Comment on Are there words in reverse order between two languages using the Latin Alphabet?

NateNate60@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

There’s this related thing in linguistics which is quite fun, relating to the terms loanword and calque, which both mean “words originating from foreign languages”: The word calque is a loanword, and the word loanword is a calque.

A calque is a literal translation of the components of a word. One of the most commonly calqued words across all languages is skyscraper (in Chinese, it’s 摩天大楼, “sky-touching large building”). The word loanword is a calque of German Lehnwort (lehnen, to borrow + Wort, word).

A loanword is a word which is taken directly from another language and, with exceptions to fit the receiving language’s grammar and pronunciation, is not translated. An example of an English word which has been calqued into many languages is “okay”. The word calque is a loanword from French, where it means “copy”.

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