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Loanwords
Eating lunch in a working man's restaurant in Hong Kong I hear mostly Cantonese but with occassional English words, "passion," for example. Borrowed words or loanwords surely tell us something important about ideas or concepts that the first language lacks. Most loanwords are for things (e.g. mouse for a computer device), it's pretty easy to explain the adoption of such words. But what about words for which the thing has always existed but not the word? Chinese speakers tell me that there is a word for love but passion is more difficult to translate.
What are some of the major conceptual loanwords? What do loanwords tell us about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? What loanwords does English need? There appears to be a large literature in linguistics on the adoption and evolution of loanwords but less on the cultural significance of loanwords. Comments?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on June 28, 2008 at 08:54 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
"What loanwords does English need?"
Well, we all know that French is lacking in one or two. For example, as we've been told, they have no word for "entrepreneur".
On the more basic subject of loanwords, you can quite neatly track the globalisation of metallurgy and chemistry by looking at the roots words for the elements. Iron and copper, for example, have different root words in most languages (for example, Russian, zhelezhnyi and medh respectively although I wouldn't trust my spelling) while those metals discovered in more modern times (tantalum, the rare earths etc) use the same roots in all languages.
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Jun 28, 2008 9:13:52 AM
To some extent it's true: the fact that English had to borrow Schadenfreude from German perhaps tells us something about Germans. But often words are borrowed just to be fashionable or snobbish: Japanese already had a perfectly good word for milk before they borrowed English miruku.
The fact that one language may have had a word for "privacy" before another language did probably simply reflects the fact that privacy is a luxury, which a more technologically advanced society can afford sooner than a poorer society. "Passion" probably falls into this same category, because marrying for romantic love rather than for practical reasons is also a luxury. So if one language had to borrow the word from another, this tells us less about cultural differences than about historically uneven technological and economic progress.
On the other hand, the fact that English has never had a word corresponding to the Russian авоська (avoska, just-in-case string bag) tells us more about one of the 20th century's more tragic failed experiments than about the Russian character. On the other hand, the fact that Russian has the word собутыльник (sobutilnik, someone you share a bottle with) probably does tell us something about the Russian character :)
Posted by: at Jun 28, 2008 9:14:50 AM
In italian there is no word for "politically correct". So they use the english term. I think that is very telling of italian society.
Posted by: pontus at Jun 28, 2008 9:21:29 AM
This is off-topic, but once upon a time, some coworkers in Toronto were talking to each other in Cantonese at lunchtime, and the English word "mortgage" kept coming up. I couldn't help but notice it, since it stood out in the otherwise incomprehensible conversational flow.
During a lull in the conversation, I turned to them and asked, "So, you guys are thinking about getting a mortgage?". Their jaws dropped: "You understand Cantonese???"
Posted by: at Jun 28, 2008 9:26:31 AM
English desperately needs to borrow the word "doch" from German. It's meaning is a bit hard to define, but basically it's the easiest way to tell someone they're wrong or to contradict someone. You can only do it when they're making a negative assumption. "You didn't go to the play?" "Doch." = I did. Or, more importantly, "That isn't true!' "Doch."= Yes it is and you are WRONG!
There is no way to counteract the doch. I've tried. It's an argument ender.
Posted by: Rochelle at Jun 28, 2008 9:28:17 AM
What I miss most in any language is the Italian diminutive. "arabi", "arabozzi"; "svizzeri", "svizzerotti" and so on.
Posted by: Hans Suter at Jun 28, 2008 9:36:45 AM
Foreign words can outcompete the native word for the concept if the native word is taboo or just unfashionable. Or they can coexist and eventually acquire different shades of meaning. If English adopted so much vocabulary from Norman French due to lexical gaps in Old English, it would be amazing that the Anglo-Saxons managed to communicate at all.
Posted by: Cyrus at Jun 28, 2008 9:41:47 AM
Posted by: MattF at Jun 28, 2008 10:05:59 AM
Obviously "Faux pas" and "lingua franca" are major conceptual loanwords in English. The first of which is quite surprising, given the attention to manners of the English and American upper classes. The second of which.... well, perhaps it only outshone "common language" because it's more fun to say.
Posted by: at Jun 28, 2008 10:17:31 AM
While locals have borrowed words (e.g., "cute" and "cool") for which there aren't well-known Cantonese equivalents, they also use English for words like "friend" and "feel/feeling" for which there are. "Date" is rather interesting too. It's used as a term for "hanging out," but there's a Cantonese term for when you're actually going out with someone. Interestingly, "mouse", "keyboard" and "virus" haven't been translated (AFAIK), but "website", "computer" and the "internet" have been. I'm not even going to try and explain "add oil," which is now the official Olympic cheer. There's also widespread usage and understanding of certain simple Japanese terms, possibly related to the spread of anime, manga and hentai.
On the flip-side, there are Cantonese terms for which I haven't been able to find English equivalents. If I can remember what they are, I'll post again.
Enjoy the rest of your time here!
Posted by: Sundeep at Jun 28, 2008 10:18:45 AM
Words spread among languages for a variety of reasons. The sweeping generalization that these changes "tell us something important about ideas or concepts that the first language lacks" is a bit misleading. For instance, Old English already had a word for a residential dwelling (house) but adopted an additional word (mansion) through contact with the Normans. In French, "maison" is just any old house. The transfer between languages had more to do with prestige than missing concepts.
