query

[g.banti at agora.it]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I know that Chinese is full of this sort of stuff. In Italian also there are
 some examples:

baco for (computer) bug. Baco is typically the silk worm or a worm in an apple
 or a cherry. The millennium bug thus was commonly translated as il baco del millennio.

scannare jokingly as a translation of scanning. Scannare is cutting a pig's
 throat for killing it, and by extension a very expressive word for killing a person by slicing his throat. Some people also
 say scannare un documento for scanning it, otherwise a more common term is scannerizzare.

I agree that there is no common term for this kind of borrowing.

Best regards,

Giorgio Banti
Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Robert R. Ratcliffe ratcliffe at tufs.ac.jp
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 09:03:50 EST
To: HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU
Subject: query


I've recently had my attention draw to a process in borrowing and I
wonder if there is a name for it:

When a concept is borrowed, rather than borrowing the word, or calquing
it, a word which sounds similar to the original with related semantics
is extended, or a compound is made which sounds close to the original
and is semantically plausible.

For example "index" becomes in Chinese inde (formed from /in/ "pull",
/de/ "find") [source: student paper, so correct me if I'm wrong.]

This is very common in East Asian languages, I believe. But I've come
across examples elsewhere. For example in Morocco the Arabic word /silk/
"thread" is used to translate the Frence "cycle" /sikl/ as an academic
term, rather than the usual Arabic word for cycle /daura/.

It is sort of the opposite of a calque-- in the sense of borrowing the
sound without the meaning-- but I don't know what to call it. By the way
does anyone have other examples?
____________________________________
*NEW E-mail address: ratcliffe at tufs.ac.jp*

Robert R. Ratcliffe
Associate Professor, Arabic and Linguistics
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Asahi-machi 3-11-1, Fuchu-shi, Tokyo 183-8534 Japan



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