# Are some languages intrinsically more prone to loanwords?



## Dymn

I have noticed many people (specially natives) like to think of English as a kind of "Frankenstein" that constantly takes little pieces out of all languages, and so English would be something like the ultimate truly global language.

But I hadn't yet read someone who not only believes this is true, but also thinks it is due to the very nature of the English language, much more isolating than the languages of its surroundings.

That kept me thinking. My initial reaction was that it was completely false, borrowings happen due to cultural, historical factors (both exposure to a language and an interest in its culture). 

But maybe it has some sense, since words are better adaptable and you don't need to worry about conjugations or declensions? Perhaps this is the idea behind it.

Which brings me to phonotactics, since two of the languages with very simple phonotactics that may have problems with English words seem to make extensive use of Anglicisms: Italian and, especially, Japanese. So this might contradict the idea that intrinsic characteristics affect the tendency to adopt loanwords.

Anyway, what do you think? Is there something purely linguistic (not sociolinguistic) that may ease or hinder the adoption of loanwords?

Thanks


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## Nino83

I think these linguistic factors could favour the acquisition of loanwords: 
1) the languages are more or less related
2) the languages have a more or less similar syllable structure (monosyllabic vs. polysyllabic)
3) the writing system

Italian and English are Indo-European languages, a consistent part of the English vocabulary is of Latin/Romance origin, they have similar sylable structures and the same writing system (an alphabet, the same alphabet).
Many English loanwords derive from Latin roots, so we have _computer_ from _computare_ (we could use _computatore_, like Spanish and Portuguese speakers do, we have also _elaboratore_ or _calcolatore_, but _computer_ is a so called _prestito di ritorno_), _camera_ (for _fotocamera, macchina fotografica_), _audience_, _bipartisan, card, center, competitor, deregulation, fashion, location, mission, on line, politically correct, sexy, target, test_ and many other terms.

Russian is a bit less related to English, but it is polysyllabic and has an alphabet, so you can find words like компьютер (computer) and имейл (mail), but there is also the alternative электронная почта, from Greek ηλεκτρονικός, ilektronikós and from Italian _posta_, via Polish _poczta_ (we use both _email, mail_ or _posta elettronica_).

Japanese is not related but it is a polysyllabic language and it has an alphabet (syllabaries), so you can find コンピューター konpyūtā (computer) and メール mēru (mail).

Chinese is not related, it is monosyllabic and doesn't have an alphabet, so there are 電腦 diànnǎo (electric brain) for computer and 電子郵件 diànzǐ yóujiàn (electronic item of post) for email.

The problems are that 1) people are used to the fact that every syllable has a specific meaning 2) when you try to write foreign words with Chinese character according to their phonetic sounds, you've a string of characters with their own meanings that together don't mean anything.

In Orthographic Constraints on the Integration of English Loan words in Mandarin Chinese  Feiyang Tian says:


> A question Chinese people frequently ask when hearing an unfamiliar word is: “which character do you refer to?” Therefore, when an English word, with its original sound and meaning, enters into Chinese, it, first of all, has to be processed in Chinese people’s mind, analyzed as meaningful characters and then decided whether it can be accepted or not. When it turns out to be that the combination of the several characters that make up an English word does not make any sense in Chinese, the word will most probably be replaced by a semantic loan or loan translation or simply be discarded.





> Some English words have two versions of Chinese translation, one of them transliteration while the other loan translation or semantic loan. When these words are first borrowed, they take the form of transliteration, after a period of time, this transliterated version is replaced by a semantic loan, and in between, there is a period when people just hesitate as to which version of the words they should use.



The Chinese were often the donor, so they didn't need to develop an alphabet but today this writing system, in the absence of an alphabet for loanwords, is discouraging the process of acquiring loanwords and the vast majority of these words is replaced by native compounds.


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## Hulalessar

The typology of the langage doing the borrowing has nothing to do with it. It is sociolinguistic. Borrowing happens when there is contact between two languages. It happens despite the rulings of academies and the diktats of government.

Phonotactics does not seem to prevent borrowing. The borrowing language just adapts the word to its phonology. When it comes to consonant clusters, in the case of Italian some consonants will be omitted and in the case of Japanese vowels will be inserted.


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## Red Arrow

English might borrow a lot from other languages, but they never borrow any sounds.

In Standard Dutch, [y], [ɛ:], [ʒ], [g] and nasal vowels don't appear in native vocabulary, but they do appear in loanwords. Granted, Dutchmen tend to mispronounce nasal vowels and [ʒ], while [g] is often mispronounced in Flanders, but overall we do our best to pronounce foreign words more or less correctly.

I cannot imagine English speakers pronouncing [y] correctly while speaking English


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## Nino83

Red Arrow :D said:


> I cannot imagine English speakers pronouncing [y] correctly while speaking English


Maybe some young Londoners could (Adele, Lily Allen, for example )


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## Dymn

Nino83 said:


> Many English loanwords derive from Latin roots, so we have _computer_ from _computare_ (we could use _computatore_, like Spanish and Portuguese speakers do, we have also _elaboratore_ or _calcolatore_, but _computer_ is a so called _prestito di ritorno_), _camera_ (for _fotocamera, macchina fotografica_), _audience_, _bipartisan, card, center, competitor, deregulation, fashion, location, mission, on line, politically correct, sexy, target, test_ and many other terms.


Some of these confuse me. Do you really use them "raw", without any adaptation? You say e.g. _politically correct _and not _politicamente corretto_? Or _audience_, _deregulation, location_...?

