2743: Semantic Loan Words Jun 24, 2024

Calques are a type of loan, where a foreign word (or usually phrase) is translated word-for-word using native terms. A famously ironic example is that ‘loanword’ is a calque from the German „Lehnwort“, while ‘calque’ is a loanword from French. 

The more general term though, semantic borrowing (or loaning), applies not just to phrases or compounds translated word-for-word, but when any native term gains additional connotations from use in another language. For instance, the English ‘star’ is both astronomical & used to describe celebrity, & this latter use is seen now in other languages like Hebrew, e.g.  Israel’s version of Dancing with the Stars, רוקדים עם כוכבים (rokdim im cokhavim). Another example is the French extension of the word «souris» meaning ‘mouse’ to apply also to the computer mouse. 

Semantic loans in general, as opposed to the more specific calques, are often hard to prove, because the sentence structure and vocabulary can be entirely normal, native language. The number of semantic loans will certainly increase due to the spread of culture on TV & the Internet, etc., but language’s inherently memetic quality can make it difficult to discern a specific connotation’s origin.