#Loanword

[dracofeb]

Calque & Loanword

Found this. Kind of want to share.

[origami10]

"Anime" got given back! Animation -> アニメーション→アニメ→ Anime

I love the term “loanwords” because it implies that you intend to give them back.

[antimomophobic]

calque being a loanword and loanword being a calque is something that just has to be mentioned more

[gammija]

biggest dumb pet peeve is when an anglophone reposts some text or video that's technically not in english but still uses a ton of english loanwords in addition to being a germanic or roman language, and captions it like 'wow truly this post transcends language boundaries, i was able to understand almost all of this' yeah the parts you understood were in english buddy

[montydragon]

Family portrait of an agrarian bugferret household, including their unofficially adopted avian (Rooturoo). By bugferret standards, the family is both small and strangely put together. More details under the cut!

This family manages a large farm in an avian/bugferret space station city. The current household makeup is relatively new. The oldest, Tanyirr, Swiitah, and Lyooi, are the last of the 'old guard'. The most recent member is Kiiwah, a spacer adopted after being divorced from a different family.

All the names displayed here are their nicknames given by Rooturoo. Most refer to avian homeplanet foods. The family in general speaks BFL-2 and Tiiliitian sign, so Rooturoo and Kiiwah are the only ones who speak vocal languages with any frequency.

Rooturoo occupies a very unusual space in the family. The bugferrets already ran a large portion of the avian agriculture in the city due to a governing quirk. Rooturoo originally helped out with the avian crops, being both suited to the ambient temperatures and an expert in xenobotany. Over time though... they became more than a colleague. They're now considered a member of the group.

The children are all very young. Their layer parents are Hshni, Oonruh, Uriimah, and Crriah (from oldest children to youngest). The rest of the ferrets are unrelated.

[critter-creature-or-beast]

By ssw-burlg at iNaturalist, CC-BY-NC

[hringum]

Loanwords in Finnish 🇫🇮

Many say that Finnish is a language that coins new words from already existing ones rather borrowing from other languages. But there are still loan words in the language nevertheless, especially lately with English dominance as the global language. 

Around 26.3 % of all finnish vocabulary is borrowed from other languages;

70.6 % Germanic (Swedish, Proto Germanic, Old Swedish, Old Norse, English, Low German)

14.4 % Balto-Slavic

15 % Other ( Proto-Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Saami, and unknown origin)

26.3 % is an above average score when it comes to the number of borrowed words. Other languages for comparison

Romanian 41.8 %

English 41 %

Japanese 34.9 %

Finnish 26.3 %

Dutch 19.1 %

Hawaiian 13.6 %

Mandarin Chinese 1.2 % 

🇫🇮 sänky (bed) ← source word Old Norse sæing (other cognates; 🇪🇪 🇸🇪 säng, 🇳🇴 🇩🇰 seng) 

🇫🇮 äiti (mother) ← source word Proto-Germanic aiþį̄ (other cognates; 🇪🇪 eit, 🇮🇸 eiða) 

🇫🇮 sielu (soul) ← source word Proto Germanic saiwalō (other cognates; 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 soul, 🇸🇪 själ, 🇮🇸 sál, 🇳🇴 sjel, 🇩🇰 sjæl, 🇩🇪 Seele, 🇳🇱 ziel)

🇫🇮 kirkko (church) ← source word Koine Greek κυριακὸν (kuriakòn) (other cognates; 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 church, 🇪🇪 kirik, 🇮🇸 kirkju, 🇸🇪 kyrka, 🇳🇴 🇩🇰 kirke, 🇩🇪 Kirche, 🇳🇱 kerk, 🇷🇺 ки́рха (kírxa), це́рковь (cérkovʹ), 🇵🇱 cerkiew)

🇫🇮 joulu (christmas), juhla (party, celebration) ← source word Proto Germanic jehwlą (other cognates; 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Yule, 🇪🇪 jõulud 🇮🇸 jól, 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇩🇰 jul, 🇩🇪 Jul 🇳🇱 joel)

🇫🇮 herra (sir) ← source word hērro (other cognates; 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 hoar 🇪🇪 härra, 🇮🇸 herra, 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇩🇰 herre, 🇩🇪 Herr, 🇳🇱 heer  

🇫🇮 kellari (basement) ← source word - cellārium (other cognates; 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 cellar, 🇪🇪 kelder, 🇮🇸 kjallara, 🇸🇪 källare, 🇳🇴 kjeller, 🇩🇰 kælder, 🇩🇪 Keller, 🇳🇱 kelder,  🇫🇷 cellier, 🇪🇸 cillero) 

🇫🇮 rengas (ring) ← source word Proto-Germanic hrengaz (other cognates; 🇮🇸 hringur, 🇫🇴 ringur, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ring. 🇩🇪 Ring, 🇳🇱 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇩🇰 ring, 🇫🇷 harangue, 🇮🇹 arengo)

🇫🇮 miekka (sword) ← source word (other cognates; 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 meak (scythe), 🇪🇪 mõõk, 🇮🇸 mækir, 🇷🇺 меч (mech), 🇵🇱 miecz)

Other non-onbious loan words I could find include; helvetti, kuningas, juusto, aukko, äyri, lyydi, huilata, tila, mursu, vesi, katu, porsas, hylly, kaupunki, peili, ranta, puhvi, peti, patja 

source; https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/118581152/220419_Emprunts_lexicaux_Finnois_Aix_Marseille_.pdf

[vaxxman]

whats your opinion on old man yaoi?

