Loanwords in English - Essay Example

Loanwords in English Instructions Loanwords are words borrowed from one language and used by speakers in another language. Words borrowed to fill a conceptual gap in the borrowing language are called necessary loans, whereas loanwords used to indicate prestige are known as luxury loans. Think of loanwords that are used by you, your family members, or friends in English (or in another language) and attempt to analyze whether they are necessary loans or luxury loans. Can you think of other reasons why a person may choose to use a loanword? Use concepts from class to bolster your analysis. Introduction & History of loanwords Loanwords are borrowings by speakers of one language from the vocabulary of another language. It is a direct usage of the actual foreign lexicon, rather than a simple rendering of the translation, which would be called a calque. Incidentally, the word ‘loanword’ itself is a loanword derived from the Old Norse word lán. The word ‘borrowing’ is interchangeable with ‘loanwords’. Dr. Danesi distinguishes two types of loanwords viz. necessary and luxury. Necessary loans he describes as filling conceptual gaps, whereas the latter suggest reasons of prestige. Examples of necessary loans are a la mode to mean in style, and au courant to Mean up to date, both of which are French words. French and Latin are by far the greatest source of loanwords in English. The major developments that led to large scale adoption of loanwords included the invasions of England by the Romans, Vikings and Normans. The Normans introduced many of the French words into English. And, copious borrowings were made earlier from Latin because it “was the language of prestige in the modern world. To borrow its words was perceived as a means of enriching the lexicon of any emerging vernacular.” (Danesi, M) The process of borrowings continues unabated even today but from an enlarged source from several other languages of the world. English has a capability of being able to absorb loanwords especially due to its flexible syllable structure. This assists its assimilation into the vocabulary. Personal experiences Since studying this course, I’ve become more observant of the vocabulary that people use, both in conversations in which I am a participant as well as noting others. Furthermore, living in a multi-cultural society and having an acquaintance of international friends has enriched my knowledge and experience tremendously. In my own and my family’s vocabulary too, I can pick out many examples of loanwords. At one mealtime, we discussed this at length after guessing whether certain words were native to English or borrowed from another language. After researching on whether or not a particular word is a loanword, I discovered that loanwords are more common that I thought. One estimate I read stated: “Today, over two-thirds of English vocabulary is ultimately of foreign origin.” This widespread use of loanwords may not be so apparent to the ordinary person but it is to the linguist who has studied the etymology of a large number of these words, and has some acquaintance with languages other than English. The rationale for borrowing Need is the biggest factor why people adopt loanwords. For example, in referring to the names applied to objects and ideas in the others’ own local language, to artifacts produced in a foreign culture, or a phenomena occurring in a foreign place. These all tend to result in necessary loans. To analyse the rationale for borrowing words from another language, it helped me to identify different ‘classes’ of the usage of loanwords. I shall discuss these individually. One class of loanwords consists of the multitude plethora of names of living things in nature i.e. the various animals, plants and their environments. A careful listening to the mentioning of names of animals on the National Geographic channel for instance would verify the frequent loanwords used. Probably because forms of life are so numerous and many only exist in the foreign place of origin, it is simply convenient to use the foreign word to name them. In a similar manner, much of classical music terminology in English was taken from Italian to fulfill a need at the time. Words taken up through the process of trade are also a necessary loan. This is a case of naming objects currently not existing in English, and artifacts produced in a foreign culture. For example, when tea was discovered by the British, they could not name it anything other than this because tea was a new thing then. Naming it the same as the Chinese word facilitated the trade because everyone knew what was being talked about. This also demonstrates that if a word is needed to name something and a foreign word exists, it would be prudent to make that a loanword rather than risk inventing a new one that people would not recognize. The practical convenience of using loanwords also applies to the filling of conceptual gaps. Dr. Danesi gives examples of naïve borrowed from French, and memorandum taken from Latin in the (19th century). Both “entered the language ostensibly because no English morpheme existed at the time for expressing the concepts that such forms encode (and still does not)”. In this situation where a conceptual gap exists and the speaker is unable to satisfactorily convey the meaning of a particular concept using the native language, he can either invent a word or phrase to represent it, or take the easier route of borrowing an existing word for that very concept from another language. Another rationale for accepting a loanword is if it has the ability of encapsulating in a single word the meaning of what would otherwise require several words or a whole sentence to express. In this case, the word fills a conceptual gap and is a linguistic convenience, so is a necessary loan word. An example is coup d’Etat from French. One of my relatives is a practicing lawyer and I have noted that legal documents and writings make abundant use of loanwords from Latin. They are replete with them. As mentioned in the history of borrowing section, Latin was also a source language in academic circles. This probably explains why it was extensively used for forming English legal terminology. However, outside of the need for precision in meaning as expected in legal texts, Latin was also used to give the impression of intellectual virtues. In this case the Latin word was a luxury loanword rather than a necessary one. This goes to show that the same words can be both necessary loans and luxury loans depending on the context of their use. French vocabulary tends to be popular when dealing such things as food and drink, fashion and clothing, fine art etc. I’ve noticed French words deliberately used with such effect in films during restaurant scenes for instance. Its use has an air of exquisiteness surrounding it. And, these would be luxury loans because they fulfill the need to produce a desired effect instead of being a need of itself or to fill a conceptual gap. Loaning words from English I have come to recognize that the phenomenon of lexical borrowing is neither a one-way process, nor associated with English alone. Moreover, it has been happening all the time as individuals of societies and cultures interact with one another. Therefore, this is a continuous multi-way