A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e., the loanword). Loanwords may be contrasted with calques, in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished from cognates, which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other.
Examples and related terms A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or loan translation), which is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by word-for-word translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language. Loanwords, in contrast, are not translated. Examples of loanwords in the English language include café (from French café, which means 'coffee'), bazaar (from Persian bāzār, which means 'market'), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten, which literally means 'children's garden'). The word calque is a loanword, while the word loanword is a calque: calque comes from the French noun calque ("tracing; imitation; close copy"); while the word loanword and the phrase loan translation are translated from German nouns Lehnwort and Lehnübersetzung (German: [ˈleːnʔybɐˌzɛt͡sʊŋ] ). Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu, are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings. Although colloquial and informal register loanwords are typically spread by word-of-mouth, technical or academic loanwords tend to be first used in written language, often for scholarly, scientific, or literary purposes. A Wanderwort is a word that has been borrowed across a wide range of languages remote from its original source; an example is the word tea, which originated in Hokkien but has been borrowed into languages all over the world. For a sufficiently old Wanderwort, it may become difficult or impossible to determine in what language it actually originated. Most of the technical vocabulary of classical music (such as concerto, allegro, tempo, aria, opera, and soprano) is borrowed from Italian, and that of ballet from French. Much of the terminology of the sport of fencing also comes from French. Many loanwords come from prepared food, drink, fruits, vegetables, seafood and more from languages around the world. In particular, many come from French cuisine (crêpe, crème brûlée), Italian (pasta, linguine, pizza, espresso), and Chinese (dim sum, chow mein, wonton).
Linguistic classification Loanwords are adapted from one language to another in a variety of ways. The studies by Werner Betz (1971, 1901), Einar Haugen (1958, also 1956), and Uriel Weinreich (1963) are regarded as the classical theoretical works on loan influence. The basic theoretical statements all take Betz's nomenclature as their starting point. Duckworth enlarges Betz's scheme by the type "partial substitution" and supplements the system with English terms. A schematic illustration of these classifications is given below. The phrase "foreign word" used in the image below is a mistranslation of the German Fremdwort, which refers to loanwords whose pronunciation, spelling, inflection or gender have not been adapted to the new language such that they no longer seem foreign. Such a separation of loanwords into two distinct categories is not used by linguists in English in talking about any language. Basing such a separation mainly on spelling is (or, in fact, was) not common except amongst German linguists, and only when talking about German and sometimes other languages that tend to adapt foreign spellings, which is rare in English unless the word has been widely used for a long time. According to the linguist Suzanne Kemmer, the expression "foreign word" can be defined as follows in English: "[W]hen most speakers do not know the word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called a foreign word. There are many foreign words and phrases used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and Schadenfreude (German)." This is not how the term is used in this illustration:
On the basis of an importation-substitution distinction, Haugen distinguishes three basic groups of borrowings: "(1) Loanwords show morphemic importation without substitution.... (2) Loanblends show morphemic substitution as well as importation.... (3) Loanshifts show morphemic substitution without importation". Haugen later refined his model in a review of Gneuss's book on Old English loan coinages, whose classification, in turn, is the one by Betz again. Weinreich differentiates between two mechanisms of lexical interference, namely those initiated by simple words and those initiated by compound words and phrases. He defines simple words "from the point of view of the bilinguals who perform the transfer, rather than that of the descriptive linguist. Accordingly, the category 'simple' words also includes compounds that are transferred in unanalysed form". After this general classification, Weinreich then resorts to Betz's (1949) terminology.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
