![]() ![]() ![]() It is part of the cultural history of English speakers that they havealways adopted loanwords from the languages of whatever cultures they havecome in contact with. and continued strongly well after the NormanConquest brought a large influx of Norman French to the language. For example, the Norse influence on English began alreadyin the 8th century A.D. The waves of borrowing during periodsof especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, andcan overlap. These periods coincide withtimes of major cultural contact between English speakers and thosespeaking other languages. Generally, the longer a borrowed wordhas been in the language, and the more frequently it is used, the moreit resembles the native words of the language.Įnglish has gone through many periods in which large numbers of wordsfrom a particular language were borrowed. In time,people in the borrowing community do not perceive the word as a loanword at all. (It should be noted that not all foreign words do become loanwords if they fall out of usebefore they become widespread, they do not reach the loanword stage.)Ĭonventionalization is a gradual process in which a word progressivelypermeates a larger and larger speech community, becoming part of evermore people's linguistic repetoire.As part of its becoming more familiar to more people,a newly borrowed word gradually adopts sound and other characteristicsof the borrowing language as speakers who do not know the sourcelanguage accommodate it to their own linguistic systems. At this point we call it a borrowing or loanword. The new word becomes conventionalized: part of the conventional ways of speaking inthe borrowing language. However, in time more speakers can become familiar with a new foreignword or expression.The community of users of this word cangrow to the point where even people who know little or nothing of thesource language understand, and even use, the novel wordthemselves. There are many foreign wordsand phrases used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and Fahrvergnuegen (German). At this stage, whenmost speakers do not know the word and if they hear it think it isfrom another language, the word can be called a foreign word. Those who first use the new word might use it at first only withspeakers of the source language who know the word, but at some pointthey come to use the word with those to whom the word was notpreviously known.To these speakers the word may sound 'foreign'. Presumably the very firstspeakers who used the word in English knew at least some French andheard the word used by French speakers, in a French-speaking context. If they are bilingual in the sourcelanguage, which is often the case, they might pronounce the words thesame or similar to the way they are pronounced in the source language.For example, English speakers adopted the word garage fromFrench, at first with a pronunciation nearer to the Frenchpronunciation than is now usually found. ![]() They (oftenconsciously) adopt the new word whenspeaking the borrowing language, because it most exactly fits the ideathey are trying to express. Generally, somespeakers of the borrowing language know the source language too, or atleast enough of it to utilize the relevant word. The actual process of borrowing is complex and involves many usageevents (i.e. Few Germanic words, onthe other hand, passed into Latin. adopted numerous loanwords from Latin as theyadopted new products via trade with the Romans. For example, the Germanic tribes in the first fewcenturies A.D. In this case the source languagecommunity has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth thatmakes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowinglanguage community. Borrowing of words can go in both directions between thetwo languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry, such that more wordsgo from one side to the other. The words simply come to be used by a speechcommunity that speaks a different language from the one these wordsoriginated in.īorrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two languagecommunities. There is no transfer fromone language to another, and no "returning" words tothe source language. "Loan" and"borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literallending process. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakersadopting wordsfrom a source language into their native language. A loanword can also be called a borrowing. Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language froma different language (the source language). Borrowed Words Major Periods of Borrowing ![]()
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