Questions tagged [borrowing]

When words are taken from one language and incorporated into another.

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Is calque equal to literal translation?

Calque is a way of borrowing words from another language. In this process, there's a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. Is calque equal to literal translation?
Sophiefy's user avatar
-2 votes
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Is تروجینا an Arabic word? [closed]

In the Wikipedia article for Neom I saw this part: On 3 March 2022, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the Trojena project, which will be the first major outdoor skiing destination in ...
Snack Exchange's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
3k views

Why did Japanese borrow words for simple numbers from Chinese?

I just realised that all (standalone) Japanese numbers from 1-10 are borrowed from Chinese (maybe except 4 and 7 if they're read as よん and なな instead of し and しち). Now, I understand why a language ...
HypnoSkales's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
155 views

What types of Arabic word were never adopted in Persian?

The Persian lexicon has a very large number of Arabic borrowings, including a small portion of very frequently used ones, and a larger portion of Arabic vocables seemingly spanning across all semantic ...
earlyinthemorning's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
81 views

How common is it for languages in contact to exchange inflectional morphemes?

So languages in contact will of course borrow vocabulary from each other. And languages in contact for a really long time might converge on a common sentence structure or other morphological typology -...
Arcaeca's user avatar
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0 answers
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Strange vowel harmony in Arabic loanwords within Turkish—why could it be?

Some Arabic loanwords have a palatalised, for example, /lʲ/ in final position, and it is more understandable in the case of those words. However, some others go against vowel harmony for no apparent ...
murshad's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
266 views

At some point, was г/Г pronounced in Russian like it still is in Ukrainian (somewhat akin to h/H in hotel, i.e. /h/)? Or is it purely regional?

Recently, with a few colleagues moving into our office from Russia, we have a new resident colleague with the first name Герман. Now, being German native speaker, my assumption was that the name ...
0xC0000022L's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
123 views

Phonology for Loanwords

What is the reason for loanwords to preserve the original pronunciation, but not to be assimilate into the new language? For example, the German loanword from English Handy (mobile phone), it is ...
Gaai Chia's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
114 views

What is a word that assimilates loanwords called?

In Kazakh, there is this verb ету etw. It appears after Russian infinitives so that they can be conjugated in Kazakh. For example: EN: invest RU: инвестировать investirovat' KZ: инвестировать ету ...
Isaac Sechslingloff's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
123 views

Etymological relationship between picture/image and education/formation

There are German words Bild (picture/image) and Bildung (education/formation). In Russian, education is образова́ние [obrazovaniye], whilst obraz in many Slavic languages means either directly picture/...
Honza Zidek's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
177 views

Balto-Slavic or archaic IE loanwords in Ossetian?

There are some unique Indo-European words in Ossetian that do not exist in Avestan or Persian, but do exist in Tocharian, Germanic or BS. Ossetian ӕвзист "silver", has BS cognates("star&...
Fatyanovo2022's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
135 views

Is there a term for a word taken from another language, but then completely changing the meaning (such as peperoni, latte, chai)

In Italian, il peperone is what the English would call bell pepper, but the English word peperoni has come to mean a type of sausage, in particular when on a pizza. In Italian, latte is milk, but in ...
gerrit's user avatar
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1 answer
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What would /ɯ/ most likely be replaced by? [closed]

If a language was borrowing words from another language that has /ɯ/, what would the first language possibly substitute it with? Borrowing language phonology - Consonants: m n ɲ p b t d c ɟ k g ts dz ...
RoseDiamond's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
172 views

Why does text in Cyrillic or Japanese contain Latin characters for technical/scientific terms?

Through a question on a sister site, I stumbled upon a Bulgarian document that includes drawings and measurements. What stroke me is that the text in Cyrillic contains Latin characters when it comes ...
WoJ's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
67 views

Is being a loan word time limited by the time it was adopted?

Is being a loan word limited by time of adoption? For example the English word "loci" comes from Latin, as other 60% of English words do. Is it a loan word in English? Or is it only for &...
Jan's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
298 views

How Polish influenced Ukrainian

I have noticed some complexed loanwords in Ukrainian from German via Polish like the word for taste “smak”. Is it just slight influence that Polish had on Ukrainian or was it related to assimilation ...
Antoine Vichev's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
124 views

Percentage of Latin loanwords in northern Germanic languages

What is the percentage of Latin loanwords or words that are of ultimate Latin origin even from intermediate languages in each of the northern Germanic languages? I have noticed that there seem to be ...
Quintus Caesius - RM's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
88 views

Compound English word with most etymologies

There are many English words with two different core etymologies, often Latin + Greek. For example: Claustrophobia – from the Latin claustrum meaning "confined space" and Greek φόβος (...
Necarion's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
346 views

Examples for calque / loan-translation words with different meanings in different languages

Are there words/phrases/compound-words in two different languages that use the same words in their respective languages (like a calque / loan translation) but result in different meanings? Here is a ...
Tangent's user avatar
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0 answers
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Formal terms for pronunciations of loanwords in source and recipient languages?

