8 replies to this topic

[An0nymous]

I searched but couldn't find anything useful about this. Linguistically, are loanwords natural and healthy? Are they considered "artificial?" Any information is appreciated.

Edited by An0nymous, 16 March 2011 - 05:39 PM.

[mariusj]

I am not a linguist, but I can't imagine them been bad.

For example, 舶來品 is a loan word, so is 衛生, and I think these often offer something new and fresh, and does not require much understanding of culture to guess what these words means.

Some other words require more educations. 馬鹿 is a word used in Japanese, at first glance, you would be confused, but if you are studied in Chinese history, you would immediately [or after some thinking] thought of Emperor Er Shi and the story of of pointing at a deer and calling it a horse. Which you could then relate the word 馬鹿 and its meaning.

Linguistically, I think a 'bad' thing would be something that are ambiguous [not syntax] and break from logic, while most loan words are direct and logical. So I think they are in general healthy.

[Karakhan]

well, language, like identity and culture, is fluid and always changing. While some may think loan words as being those vocabulary imported from English.. its something that has gone for a very long time and in many languages.. Its just that the scale is a bit larger. In the past you'll have many loan words that come from neighboring languages, but now they can come from much further abroad.

examples: Xibe (a dialect of Manchurian) has many loan words from Kazakh, Uighur, and Mandarin. Uighur has loan words from Russian and ALOT from Persian. the influence of Chinese vocabulary in many non-Sinitic language is another example (Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc)

[Yizheng]

There is no reason why they should not be healthy, in any case, loan words are simply inevitable, because like Karakhan rightly says, language is always changing and evolving, and it has to of course, to reflect the changing culture and world around us and its different interactions.
Some people say too many languages are getting too many loan words from English, but English itself is full of loan words from other languages picked up over the centuries.
It would be hard to find a language that does not have many loan words I think.
It is true that Korean and Japanese, say, are full of Chinese loan words, but they have become so natural over time, they do not have the same feeling as new loan words from English. It's same in Russian, there are old loan words from Turkish and Tatar, say, but most people wouldn;t even think of that as loan words, then there are plenty from French, Dutch and German, but people are used to those too, and it is more the recent English ones that still sound a bit strange sometimes. Some of them might give way to Russian equivalents, and others will stay in the language and become 'russified'.
Turkish, say, has many loan words from Arabic, Persian, and later from French too, but they have all become normal part of the language. Persian itself is full of Arabic loan words. Hindi is built on a base of Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic words, and of course has many English loan words too, a real mix of languages all in one. All of the central Asian countries have incorporated many Russian loan words in their languages.
I remember, when studying Korean (not very successfully) that there were loan words that had come through Japanese, which originally took them from German! So, really, language is not some kind of set of separate ponds, but a series of interconnected lakes that are constantly flowing into each other and feeding each other with new things.
I admit I find that sometimes excessive use of loan words is just lazy or an image thing to look trendy and modern, but on the whole, I think it's just a normal process and perfectly healthy.

[An0nymous]

Thanks i think learned a lot but here's a thought. First, language A borrowed loanwords with vowels or consonants it originally didn't have. Then language A was continually influenced by language B and more words with new sounds were borrowed to A. Then after a century of this process, will the new vowels/consonant fuse with language A and become a part of the language?

Edited by An0nymous, 18 March 2011 - 12:36 PM.

[bloodmerchant]

In a way, many meanings of loanwords have changed years after the initial borrowing. So it could be a good thing, as there are some concepts a language can't innovate on their own, for example foreign concepts in English language. It's inevitable.

[SNK_1408]

Actually loan words doesn't change, just accent/pronunciation.
I think OP is asking if loan words effect native words/language?
Yes it does and while it can be healthy for bridging the two different languages closer but not healthy for native words/language.

Koreans would sound very differently if they've used native words only, which also mean it would have preserved local language better.
Koreans today still use 40% of its vocabulary with loan words from Hanja (aka Chinese characters), it used to be 70% about 100 years ago then it got gradually reduced to 60% because of other foreign loan words in mid 1960s. However reduction of Chinese loan words didn't really help to preserve more native Korean words because it simply got replaced by English/European loan words.

Example;
Ice cream
Korean = 아이스크림, pronounce as I-ss-Cream, it's loan word.
Native Korean = 어름구술, pronounce as Eoruemguseul

School
Korean = 학교, pronounce as Hakgyo, it's Chinese loan word.
Native Korean = 베우는곧, pronounce as Baeuneungoet

Because modern Koreans completely forgotten getting used to native words, 60~70% of Korean words are depended on loan words.
This can be translate into unhealthy for preserving native language.

[qrasy]

Actually loan words doesn't change, just accent/pronunciation.

For some terms, not only the pronunciations; the meanings do change as well.
Some of them you can treat as mis-translation, though, like Japanese "Shuuto" - meaning "goal" even though it was derived from English "shoot".
Sanskrit - Saṃsāra "continuous flow" => Indonesian Sengsara "to be in a suffering" - the meaning shifted because it's often used in Buddhism.
Indian "roti" and Indonesian "roti" refer to different types of bread (because of influence of European types of bread to Indonesians).

Ice cream
Korean = 아이스크림, pronounce as I-ss-Cream, it's loan word.
Native Korean = 어름구술, pronounce as Eoruemguseul

Just minor correction, I think you typed wrong and I can't find anything about "어름구술"
Ice = 얼음 Eoreum
and North Korean: 얼음보숭이 Eoreum Bosungi

I can't find anything about Eoreumguseul.

Native Korean = 베우는곧, pronounce as Baeuneungoet

I think it should be spelled as 배우는 곳 .

[SNK_1408]

.
Just minor correction, I think you typed wrong and I can't find anything about "어름구술"
Ice = 얼음 Eoreum
and North Korean: 얼음보숭이 Eoreum Bosungi

I can't find anything about Eoreumguseul.
I think it should be spelled as 배우는 곳 .

You're right, that was my typo.