LOAN WORDS

Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language (the source
language). A loanword can also be called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the
process of speakers adopting words from a source language into their native language. "Loan" and
"borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer
from one language to another, and no "returning" words to the source language.
English is a heavy borrower and borrowed words constitute 80% of the modern English vocabulary.
 Many of the English words we speak today are derived from other languages. They are called
loanwords or borrowings. Wikipedia has lists of English words derived from many other
languages.
LEXICAL BORROWING
Many terms are borrowed or coined to cover the lexical gaps which have arisen as a result of
technological developments, for instance the word television derives from Greek tele ‘far’ + Latin
visio ‘thing seen’
 According to Haugen (1950), there are five different types of lexical borrowing:
 Loanword: the word and the meaning are borrowed, e.g. hummus (or humous)
 Loan-translation: literal word-for-word translation of both parts of the lending compound, e.g. superman
derives from the German ‘Übermensch’
 Loan-rendition: the translation vaguely captures the original meaning: refrigerator is translated as ‘ice-box’ in
Chinese
 Loan-blend: one part of the compound is borrowed, the other one translated
 Semantic loan: only the meaning is borrowed, not the word
In Middle English over 10,000 French loan words arrived in two stages.
Before 1250 mainly technical words were borrowed from Norman French: legal (government,
prison, court)
 religious (clergy, abbot, sacrament)
 military (army, soldier, sergeant)
 miscellaneous (pork, beef, mutton)

And after 1250 mainly cultural terms were acquired from Parisian French: fashion (fashion,
dress, coat)
 domestic settings (curtain, towel, blanket)
 social life (leisure, dance, music)
 literature (poet, prose, romance)
In Early Modern English the largest expansion of vocabulary was through word-formation
processes and borrowing:
 mainly from Latin (perfect, logic)
 French (elegant, decision)
 Greek (theology, trilogy)
 Italian (opera, balcony)
 Spanish and Portuguese (alcohol, alligator).
ENGLISH HAS BEEN ADDING THOUSANDS OF
WORDS TO ITS LEXICON BY ACQUIRING NEW
WORDS FROM OTHER, OFTEN UNRELATED,
LANGUAGE
 risotto and pizza comes from Italian
 vodka from Russian
 Goulash from Hungarian
 ketchup from Chinese
 Babushka (from Russian) In Russian, this word means “grandmother,” but in English it
usually refers to a scarf or head covering that you might imagine an old Russian woman
wearing
 Paparazzi (from Italian)“Paparazzi” is actually the plural form of the Italian word paparazzo.
It’s used in English to describe a photographer or a group of photographers who take pictures
of celebrities.