All Questions
Tagged with borrowing terminology
13 questions
6
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2
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545
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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
5
votes
3
answers
121
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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
1
answer
230
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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
0
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0
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53
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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 ...
- 101
2
votes
2
answers
2k
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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
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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
3
votes
2
answers
231
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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
0
votes
1
answer
89
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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
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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
1
answer
203
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Term for borrowing an inflected form as an uninflected form
Sometimes when a word is borrowed from one language to another, what is an inflected form in the source language becomes an uninflected form in the target language. Examples of this are the Italian ...
- 468
0
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1
answer
111
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Name of the act of borrowing linguistic concepts from different languages
What is the term for concepts that got translated from one language or another?
I've heard this term in a conversation about Czech Anglicisms such like: "Mějte hezký den." - the literal version of ...
- 597
12
votes
3
answers
4k
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Is a loanword also a cognate or are the two terms mutually exclusive?
A borrowing or loanword is when a word from language A is added to the lexicon of language B, with whatever phonological adaptations are necessary.
But is a cognate only a word directly inherited ...
- 14.8k
15
votes
1
answer
673
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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 ...
- 487