Group Members Mevis, Isabel, Natalie, Selene.doc

Group Members: Mevis, Isabel, Natalie, Selene Introduction to Linguistics Dr. Yun-Pi Yuan Group Report May 13, 2003 Borrowed Words Introduction The purpose of this report is to look into borrowed words. The paper will be focused on the different classifications that borrowed words can fall into such as food, electronic gadgets, cultural and so. Classifications according to the languages the words have been adapted to and from are also provided. In addition, a further study is also done on the reasons for borrowing words. Furthermore, we will look into the techniques used to blend the new words in a language, taking a glimpse on the changes of meaning and pronunciation the acquired vocabulary goes through. Design The collected data was entirely based on our own knowledge of borrowed words in different languages: English, Chinese and Japanese. Owing to the concern of wider range of borrowed words, we all try to gather different borrowed words according to our own knowledge and family member’s interviews. Findings and Discussion Generally speaking, we can divide borrowed words into two groups: transliteration and loan-translation or calque (Yule 65). A transliteration occurs when the original word is input to a new language, suffering a variation in its spelling and of course pronunciation in order to adapt better to the receiving language. An example of transliteration would be the word “cheese” which in Chinese is 起司. Here, the word is no longer written with the Roman alphabet but with Chinese characters. During the borrowing of the word though, there has been an attempt to keep the original word’s pronunciation, therefore, the pronunciation of the Chinese version of “cheese” is as close as it can be to the original word: “qi si”起司 The process of loan-translation, otherwise known as calque, is not as complicate as transliteration. The borrowed words are simply translated literally in to the new language. For example, “honeymoon” is translated into 蜜月 (mi yue) in