All Questions
106 questions
2
votes
2
answers
182
views
"fake" translated words
When studying foreign languages I occasionally encounter rare words. These can be cross-referenced in word lists that are available from different sources to see how commonly used a word is. I have ...
- 141
2
votes
1
answer
107
views
Frequency of English words despite native equivalents in other languages: studies?
I am not a student of linguistics. However, I am learning Hindi, which is a fascinating language.
Are there studies on the frequency of English words - in a language where the country was colonised by ...
- 153
1
vote
2
answers
136
views
Are there maps/infographs/pie charts of major source of loanwords in languages?
On WALS, there is a chapter about the spread of the loanword "tea" VS "chai".
I can't find much online except this database which I don't understand the map:
Loanword database
...
- 374
2
votes
0
answers
92
views
Finnish and Hungarian loanword cognates?
Finnish and Hungarian are two distantly related, mutually unintelligible languages in Europe that do not belong to the Indo European language family but the Uralic one. But they do have one more thing ...
- 1,559
1
vote
1
answer
124
views
Where Does the 'fi' in 'Authentication' Come From in East Slavic Languages?
I've noticed that some languages, seemingly restricted to East Slavics, add an extraneous 'fi' to the word 'Authentication'. E.g. Bulgarian and Serbian spell it 'Автентикация' and 'Autentikacija', as ...
- 199
6
votes
2
answers
545
views
Examples of ‘kangaroo etymologies’ that actually happened
There’s an urban legend that the word kangaroo is from an Aboriginal phrase that means, “I don’t know.” This is not true: the word is actually from a Guugu Yimithirr word for a particular species of ...
- 415
4
votes
1
answer
123
views
Has a word or a phrase been borrowed into another language with permission?
Source, in Russian:
I thought at this moment it was the first time in the world when someone asked the donor language speaker for permission before borrowing something from their language.
Are there ...
- 159
1
vote
0
answers
98
views
Is Etruscan zivas "to live" a borrowing from some IE language?
The Etruscan zivas looks similar to PIE *gʷih₃wós and its decendants, like Greek zōós, Latin vīvus, Proto-Italic and Proto-Hellenic *gʷīwos. Is it known to be a borrowing from an IE language?
- 6,711
-1
votes
2
answers
720
views
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?
- 109
11
votes
5
answers
4k
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 ...
- 113
4
votes
3
answers
251
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 ...
1
vote
0
answers
93
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 -...
- 600
3
votes
0
answers
111
views
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 ...
- 31
3
votes
1
answer
707
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 ...
- 207
1
vote
1
answer
159
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 ...
- 67
5
votes
3
answers
121
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 ...
2
votes
3
answers
140
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/...
- 899
2
votes
1
answer
236
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&...
- 135
2
votes
1
answer
229
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 ...
- 231
1
vote
1
answer
147
views
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 ...
- 19
1
vote
1
answer
277
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 ...
- 189
1
vote
2
answers
73
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 &...
- 11
3
votes
1
answer
362
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 ...
- 100
0
votes
0
answers
180
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 ...
0
votes
1
answer
114
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 (...
- 87
1
vote
1
answer
430
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 ...
- 79
0
votes
0
answers
53
views
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 ...
- 101
2
votes
2
answers
827
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 ...
- 123
3
votes
0
answers
93
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 ...
- 713
2
votes
1
answer
148
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 ...
- 79
2
votes
1
answer
629
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 ...
- 217
3
votes
1
answer
753
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 ...
- 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 (...
user22430
-3
votes
1
answer
63
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?
...
-1
votes
1
answer
154
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 ...
- 4,438
5
votes
1
answer
962
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 ...
- 1,189
0
votes
1
answer
195
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 ...
- 363
7
votes
2
answers
295
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) ...
- 1,047
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 ...
4
votes
3
answers
251
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 ...
- 279
6
votes
2
answers
3k
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 ...
- 911
9
votes
3
answers
243
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, ...
- 247
5
votes
1
answer
464
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,
...
- 704
3
votes
2
answers
230
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 (...
- 285
2
votes
1
answer
789
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 ...
- 29
0
votes
1
answer
89
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-...
- 115
2
votes
3
answers
229
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 ...
- 213
7
votes
3
answers
667
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 ...
user19661
8
votes
2
answers
558
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 ...
- 2,785
6
votes
4
answers
635
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 ...
- 91