Where did that word come from? How and Why Languages Borrow Words

Where did that word come from? A behind-the-scenes exploration into how and why languages borrow and lend words

Alexis Chin and Anna Serrichio

You don’t have to be a linguist to be able to identify certain well-known “borrowed” words—words that are adapted from one language into another. After all, who hasn’t enjoyed a tasty croissant for breakfast, been confused by a strangely familiar déjà vu experience, or gotten lost by accidentally driving down a cul-de-sac? In this piece we discuss why and how words enter one language from another.

Borrowing from French to English

French has a strong presence in English. Aside from the commonly known borrowings from French mentioned above, there are many more French words hiding in the English language, some of which may surprise you. Some examples include honesty (from the Old French onesté), advice (from the French word avis, or opinion, as in “a mon avis…”) and habit (from Old French habit, which is habitude in contemporary French)¹.

Historically, English began borrowing words from French in 1066 after the conquest of England². French became the language associated with nobility, and English became the language associated with commoners. This situation led to many French words being borrowed into English, in part because the French language was considered more prestigious. Power dynamics between speaker groups like this often play a role in the borrowing process. The process happens naturally, and bilinguals are often unconscious of the fact that they are bringing new words into the language, as well as the power dynamics that shape their language use.

The role of bilingualism

Bilinguals often have a stronger language and a weaker language. When words get borrowed, they often get borrowed from the stronger language³. But not all words become established borrowings, so how can we tell when a word is truly integrated into another language⁴?  For this we look to the speakers themselves: If use of the word is widespread and frequent, and if speakers generally accept the word as the label for a particular meaning, then we can consider it an official borrowing. Truly borrowed words will often replace the original word and take on the new language’s sounds and grammatical markings (e.g., croissant is pronounced very differently in American English as compared with Parisian French!)⁴.

Processes for word borrowing

One way that linguists have categorized the different ways words become integrated into a new language is in terms of “importation” and “substitution.” Importation occurs when speakers adopt the original word along with its meaning. One example of this the English word tortilla, which carries the original meaning and sounds (e.g., the ‘y’ sound written as “ll”) from Spanish. Substitution occurs when speakers borrow a word’s sounds and grammatical markers but change its meaning. For example, the German word for “skyscraper” comes from a translation of the word for “cloud” and “scraper”⁵.

Some reasons for borrowing

Why do words get borrowed? Sometimes borrowing happens because a language needs a label for something. For example, the German language contains the word “computer”, a relatively recent borrowing from English, since computers did not previously have a name in German.  Borrowing may also fill gaps in vocabulary that emerge when other word meanings change. For example, the Latin word for “animal” filled in the gap when the Old English word for “deer” shifted in meaning from referring to animals more generally to the specific type of animal we now know as “deer”⁶.

Social factors affecting borrowing

Word borrowing is a cultural phenomenon, and it is therefore shaped by certain social dynamics, such as the power dynamics between French and English discussed above². In modern times, English is widely used across the globe, which positions it as a source of borrowing for many languages. But speakers’ attitudes toward the language(s) may also affect the rate of borrowing⁵. For example, French speaking societies in Europe have demonstrated a strong resistance to the spread of English, and a reluctance to adopt its vocabulary.

Linguistic factors affecting borrowing

Characteristics of languages themselves may also influence borrowing. For example, languages that sound similar such as Dutch and German may borrow more from each other than languages that sound very different from each other⁹. The grammatical properties of a word may also determine whether it is likely to get borrowed. For example, words that can be classified as nouns (e.g., “computer”) and verbs (e.g., “to tweet”) are more likely to be borrowed than more functional words like determiners (e.g., “the”)⁶. Frequency of meaning also plays a role: words with meanings that tend to be commonly used, like ‘night’ tend to have a lower rate of borrowing than words with less frequently used meanings, like ‘to stab’¹⁰. Finally, words that refer to things that tend to vary by culture, such as clothing, tend to be borrowed more often than words with less cultural significance (e.g., words for body parts)¹¹.

Individuals’ impact on borrowing

Borrowing can also be affected by individual language learning trajectories, and proficiency in a language. When people acquiring a new language learn new words early in the learning process, they are less likely to try to borrow those words from their first language¹². At the same time, more proficient bilingual speakers have more knowledge of their foreign language to draw from and integrate into their conversation, and so they may contribute more borrowings⁴.

Summing up and looking forward

Word borrowing is one of the many phenomena contributing to a state of constant linguistic change—as linguist Dennis Preston likes to say, languages have a hard time “sitting still”. In this piece we discussed just a handful of the many factors shaping this constant movement. While it is natural to sometimes be resistant to change, we hope that by sharing insights from language science on how and why these changes happen, we can promote a welcoming attitude toward the natural diversity and innovation that emerges when people from different groups interact.

 

References

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3. Winford, D. (2010). Contact and borrowing. In R. Hickey (Ed.), The handbook of language contact. Malden, MA/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
4. Poplack, S., Sankoff, D., & Miller, C. (1988). The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation.
5. Hickey, R. (Ed.). (2020). The handbook of language contact. John Wiley & Sons.
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9. Franco, K., Geeraerts, D., Speelman, D., & Van Hout, R. (2019). Maps, meanings and loanwords: The interaction of geography and semantics in lexical borrowing. Journal of Linguistic Geography, 7(1), 14-32.
10. Pagel, M., Atkinson, Q. D., & Meade, A. (2007). Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history. Nature, 449(7163), 717-720.
11. Tadmor, U. (2009). III. Loanwords in the world’s languages: Findings and results. In Loanwords in the World’s Languages (pp. 55-75). De Gruyter Mouton.
12. Monaghan, P. (2014). Age of acquisition predicts rate of lexical evolution. Cognition, 133(3), 530-534.