phenomenon because all open languages borrow from each other as and when necessary. One Arab friend tells me of the large number of English words used in their textbooks for defining scientific and other technical terms. This shows the necessity of loanwords to “fill conceptual gaps in the borrowing language” (tutor). I understand that there has been a phenomenal advancement in all fields of modern science and technology in recent history and that this has been largely led by the English-speaking world. Along with the practical benefits, modern thinking and theorizing has resulted in many new concepts and terms. It is expedient for non-English speaking countries to simply adopt the English terms rather than attempt to naturalize new artificial constructions more in rapport with the style of their own language. In some countries there are even movements to reform their own language to incorporate customizations of the new words and dispose of the original English terms, but they are unsuccessful due to the impracticality of doing so. The word computer suffices as an example of the name of a common globally used modern object. Many languages have tried to invent native alternatives such as elaboratore elettronico in Italian, but the word computer is resilient to being replaced. The situation is by no means different for other languages. English is almost entirely a ‘borrowed language’ but now that it has become the lingua franca of the world, many languages are also borrowing from it. A study on English loanwords in Mandarin Chinese revealed the fields in which the borrowings largely occur, how common this practice has become and who the prime borrowers are. This tells us in particular which cultural influences are greatest as far as language effects are concerned. The study revealed that “the frequency of English loan words was found to have increased in Mandarin in the past decade, particularly in the realms of technology and communication, pop culture and entertainment, and politics. The borrowings are consequently spoken and understood by younger interlocutors and speakers who study English, and ideas of a loan word’s integration into Mandarin varies accordingly.” (Hall-Lew, L) Issues associated with borrowing When a loanword is adopted it may not be easily understood until it comes into popular use. If it is modified in order to accord with the native patterns of pronunciation, it could become unrecognizable to speakers of the original language from which it came. On the other hand not all English speakers would be easily able to pronounce it, as it ought to be if that is what is required of them. Examples are the nasalized sounds in French and the sound /kh/ in German. Pronunciation is therefore a key issue associated with borrowing. And, regardless of pronunciation, the loaned word and the original word can also differ in their shades of meaning and this can pose problems in interpretation. For example, a dossier in the original French refers to any type of file, even a computer file, whereas in English, as a loanword, it has assumed a narrower meaning of a file that specifically contains “detailed records on a person or subject” (Merram Webster Collegiate Dictionary). Whilst readers may have difficulty in pronouncing, interpreting and understanding the meaning of certain loanwords, their existence is also an issue for writers and teachers alike. Writers have to make a safe decision whether or not to use a particular loanword for their target audience. They will consider whether it is likely to either aid understanding of what they intend to say or result in a misunderstanding. For teachers, they may need to decide whether to teach the loanword or a native equivalent if there is one. The criteria would be frequency of its occurrence i.e. how common the word is used by people in general. The greatest advantage of loanwords is that it helps to make subtle distinctions lexically and thereby avoid circumloculations i.e. having to express an idea in more words than are necessary. Borrowing words from other languages may enrich the vocabulary of the borrowing language and enable different shades of meaning to be used, but it also has the consequence of bringing about the co-existence of synonymous pairs such as wedding (Old English) and matrimony (Latin), and home (Old English) and domicile (Latin). In a situation similar to Indonesian, “while some of these loanwords fill gaps in the vocabulary, many others exist alongside a 'native' synonym”, (Hassall, T) Final thoughts The extent of borrowing is quite heavy and a look at the situation shows that lexical borrowing has been a common phenomenon in all languages throughout history and continues to be the case. In fact it is perhaps more common now than ever due to globalization and the increasing interaction of societies and their cultures. More often than not this practice arises out of a need rather than an as a luxury though there are examples of the latter too. As far as English is concerned, the vocabulary of words is rapidly expanding, not just due to native new additions, but also through the incorporation of words from other societies and cultures. It is a language that has highly borrowed its vocabulary from other languages. I believe the richness of the vocabulary is an indication of the level of sophistication the society has reached and borrowing words from other languages helps to bring this about. “English is the way it is because it is such an inveterate borrower from other languages.” (Ayto, J) What fascinates me most about a loanword is learning the history behind it, which often leads to some insight into the society or culture at the time of its introduction. For example, knowing the derivation of the word salary leads us to learn that Roman soldiers received a part of their wages in salt! In ‘The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English’, Henry Hitchings makes an interesting comparison between Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin/Greek with respect to the general ‘type’ of loanwords they have provided for English. He says that the layering of English loanwords means that it now has three terms to describe the same thing: the Anglo-Saxon term (usually neutral/vernacular), the French term (sophisticated), and the Latin/Greek term (clinical/scientific view). For example, compare fire, flame, conflagration, or go, depart, exit respectively. Works Cited Ayto, John. 1991. Making Sense of Foreign Words in English. Edinburgh: W&R Chambers Ltd. Danesi, Marcel. 2008. Language, Society, and Culture: Introducing Anthropological Linguistics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press. Ch. 8, Borrowing. Hall-Lew, Lauren Asia. 2002. English Loanwords in Mandarin Chinese. A thesis submitted to the Honors College, University of Arizona. Aug. 2002. Hassall, Tim. 2000. Budaya or Kultur? Learning and Teaching Western Loan Words. Australia National University, Canberra. http://www.ialf.edu/bipa/april2000/budayaorkultur.html (accessed November 26, 2008). Hitchings, Henry. 2008. The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, London: John Murray, ISBN 9780719564543. Merram Webster Collegiate Dictionary Zdenek Salzmann. 2006. Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Westview Press, Fourth Edition. Read More