All Questions
13 questions
12
votes
3
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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
11
votes
1
answer
807
views
Are tones "preserved" when borrowing between unrelated tonal languages?
Let's consider just borrowing between unrelated, national/standardized tonal languages, just in case borrowing between related languages might be a special case and borrowing between non standardized ...
- 14.8k
18
votes
1
answer
1k
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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 ...
- 8,780
2
votes
1
answer
789
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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
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 ...
13
votes
1
answer
3k
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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 ...
user444
11
votes
6
answers
3k
views
Examples of Borrowing Languages
In the Wikipedia page History of the English language it is mentioned that English is a "borrowing language", with the implication that there are many loan words in English. What other languages may ...
- 1,296
8
votes
1
answer
287
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c- in Irish clann "offspring"
Irish clann "plant; offspring; child" (the source of English clan) is borrowed from Welsh plant with the same meanings, which is itself a borrowing of Latin planta. Why did Irish change the initial p ...
- 11k
8
votes
4
answers
6k
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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 ...
- 8,571
6
votes
4
answers
635
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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
5
votes
3
answers
1k
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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 ...
- 333
5
votes
2
answers
2k
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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 / ...
- 487
1
vote
3
answers
267
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 ...