Personally, I call it oyaji BL

[skiplup]

i was curious what the joke in japanese was since it fit so well in english (”you said rock of the g-o-d-s, but did you mean rock of the d-o-g-s?”) only to find out it’s literally the same joke english wordplay and all LMAO

[ranahan]

i've been pondering how mando'a-as-first-language speakers might tend to parse [θ] and [ð]... we know <x> = <sh> thanks to ryan kaufmann (which i'd say must be canon enough since traviss didn't contradict it) and [f ~ p] and [z ~ s] from Traviss, (and maybe <vh> = [f] at least dialectally a la Vhett -> Fett, but I'd prefer to think that's more a matter of Basic speakers parsing [ɸ] as [f] than [ɸ ~ f] being widespread in mando'a) but I don't think we have any data on how they'd tend to parse [θ] and [ð]. I like the idea of th-fronting where [θ] becomes [ɸ] and [ð] becomes [v ~ ʋ] (Kiwi English is allegedly developing this phenomenon), but since mando'a phonotactics don't seem to allow [ɸ] outside of a syllable-initial position (of course since vhe- words are the only example we have of <vh> the data is a biiit limited, but if we assume it's true) I do wonder how likely mando'ade would be to parse, for example, the [θ] in "cloth" as [ɸ], or if they'd be more likely to parse it as [t] or [s]. Tho I do also like the th-fronting bc I wanna distance <vh> from <f> as much as possible :') Not a cipher! 🗞️

On the other hand I'm a bit charmed by [θ] -> [s] as well, mostly bc I associate it with the Askie pronunciation of ת‎, historically [θ] which has in different regions either remained as such or become [t] (Modern Israeli) or [s] (Askenazi). But then the lack of [z] for [ð] (since [s] and [z] are not readily differentiated among mando'ade) makes it less ideal imo. I mean ofc they could be mismatchy, it's not like [ð] and [θ:] were replaced with other sounds neatly and evenly in Finnish (and there's that variation across dialects, which of course would be a thing among mando'ade as well--) But yeah, [ð] could be, if not [v ~ ʋ], then [d] or even [ɾ] or [l]... for obvious reasons I find the idea of the [ɾ] realisation pretty charming :')

anyway, uh, thoughts?

(yes i am thinking abt this bc loan words mostly)

(also. while generally i prefer [f] -> [p], ~kevhe [or whatever final vowel would be best...] for caf is much nicer than kep, lol...)

I’m afraid your ask is going to be better thought out than my answer!

I did think about the same thing, then thought about the option of ð being loaned as dh in Mando’a, and then got hung up in determining what the heck Mando’a phonology even is, and what do the dh etc. spellings stand for. And then never really got back to loanwords.

But now that I’ve found an answer that satisfies me, I do have a whole bunch of things I’d like to loan to Mando’a actually, because I for one don’t buy that a language of an empire, itself a creole (if you subscribe to that headcanon), does not have many loanwords. You know that joke about English mugging other languages and riffling through their pockets for loose vocabulary? I think it would be more realistic for people to make similar jokes about Mando’a, and how Mandalorians plundered half of the galaxy and half of the dictionaries too. (Yes, this is the hill someone else will die on.)

Anyways, yes I do have thoughts. Sorry this is going to be very long and rambling because these are more of immediate thoughts rather than something I’ve formed a considered opinion on.

Like you, I’ve also noted that vh only occurs in syllable initial position in the Mando’a dictionary. But! There’s a Mandalorian world called Ceravh, which as far as I can tell comes from Traviss. I’d give that even odds of being Mando’a or being (perhaps a Mandalorianised version of) a native name of the colonised world, which could indicate that Mando’a could use syllable-final vh in loanwords at least.

But anyways, another option I have thought about is that a word-final φ could get loaned as v. Even if Mando’a doesn’t allow a syllable final φ, the voiced counterpart v is very common in that position. So e.g. caf > kav. Or heck, how about h? > kah. Idk how sensible h would be, it just popped into my mind as something that could sound similar and is allowed in the coda.

