Loan 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!
Here, we are going to learn what loan words and calque are and how we can distinguish them.
What Is Loan Word?
Types of Loan-Words
loan words are those foreign words that one language borrows from another without changing their meaning. There are two types of loan words and we are going to clarify each of them.
- Foreign words with the same spelling: a borrowed word of a foreign language that its orthography stays the same.
\Umbrella\ from (Italian) to (English)
- Foreign words with different spelling: The orthography of the word changes in the target language.
Tip
In other languages like French, English words are used as well, like 'stress', 'cool.'
What Is Calque?
Loan-translation or calque is used when a word is translated word by word into another language. Remember that calque is a semantic or syntactic translation and it does not have phonetic matching.
Types of Calque
- Phraseological calque: when idiomatic phrases or sets of expressions have been 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 language.
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 down in italics.
Comments