The same principle should hold true between English and Chinese i.e. Chinese speakers are using English loanwords to make their speech sound more exotic or cosmopolitan. The Chinese can certainly express "passion" within Mandarin, a language with far deeper roots than English. There are in fact many choices about how to express passion, one of which happens to be the English. As an economist, maybe it would be better to ask what costs and benefits drive this word choice at the margin, and thus drive language change.
Posted by: J.K. at Jun 28, 2008 10:42:39 AM
The Danes have "hygge" which means the comfortable and pleasant feeling of being together with friends and/or family. They don't have "please" which leads to some elaborate substitutes that I'm not qualified to explain.
Posted by: john schafer at Jun 28, 2008 10:43:52 AM
A good number of the words for Western scientific and philosophical concepts in Chinese were translated from English and German into Japanese using earlier Chinese terms with slightly different meanings. These terms then came back into Chinese in the early 20th century with their new meanings. E.g. 民主 minzhu, for "democracy" and 科學 kexue for "science." The Japanese, of course, are also kings of the transliteration.
Posted by: wugong at Jun 28, 2008 10:46:51 AM
"What loanwords does English need?"
From Español: picante and caliente. Or spicy hot and temperature hot.
Posted by: Dave Barnes at Jun 28, 2008 10:49:28 AM
Also interesting to note is the English words that Chinese living in an English speaking country often use even when speaking Chinese to each other. One of the oddest is "care" as a verb. I've often heard the phrase "我不care" ("I don't care") in the US among native Chinese speakers.
Of course native English speakers living in China do the same thing with certain words. I've found that 厲害 lihai, which means a range from "intense" to "formidable" and so forth (and I've heard applied to everything from a teacher's demeanor in class to the size of a man's penis), is a term often used when English speakers in China who know Chinese are speaking English to each other.
Posted by: wugong at Jun 28, 2008 11:04:19 AM
"What loanwords does English need?"
One that stuck with me from a year in Japan is 'natsukashii.' It's a popular exclamation of an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia, having been reminded of something from your past. I didn't realize it was a fundamental emotion until I had a word for it.
Posted by: Scott at Jun 28, 2008 11:12:47 AM
"Te Quiero", in Spanish. There is an enormous difference between "querer" and "amar", whereas in English you only have "love." For example, one would never say "te amo" to a family member.
In my experience, the closest thing to "te quiero" in english is "I love you", whereas the closest thing to "te amo" is "I'm IN love with you." Still, it's fairly sloppy.
Posted by: Linkt at Jun 28, 2008 11:21:24 AM
The adoption and spread of "OK" amazes me.
My mother always said the there is no go English word for simpatico.
I like "hay" in Spanish not because we do have word for it but because the contraction "there's" is often used for both "there is" and "there are" which grates on me.
Posted by: Floccina at Jun 28, 2008 11:34:32 AM
Russian apparently lacks lots of basic concepts that are familiar to English speakers. Thus there is no easy way to say "enjoy" or "fun".
Posted by: Andy at Jun 28, 2008 12:21:39 PM
The concepts often are present, but not a single word embodies it in a language. Take the word mentioned above, schadenfreude, as an example. The concept has, no doubt, a long history in English speaking culture, but the culture never settled on a single word to name it until it borrowed the German.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jun 28, 2008 12:24:56 PM
The Turkmen language uses one word, ajy, to cover all strong flavors except for sweet and salty -- bitter, minty, spicy hot, sour -- all ajy. This from a people sitting on a major hub of the silk road! (It's also interesting that after 70 years in the Soviet Union, they have borrowed Russian words for everything related to government, business, and technology, but not flavor).
On a related note, I wonder if there are languages that have more nuanced terms for smell than English, and if so, why don't we borrow them? It seems that when describing smells we have little to rely on other than simile.
Posted by: Ben Graham at Jun 28, 2008 12:45:29 PM
Oh, I always liked the latin dimunitive of ending words with "-ino" (italian) or "-ito/inho" (spanish/portugese). Small elephant is simply elephantino. I think it's cute. (works well for nick name too; little ronaldo=ronaldinho, lil' kim = kimino ... or maybe not ;))
Posted by: pontus at Jun 28, 2008 12:46:54 PM
"What loanwords does English need?"
From Swedish: Lagom. Meaning "just the right amount". Maye it could be translated as "average" or "sufficient", but these words suggest some degree of abstinence, scarcity, or failure, while "Lagom" carries the connotation of perfection or appropriateness.
You've already loaned words like "ombudsman" and "smorgasbord" from Swedish, by the way :)
Posted by: jakob at Jun 28, 2008 12:53:27 PM
English needs an equivalent to the Portuguese word saudade.
Posted by: Michael A. Cleverly at Jun 28, 2008 12:58:30 PM
I like the picante/caliente distinction, and I've noticed that since getting reasonably familiar with Spanish, I now always use "spicy" instead of using "hot," and my kids seem to be picking up the same usage.
Although it's not a word, exactly, being able to put things in the subjunctive is something else we've mostly lost in contemporary English, and which communicates something useful.
A lot of languages use the same word for security against attackers (good locks) and safety against disasters (good smoke detectors). Similarly, English uses "security" to mean both actual resistance to attack, and the feeling of being protected from attack--it would be nice to have separate words for those two.
Posted by: albatross at Jun 28, 2008 1:05:24 PM
