Loanword
A
loanword is a word directly taken into one
language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a
calque or loan translation is a related process whereby it is the
meaning or
idiom that is borrowed rather than the
lexical item itself. The word "loanword" is itself a
calque of the
German Lehnwort.
Although loanwords are typically far less numerous than the "native" words of most languages (
creoles and
pidgins being an obvious exception), they are often widely known and used, since their borrowing served a certain purpose, for example to provide a name for a new
invention.
As languages develop, in most cases the bulk of the vocabulary of a language is
inherited from its ancestral language. Words that are inherited from ancestral language, the "native" words of the language, are not considered to have been borrowed. Borrowing is when words are added to a language from any language
other than the ancestral language or, on the other hand, when words from one language are taken into another language, especially during translation processes.
Certain classes of loanwords are more common;
function words, such as pronouns, numbers, words referring to universal concepts, are usually not borrowed. Examples of these words being borrowed have been attested, however.
Words referring to exotic concepts or ideas are usually borrowed. What is "exotic" can vary from language to language. Thus, English names for creatures not native to Great Britain are almost always loanwords, and most of the technical vocabulary referring to
classical music is borrowed from
Italian.
Idiomatic expressions and phrases, sometimes translated word-for-word, can be borrowed, usually from a language that has "prestige" at the time. Often, a borrowed idiom is used as a
euphemism for a less polite term in the original language. In English, this has usually been
Latinisms from the
Latin language and
Gallicisms from
French.
English has many loanwords. In
1973, a computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was published in
Ordered Profusion by
Thomas Finkenstaedt and
Dieter Wolff. Their estimates for the origin of English words were as follows:
*
French, including
Old French and early
Anglo-French: 28.3%
*
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
*
Germanic languages, including
Old and
Middle English: 25%
*
Greek: 5.32%
* No
etymology given or unknown: 4.03%
* Derived from
proper names: 3.28%
* All other languages contributed less than 1%
This survey shows no information about the frequency of words, however. If the frequency of words is considered, words from Old and Middle English occupy the vast majority.
The reasons for English's vast borrowing include:
* (to a relatively small extent) the existence of other
languages native to Britain;
* the invasion of England by the
Vikings and the
Normans;
* its modern importance;
* its being a scientific language;
* its development as a trade language in the
18th century; and
* the flexibility of its
syllable structure.
This lack of restrictions makes it comparatively easy for the English language to incorporate new words. Compare this with
Japanese, where the English word "club" (itself originally from
Old Norse) was turned into "kurabu" because of Japanese's inflexible syllable structure. However, the English pronunciation of a loanword will often differ from the original pronunciation to such a degree that a native speaker of the language it was borrowed from will not be able to recognize it as a loanword when spoken.
Affixes
The majority of English affixes, such as "un-", "-ing", and "-ly", were present in older forms in Old English. There are, however, a few English affixes that have been borrowed. One example, possibly the most prolific, is the suffix -er (agentive suffix, not the comparative suffix), which was borrowed (ultimately) from Latin. The verbal suffix '-ize' comes (via, Old French, via Latin) ultimately from Ancient Greek and became util
ized liberally in America, often to the chagrin of the British.
Direct loans, expressions translated word-by-word, or even grammatical constructions and orthographical conventions from English are called
anglicisms. Similarly, loans from Swedish are called
sveticisms or svecisms. In French, the result of perceived over-use of English loanwords and expressions is called
franglais.
Germish is English influence on
German. English loanwords in French include 'le weekend', 'le job' and 'le biftek' (beefsteak). This has so outraged French purists that much time and energy is spent by various French institutions keeping the language pure; probably a futile endeavor.
English often borrows words from the cultures and languages of the British Colonies. For example there are at least twenty words from Hindi, including syce/sais, dinghy, chutney, pundit, wallah, pajama/pyjamas, bungalow and jodhpur. Other examples include trek, aardvark, lager and veld from Afrikaans, shirang, amok (Malay) and sjambok (Afrikaans via Malay).
It is possible for a word to travel from one language to another and then back to the originating language in a different form, a process called
reborrowing. A specific example of this is
anime which is borrowed from the Japanese
アニメ, which is a shortened version of アニメーション (
animeshon), which is in turn borrowed from the English
animation. Another example is the Russian word "bistro" (бистро), borrowed (by many languages) from the French word "bistro," which itself comes from the Russian "bystro" (быстро), meaning "quickly," a frequent demand of restaurant owners by Russian soldiers in France after the Napoleonic Wars.
*
Lists of English words of international origin