Your explanation overall is interesting, thanks. I guess Chinese nature might be in general difficult for loanwords to take root, but I still think that China being like "a world in itself" might be a better reason. I also think the Taiwanese have a higher tendency to use borrowings.


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## M Mira

Dymn said:


> I also think the Taiwanese have a higher tendency to use borrowings.


This is probably true. In Table 3 provided, only half of them hold true in Taiwan, and some of the two forms means different things or have different nuances and are not fully exchangeable.


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## Nino83

Dymn said:


> Do you really use them "raw", without any adaptation?


Many of these terms are in competition with Italian ones. For example in marketing words like _audience, competitor, fashion, mission, target_ are used more often (they're part of the technical language), but you can also use _pubblico (di riferimento), competitori, moda, scopo, segmento (di mercato)_. Each of these words have an Italian counterpart which is used in common speech, but in technical/scientific wiriting you can also find words like _audience_ or _target_.


Dymn said:


> I guess Chinese nature might be in general difficult for loanwords to take root, but I still think that China being like "a world in itself" might be a better reason.


Yes, I think so.
There is nothing wrong in loanwords. The spreading of products, ideas through the Silk Road has been one of the reasons of the cultural and economic developement of Europe and Asia, but it seems that the Chinese think that loanwords are not a good thing.
Latin borrowed from Greek and other languages (Arabic, Persian, Germanic languages), then other languages in Europe borrowed from Latin and now we're borrowing from English.
The Chinese orthography is not well fitted for loanwords, which require, at least, the existence of an alphabet. The Chinese are very proud of their writing system (it is one of the more ancient ones, with a very long history) but it seems they think they don't need and can manage without loanwords. In this aspect, I think, the cultural/political part, as you and Hulalessar say, plays a big role.


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## Dymn

Well, I wasn't saying the Chinese are against loanwords, just that because of their cultural isolation (or at least that's my perception), they don't need or use many of them, and as you say the structure of the language also seems to be an effective barrier.


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## Nino83

But I think that the cultural isolation is the result (not the cause) of a particular political/cultural line and there is a basic idea that Mandarin is self-sufficient. 
Theorically every language can be self-sufficient (every language can use compounds, derivational affixes and so on), so the linguistic "purism" is often the result of political/cultural decisions.


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## Red Arrow

I want to correct myself. Dutch does have some words with [y], such as 'huur', 'stuur' and 'stuurs'.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Nino83 said:


> Chinese is not related, it is monosyllabic and doesn't have an alphabet, so there are 電腦 diànnǎo (electric brain) for computer and 電子郵件 diànzǐ yóujiàn (electronic item of post) for email.
> 
> The problems are that 1) people are used to the fact that every syllable has a specific meaning 2) when you try to write foreign words with Chinese character according to their phonetic sounds, you've a string of characters with their own meanings that together don't mean anything.
> 
> In Orthographic Constraints on the Integration of English Loan words in Mandarin Chinese  Feiyang Tian says:
> 
> 
> 
> The Chinese were often the donor, so they didn't need to develop an alphabet but today this writing system, in the absence of an alphabet for loanwords, is discouraging the process of acquiring loanwords and the vast majority of these words is replaced by native compounds.



This is all very nice, but it does not take into account the different behaviours of formal vs. colloquial language. E. g. there are also colloquial forms like yimeir for "e-mail" - 伊妹儿, 3rd-person-pronoun - little sister - largely phonetically used character which may mean "son".

There are also formal loans from times of Chinese-Soviet friendship, like bulaji (from Russian платье) meaning "dress", but which uses some characters that, put together, don't make any sense at all (unfortunately mdbg.net does not know this word, so I cannot write it out in Chinese characters because I don't remember them).

Today, formal Chinese goes for semantic adaptations, while colloquial Chinese rather goes for phonetic renditions.

The thesis that China today is culturally isolated is not true any more, at least in the big cities young people with academic training have perfect command of English and some also of other foreign languages.
In past, China had to adopt cultural and linguistic concepts related to Buddhism and it also had to put up with various invaders.

However, in Chinese loan translations or own concepts are in general preferable to phonetic loans due to two reasons
1) the extremely limited repertory of syllables combined with the general shortness of Chinese words: typically, one-character words in Classical Chinese and two-character words in contemporary Chinese.
2) the nature of Chinese characters that contain only limited and rather vague information about the character's pronunciation, putting enphasis on the character's meaning.

This may change within some centuries, given that today Chinese already uses some characters as mainly phonetic components (儿, typical of Northern China and especially Beijing) and that three-character words may become the standard. This is, however, but a long-term perspective.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Red Arrow :D said:


> I want to correct myself. Dutch does have some words with [y], such as 'huur', 'stuur' and 'stuurs'.



How do you read word with ui? In German there is a city that goes by the name of Duisburg, where ui is pronounced like a long [y].


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## Red Arrow

In Dutch, long [y] sound changed to [œy̑] in every position except before R. In some dialects, [y] can still be heard.

*English - German - Dutch - Swedish*
mouse - Maus - muis - mus
house - Haus - huis - hus
out - aus - uit - ut
spout - (Spritze) - spuit - sputa

So Duisburg would be written "Döüsbürch" in German  (with short ö)


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## Hans Molenslag

Red Arrow :D said:


> In Dutch, long [y] sound changed to [œy̑] in every position except before R


Actually, the [y] sound not only occurs before [r] but also in final position and before other consonants, e.g. _u, uw, nu, duwen, kluwen, luw, beduusd, fuut, kluut, spugen_. These words are far less numerous, but some of them are frequently used.


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## Red Arrow

You are completely right. Turns out I am not very good at finding words with [y].


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