Sign inLoan Words and Calque
Sometimes we adopt a word from a language and translate it more or less literally. And Sometimes, we borrow words directly from another language. Let's learn!
What is a Loan Word?
A loan word is a word that is borrowed from one language and used in another language, often with little or no modification in spelling or pronunciation.
Loan-Words: Types
There are two types of loan words:
- Foreign words with the same spelling: a word is borrowed from a foreign language and its orthography stays the same.
\Umbrella\ from (Italian) to (English)
- Foreign words with different spelling: In this case the orthography of the word changes in the target language.
Tip
Other languages like French borrow English words as well, like 'stress' or 'cool'.
What Is Calque?
A calque is a word or phrase in one language that is formed by directly translating the meaning or structure of a word or phrase from another language. Calques are also known as loan translations.
Calque: Types
- Phraseological calque: when idiomatic phrases or sets of expressions are translated word by word.
In this example, ça = it, va = goes, sans = without, dire = saying
- Syntactic calque: Syntactic or structural calque is the product of an inexact connection between the elements of a sentence or phrase.
in order to =
to find guilty =
Here, a third language is made which could be called 'Spanglish'.
- Semantic calque: Additional meanings of the words in the source language are transferred to the word in the target language, with the same primary meaning.
Biergarten (German) =
Here, the concept of 'beer garden' is derived from German.
Computer mouse (English) =
Hot dog (English) =
Gratte-Ciel (French) =
Marché aux puces (French) =
- Phonological calque: When the pronunciation of a word is imitated in the other language.
radar (English) =
Here, this word literally means "to arrive (as fast) as thunder"
teflon (English) =
- Typographic calque: When typographical rules in the source language are transferred to the new language. For example, the rule of capital letters in English has started to enter into Spanish, as well as the use of italics for emphasis and certain uses of quotation marks.
She was just talking to her.
Here, we
My favorite magazine is New York Times.
As you can see, the name of newspapers and magazines must be written in italics.
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In linguistics, there are many ways for creating a new word. In this lesson, we will get to know all the word-formation processes in the English language.
Compounding and Blending
The act of making a new word using an old one is called derivation in English. And Compounding is creating words by combining two or more words. Let's learn!
Affixes
Affixes are like codes in a code language. With their help, you can decode the words in a language. Let's take a closer look at these codes!
Prefixes
Prefixes are a group of letters that are placed at the beginning of the base of a word to changes its meaning and/or parts of speech.