If they exist, what are formal terms meaning "pronunciation of a loanword in the donor language" and "pronunciation of a loanword in the recipient language"? In shorter terms, the ...
outis's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
667 views

Words with "hybrid" declension (in Latin, or borrowed by English from Latin)?

There is a recently-coined technical usage (in mathematics) of the word "anima", borrowed from Latin to English. The funny thing about this coinage is that the coin-ers of the term insist on ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
90 views

Germanic loanwords in Czech? The case of "lék" [duplicate]

Recently I started studying Czech and I learned the word "lék", pill/medicine and "lékař", doctor/physician. In Polish there is a similar one. They bear a superficial resemblance ...
Qwertuy's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
134 views

Why is direct affix borrowing generally thought to be impossible?

F. Seifart (Seifart, 2015) says: "a widespread assumption in the language contact literature is that affixes are never borrowed directly, but only indirectly, that is, as part of complex ...
tiopjkl's user avatar
  • 79
2 votes
1 answer
472 views

Is the Turkish word for brother(kardeş) of Indo-Iranian origin?

I looked up the word for "brother" in other Turkish languages. In Ubzek it is aka. And in Volga Tatar the corresponding word is abi. The word "kardesh" sounds suspiciously similar ...
Mr X's user avatar
  • 197
3 votes
1 answer
515 views

Similarities between Sumerian and Semitic languages

I noticed that the Sumerian words for mother and father, ama and abba respectively, are very similar to the Hebrew words for mother and father, being ema and abba respectively. Given that Sumerian is ...
iat's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
4 answers
3k views

Why does English have words from Latin and none from Celtic?

It is known that Britain's history of invasion goes as: Celtic arrival, Roman domination, Saxon settlement, Nordic settlement, Norman invasion. If England's identity was largely made from the Saxons (...
user avatar
-3 votes
1 answer
60 views

Combine flexibility + ism , how ? thanks [closed]

I want to use the word flexibility in an "ism" form. I have two possible forms in mind but sure which one is better: flexibilism flexibiltyism Which of the above forms is correct? ...
Kanglando's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
146 views

Why hasn't English borrowed more words from China? [closed]

Why hasn't English (or Latin/Greek/others from which English arrived) borrowed more words from China? I am looking at Wikipedia and there's probably only 30 words there out of the millions of words ...
Lance's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
780 views

Did the Portuguese influence how days of the week are named in Vietnamese and Chinese?

The Portuguese were some of the first colonizers / missionaries in the Far East. In the case of Vietnam, they created the first phonetic transcription of the language. Interestingly, nowadays the ...
GA1's user avatar
  • 1,179
0 votes
1 answer
178 views

Pronunciation and spelling of English loanwords in Japanese

The word for allergy in Japanese is アレルギ (pronounced "a/re/ru/gi") The first three characters are typical for words borrowed from English, but why is the last sound "gi" instead of "ji"? Is this word ...
joe's user avatar
  • 363
7 votes
2 answers
265 views

Is it normal for only one verb class to be productive in Indo-European languages?

In another question on this site, there is some discussion on the view that the so-called "strong verb" class in English is no longer "productive" - that is, newly formed or coined words (neologisms) ...
Robert Columbia's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

Loanwords with different meanings from original language?

First, let me say this questions is asking only about fairly recent loanwords (as in, the word (or something similar to it) exists in both languages). I'm not asking about very old loanwords that may ...
CoffeeTableEspresso's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
226 views

Is there a specific linguistic term for the following practice of constructing new words/characters?

I have in mind examples such as the Scheingallizismus (lit. appearance of Gallicism) in German which are words/phrases constructed from French origins but are themselves unknown in French speaking ...
mooncatcher's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

Etymology of Romanian "amor" (cf. "iubire")

I found it interesting to learn that Romanian borrowed this word from a Slavic language as well as the verb "a iubi". I also discovered that the word "amor" is present in Romanian but apparently it ...
X30Marco's user avatar
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9 votes
3 answers
222 views

Do dead languages borrow words?

