Borrowing

When two languages come into contact, they are very likely to influence each other in various ways, including through borrowing.

Is a common translation technique.

Borrowing

English is a more varied melting pot than you think...

Which Words Did English Take From Other Languages?

English—is one of the most incredible, flavorfully-complex melting pots of linguistic ingredients from other countries that’s been left to simmer for centuries. These linguistic ingredients are called loanwords that have been borrowed and incorporated into English. The loanwords are oftentimes so common now, the foreign flavor has been completely lost on speakers.

Borrowing is a very common source of new words in languages.

What usually happens is that English speakers find a word in another language to describe something they don’t have a word for. So they “borrow” that word.

It basically means that the translator makes a concious choice to use the same word in the target text as it is found in the source text. This is usually the case when there is no equivalent term in the target language.

What is Borrowing?

1. Loanword *
2. Loan translation (Calque)

2 Types of borrowing

Loanword: Is a foreign word or expression mainteined in its original form in the target language.

Loanword

Loanwords fall into two categories: popular loanwords and learned loanwords

Learned loanwords tend to come from scholarly or specialized fields, like medicine or law. It’s usually easier to see what language these words came from.

The word ballet, for example, comes from French, and the terms for the different positions and steps in ballet have retained their original French names.

• The Demi-Plie
• Battlement Tendu
• Piquette
• Sauté
• The Grand-PLie

The specialized terms in ballet

As many as 350 other languages are represented and their linguistic contributions actually make up about 80% of English!

Loanwords make up 80% of English

English is composed of words from: Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Russian, Maori, Hindi, Hebrew, Persian, Malay, Urdu, Irish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Norwegian, Zulu, and Swahili. And, that’s not even 10% of the 350 languages in the English melting pot

War is actually a way a lot of loanwords have come into English. Viking invasions of England during the Old English period brought Old Norse words like war and ugly. In 1066, the Normans (basically the French), led by William the Conqueror, invaded and took over the British Isles. That made French the language of the English court for hundreds of years. As many as 10,000 loanwords resulted from that period of English history. Interestingly, a lot of war-related words are loanwords.

Examples

Borrowing and lending of words happens because of cultural contact between two communities that speak different languages.

A lot of the words that end up being loaned are part of the material culture of the dominant group. Food, plants, animals, and tools migrate with the groups that use them, and, of course, so do the words that describe those things. So, when other cultures come into contact with those new people and their objects and words, it’s no surprise that physical and linguistic exchanges take place. Because those objects already have names, the borrowing culture tends to adopt those names instead of inventing their own words.

1. Ballet
2. Delicatessen/Deli
3. Genre
4. Kindergarten
5. Macho
6. Patio
7. Gung-ho
8. Paparazzi
9. Tarantula
10. Ketchup

Do you know The meaning of these 10 words and their origin?

Loan Words to English

• What is Borrowing?
• What is the main purpose of borrowing when translating?
• Give 5 examples of Loanwords.

Thank U!