Another option of course is that Mando’a could insert extra vowels into loanwords, like e.g. te reo Māori which basically keeps all of the original sounds and adds vowels until the word conforms to te reo phonotactics. So e.g. caf > kavha or kevhe or whatever the vowels would be. There’s this quote, which has a different context, but be used as a precedent if you wanted? “Pronouncing terminal consonants varies in songs. They often become extra syllables. For examples, tor becomes to-rah and tang becomes tan-gah to maintain rhythm and meter.”

On the other hand, loanwords, especially old ones, could also be subject to Mando’a’s habit of contraction. Which tbh seems as much fanon as canon to me in that canon shows some contraction and elision (especially in compound words), but fanon has observed that pattern and taken it as a licence to go an extra mile. I kind of love that kind of an emergency and it’s what got me interested in Mando’a in the first place. I digress, but I’m trying to say faithfully borrowing every single sound is not necessarily the way I’d go for Mando’a. Maybe borrowing syllables as the closest equivalents would feel better? Idk, maybe I’ll try a couple of different approaches with some test sets of loanwords and see what happens.

I do generally like f > p, but… Idk, the results don’t always compel me? They don’t sound unlike Mando’a, but also not exactly like Mando’a either? I mean kav feels more like Mando’a than kap to me. Same for vhervhek vs perpek (although for obvious reasons, perpek does appeal as a curse). But on the other hand, fan > pan vs van vs vhan? Not much of a difference. And Fi > Pai, Felucia > Pelucya/Pelusha, even Falleen > Palin/Paliin do sound good to me. This is probably because while there are words that end in p (like kotep, taap), they are pretty rare. While words ending in v or beginning with a p are a dime in a dozen.

I agree that Vhett being spelled as Fett is a transliteration from Mando’a to Basic, and not necessarily indicative of how Mando’a L1 speakers would adapt loanwords from Basic to Mando’a.

Re: θ/ð, I’ve previously considered t/dʰ, but I like both s and th-fronting better! Those would be the closest fricatives, wouldn’t they.

Mando’a doesn’t seem to have /z/, which seems to be an allophone of /ts/ rather than /s/, if you go by Traviss’s recordings. Or maybe it’s an allophone of /s/, if you go by some comments. Heck, maybe it depends on the dialect. So perhaps you could go with s/ts, or level them both as s? I guess it would depend on whether z gets loaned as ts or s?

Or go with th-fronting (θ > ɸ, ð > v) in syllable initial positions, and for the coda, either voice the θ > v, or add an extra vowel after it, or allow φ in the coda for loanwords. I think that at least for dialects that realise <v> as [β], th-fronting sounds really close. I like it!

And since some Mando’a dialects seem to have [b ~ v] (or perhaps more likely [v ~ β], or maybe some dialect has /β/ which is heard as /b/ in some others…), after making the rounds in Mando’a dialects, a loan word might even end up with ð > v > b.

Full disclosure, I also like how either would make loanwords a little less immediately recognisable. But on the other hand, loanword phonology is also affected by the speakers’ understanding of the donor language, which might bias e.g. /t/ over /s/. Idk though how much we need to nitpick realism in an artlang though. Enough to ground it, not so much the art goes out.

And then we of course have the loan words Traviss picked from English:

besom /ˈbiː.zəm/ > besom /ˈbɛ.sɔm/

Bergen /ˈbəɹɡn/ > birgaan /bɪɾ.ɡaːn/

TAB /tæb/ > taab /taːb/

hyem /jɛm/> yaim /ʝaɪ̯m/

charva /ˈt͡ʃɑːvə/ > chaav’la /ˈt͡ʃɑːv.la/

chebs /tʃɛbs/ > shebs /ʃɛbs/

scran /skɹan/ > skraan /skɾaːn/

scunner /ˈska.nɐ/ > skanah /ska.nah/

(Geordie) way aye /ˈwaɪ.eɪ/ or (Pompey) weee /wiː/ > wayii /wa.jiː/

dinny /ˈdɪ.nɪ/> dinii /dɪ.niː/

jack /d͡ʒæk/ > jag /d͡ʒaɡ/ ?

(I’m not counting mhi and kando from that linked post, since they—or at least kandosii—are pre-Traviss Mando’a.)

Bit of a guess at the pronunciations because I’m not a Geordie and Traviss doesn’t do IPA, but I’m getting the feeling that the vowel qualities don’t match up that well. I might have loaned Bergen as *bargen or *begen instead. Besom i > ɛ I can excuse as levelling the vowels to the same height, which seems like something Mando’a is prone to. ɛ > aɪ̯ is interesting. But generally, I’m not sure what I’m looking at here? Maybe just artistic licence?

