

Latin often does it for Greek words. That is, one usually has two options in Latin: either one translitterates the Greek endings directly into Latin, or one Latinises the entire paradigm. Which option is chosen also depends on the word; I believe the Greek word aer "air" always has the (Greek) accusative ending -a in Latin, so it will be aëra in the accusative in Latin, rather than the Latinised ?aerem. Using the Greek endings seems to be most common in poetry.

Jesu happens to be an example of this. In Greek, it is an irregular noun with a nominative singular Iesous, genitive and dative Iesou. Greek ou is normally translitterated into u in Latin (cf. ou-topia "non-place" → utopia), whence Latin Iesus and Iesu. As to the dative ending in Greek, which is highly irregular, it may be an ending borrowed from Hebrew (or a later normalised error).

I also seem to remember that this happens far more often with the accusative and genitive than with the dative, probably also because dative endings are very often (almost) the same between Greek and Latin.

Answer 3

German does so, too.

It preserves plural forms from English (really frequently), Italian, and Spanish; but usually not from French (Garage, pl. Garagen), Latin (Museum, pl. Museen), nor Greek (Thema, pl. Themen)..

Answer 4

Hindi, for sure, English borrowed examples include:

pencils - pencil -ẽ / -õ (depending on use -general pl. marker, -object pl. marker), 3 of them used as the environment demands (English in formal environments, Hindi inflection in informal ones.

cars - car -ẽ / -õ

English word with Hindi inflection like computerõ (कम्प्यूटरों) were the English word “computer” is inflected by the Hindi plural marker –on.

"sab artists ko bulayaa hai" (all artists have been called)

(last 2 from https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W14-3914)

etc.