So, presumably, at some point during of after the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin became a dead language. Or, at least no longer used outside of the Church or science. When that happens to a language, ...
DBWeinstein's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
366 views

Why do French words tend to become so much more intense in English?

My knowledge of French is very rudimentary, but one common theme I noticed in English words borrowed from French is that their meaning becomes so much more intense. To give just a few examples, ...
Szabolcs's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
218 views

How do you call a languages tendency to adopt foreign words rather than translate them to their language?

One difference between Mandarin Chinese and Japanese is that the former likes to translate foreign terms, while Japanese prefers to transcribe them to Japanese. E.g. Basketball: Mandarin Chinese: 篮球 (...
hgiesel's user avatar
  • 285
2 votes
1 answer
656 views

What is a loan creation?

How is it different from a loanword? One example given was mitkind created on stimulus of English sibling. Does this mean mitkind is a new word but with a foreign sense? Is there such thing as loaning ...
leon's user avatar
  • 29
0 votes
1 answer
84 views

Is there any specific term for "English-originated?

I'm working on an academic writing in English, but as a non-native speaker, I feel lacking of vocabulary. When a word has its origin in the Chinese language, we use the term 'Sino-' such as Sino-...
Jeeyoung Jeon's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
160 views

What is it called when a new word is replaced by a more familiar one?

I mean the phenomenon that happens when a language borrows a word, but it gets replaced by a similar-sounding word that is already in the language like from Spanish 'aguacate' to 'avocado' or 'echeque ...
Andrew James's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
584 views

How do people deal with loanwords with highly alien phonemes?

I've been thinking about how a people who speak a language without rhotics would perceive a rhotic sound. Obviously of course, this would depend on exactly which rhotic we're talking about. I thought ...
user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
486 views

Why does Hebrew transcribe Akkadian š inconsistently?

Biblical Hebrew consistently uses the letter ס (s) to transcribe names with the Akkadian consonant š. For example, Esarhaddon for Aššur-aḥa-iddina, Esther from Ištar, Sargon from Šarru-ukīn (all ...
b a's user avatar
  • 2,765
6 votes
4 answers
465 views

Which languages have absorbed the most vocabulary from Russian, and which languages have influenced its vocabulary?

I'm a student of formal linguistics and Russian language, my question has been surprisingly hard to google -- I've studied a little Ukrainian, and I've read that its structurally similar to Russian ...
user173361's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
385 views

Sami loanwords in Swedish language [closed]

Are there any words in Swedish borrowed directly from Sami languages? Excluding proper nouns. One example would be enough for "yes" answer. A link to some research on related subject is required for "...
user avatar
9 votes
4 answers
647 views

Borrowing words along with the articles or other grammatical parts (like Spanish from Arabic)

Disclaimer: I do not know Arabic. Here is an example of Spanish words of Arabic origin: alacrán, albañil, alquimia... I wonder why Spanish language borrowed so many Arabic words along with the ...
GA1's user avatar
  • 1,179
3 votes
2 answers
421 views

Does Sanskrit really have a large proportion of borrowings from non IE stock?

A comment on an answer to anoher question about Lithuanian suggests that 'quite a large number of words was borrowed from non-IE languages'. While some words in Sanskrit indeed seem to have Fenno-...
Manjusri's user avatar
  • 2,761
1 vote
3 answers
250 views

Greek words with initial "ia" instead of "a" [closed]

Greek verbs with initial #i+H4- from Arnaud Fournet (May 2017) *H4eH4- ‘to heal, guard’: (1)Hurrian a-tt- ‘to guard, protect’ (2) Greek ἰάομαι ‘to heal’ < *y-ā- (3) The question : why "ia" instead ...
Rajan Menon's user avatar
10 votes
4 answers
638 views

Languages preserving loanword inflections

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 "...
melissa_boiko's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
62 views

Can anybody recommend some textbooks/articles that deal with the adaption of loan words into Spanish?

I'm doing a phonology project on Spanish and one of the components is describing how the language adapts loanwords. I'm particularly interested in Arabic loanwords and how they are adapted as I ...
zettasyntax19's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
313 views

Why are some words to express country names different between Chinese and Japanese?

In some countries, their principal chinese characters are represented differently between Chinese and Japanese. For example, 意 vs 伊 (Italy) 法 vs 仏 (France) 德 vs 独 (Germany) That being said, there ...
Blaszard's user avatar
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