Of course if actual historical loans, we’d have to consider that those words might’ve been loaned from a dialect or at a time when the pronunciation differed from modern/RP pronunciation. Plus I at least like to think that Mando’a itself has many different dialects, so I’d be willing to excuse a degree of artistic licence and inconsistency, especially when it comes to vowels which are more fluid to begin with. Afaik it’s also not weird for natural languages to exhibit even considerable variation in loan word adaptation.

Ch is loaned both as ch and sh. Syllable-final r seems infrequently loaned (birgaan) or not (chaav’la) or loaned as h (skanah)—perhaps this reflects the (non)rhoticity of the dialect from which the loans came from, because Mando’a does have syllable-final r’s. Otherwise the consonants in these words seem unremarkable.

Talking about r though, I think there are some words in Mando’a where n > r in certain environments (or at least that could explain some etymologies). I guess it wouldn’t be too much a stretch to extend that to d and maybe ð. You can hear [kote], [kode] and [koɾe] or the Republic Commando OST. Imo this is simply the effect of singing on pronunciation (I was a trained singer once upon a time, I could go on about this), but Traviss seems to have taken it as t and d being interchangeable, or /kode/ being the archaic pronunciation and /kote/ modern.

Also as an aside, I kinda want to work out the phonetics of Huttese, because clearly Huttese (or trade/pidgin/creole Huttese, whatever they speak as a lingua franca in the Outer Rim) has lots of Basic loanwords, and I think that many Basic loanwords would probably arrive to Mando’a via Huttese rather than directly from Basic.

tldr: You have seem to have thought more about this than me. Do you have more thoughts? I’m not sure how much sense my reply made; it was bit of a brain vomit. I’ll probably go read some things and come back to this later with hopefully more sense, but I wanted to reply now because I’m not sure how busy I’ll be in the near future.

P.s. you wouldn’t happen to remember where you read about <x> = <sh>, [f ~ p] and [s ~ z]? I mean I remember reading some of those same things, but it was at least a year ago and I don’t seem to have saved the source (whoops). I can probably look up the source myself if you remember where it was. Might it have been this forum thread? “So, Xaga might have been "Shaga" (incorporating that "sh" sound the Mando like) and Zuka could've been Suka.”

[stirdrawsandreblaws]

you are already booped

[absolutebl]

Okay, I've got a language question for you:

Why would native Thai speakers accentuate (as they seem to) the last syllable of English-language nouns, proper and common ? Is there something in their own tongue that would have led to this practice ?

Isn't it the best thing ever?

My favorites are strawberry & blueberry.

sounds like

sa-tawh-bur-rEEE boo-bur-rEEE

Okay, so the first thing is, mostly in Thai, consonant noises don't exist without vowel noises attached.

The easiest way to think about this is the name Sky (think about it particularly in SCOY, but also LITA). The S+K can't really exist together, they need a ahh vowel noise to break them.

The way it's said in Thai is:

Sah'kai

Remember that?

The ' indicates a glottal stop (slight hitch in speaking). You have to kind of stop the breath from the "sah" by rolling your tongue up towards the roof of your mouth to then say the hard "k." If you know how to say the formal sah'wah dEE, you'll know how to execute that. And that's because sk can't really be said together in Thai.

To answer your question, it depends on the sound the loanword converts into for Thai comprehension/execution.

For example: "bur" is an adapted loanword (from the English for "phone number") but they actually drop tone the end of that word. Which may sound, to English speakers, like a de-emphasis. In fact "bur" shows up all the time in BL but most English speakers don't realize it's a loaner. See UWMA Dean getting Pharm's digits.

What you're picking up on is most likely the ah and ee sounds, which in Thai are often tonally pushed up in loanwords. It's not really emphasis as we think of it - it's the use of a non-tonal word in a tonal language. Those sounds are simply said that way when they are placed in those parts of words in Thai.

Like, how some people have a really hard time rolling their rr's. Or pronouncing the ø. Or the w (many native Mandarin speakers will say it as a v).

It's the way those sounds are shaped in the mouth in that part of the world.

Language trains the human brain so there are also some sounds it's very hard for speakers of a different language to even hear. I really struggle with some Thai tones, myself.

[possessivesuffix]

Oh well huh, speaking of substrates and Egyptian etc.: here's a brand new article proposing a former Afrasian branch in the Balkans, substratal to Proto-Indo-European

and yes this does at least sound like it would work better than trying to make PIE and PSem neighbors, or projecting binary Semitic–IE comparanda into Nostratic. TBD if anything more comes of this idea later on…

[ladyloveandjustice]

Oh sweet summer child.

Sousuke knowing what a condom is implies he at least attended a decent sex education class in Child Soldier Academy, small blessings.

[itstokkii]

me when ppl hc south italy as X percent arab when italians invaded colonized and committed massacres against north africans, going so far as to commit a genocide in libya:

[amandabe11man]

this old japanese dude is so me:

the court ruled against him despite him literally being right, smfh. I feel you though, hoji takahashi. respect ✊