With well over 600 000 words, English has a largest vocabulary than any other language - but many of these words have been 'borrowed' from other languages.
For those of us growing up in the 1970's and early 80's, words such as AIDS, VCR, e-mail, rollerblade, internet, website, and globalization may have had little or no meaning. Those growing up in the 1940's and 50's were witness to the same type of new-word explosion that occurred after the invention of plastic. New technologies, clever inventions, new diseases, continuing social problems, global communication networks, along with grammatical ways to be discussed later in this report, are some of the major reasons we find ourselves adding more new words to our spoken languages than ever before.
Word borrowing: 'When speakers imitate a word from a foreign language and at least partly adapt it in sound or grammar to their native speech ways, the process is known as borrowing, and the word thus borrowed is a loanword'. In all of the world's languages, English, especially, has borrowed countless words from other languages.
Popular loanwords can be described as the loanwords that we use in our everyday communication. It's interesting to note that many people take for granted the words they use in everyday conversation and are unaware that many of the daily vocabulary they use are popular loanwords from other languages. Common words such as kindergarten, hamster, hamburger, wiener, and frankfurter for example, are all loanwords that made their way via Germany at one time or another. This phenomenon is clearly visible in the Japanese language as loanwords, primarily from English, are seemingly exponentially growing in number. Words such as 'biru' (building), 'biiru (beer), 'kohi' (coffee), 'sekuhara'(sexual harassment), and 'supoon' (spoon) are just a few examples of the number of popular loan words that have become part of the Japanese vocabulary and have replaced actual Japanese words. As generally stated before, many Japanese have no idea that many of the words they use in daily life come from English. 'Anyone knows that an average Japanese rice farmer would have extreme difficulty communicating if suddenly confronted with a native English speaker. This is despite the fact that the rice farmer's native Japanese is chock full of English, to the tune of 20,000 or so words added over the years or almost 10 percent of the Japanese language'.
Contrary to this fact however, some Japanese who are aware of the foreign flavor of the words they use automatically assume that the word's origin is English as opposed to coming from other foreign languages. ESL students speaking of their 'part-time job' for example, often refer to this type of employment as 'arubaito'. Most naturally assume arubaito is an English word and insert it into English sentences, not realizing it is derived from the German word 'arbeit', meaning part-time job.
In reference to Japanese loanwords and in many other cases, it may not be so difficult to trace the source of the loanword's original language (usually English) since Japanese uses separate writing systems (katakana or romanji) in writing most of it's loan words. However, successfully tracing a Japanese loanword to English may only be the first step in a long journey through history, since the origin of the English word in question may have many historical roots of its own. 'The history of a loanword may be quite complex because such words have often passed through a series of languages before reaching English. For example, chess was borrowed from Old English in the thirteenth century. The old French word (pl. esches, sing. eschec) was, in turn, a normal development of the Medieval Latin form scaccus, borrowed from Arabic, which had earlier borrowed it from Persian shah 'king'. Thus the etymology of the word reaches from Persian, through Arabic, Latin, and Old French, to English.'
As for the reasons loanwords enter a language, they range historically from ways such as the conquering of one country by another, occupation, trade, global media, and immigration. North American English (namely American and Canadian English) may be the most open to loanwords in comparison to other countries. Canada and America being countries founded on the basis of immigration, their populations include peoples from many of the common languages of the world. H.L. Mencken mentions, The American Language, the following quote: 'Constant familiarity with such immigrants from foreign countries and with the general speech habits of foreign peoples has made Americans a good deal more hospitable to loan-words than English, even in the absence of special pressure. Let the same word knock at the gates of the two languages, and American will admit it more readily, and give it at once a wider and more intimate currency'.
This is an interesting comparison since a similar comparison could be made of Japanese and Chinese. As stated previously, Japanese had a separate writing system for writing loanword used in Japanese language. Japan, being a country defeated by America in WWII, has become wide open in the adoption of English loanwords. Chinese, on the contrary, may be less enthusiastic about accepting loanwords into the language as the country remains conservative in its openness to the world and prefers to use Chinese language & characters in reference to foreign entities (with the exception of country names, brand names and the names of people).
The French-Canadian province of Quebec, in interest of the preservation of its French heritage and language, also promotes the use of French to its French residents. 'August 26, 1977 saw the birth of Bill 101, an openly discriminatory law enacted by the Province's first separatist government, which took away the right to freedom of speech from its citizens. Under the law, tighter restrictions on the use of English were introduced, as well as access to English schools. It became against the law to produce any commercial sign that wasn't in French-only, and the law aimed to make French the language of the workplace.'
The advantages and disadvantages to such ideas of language preservation maybe cloudy, but such laws will ensure the consistency and longevity of a language (as well as heritage). Viewing Japan as a non-Japanese, it is my personal opinion that it would be in the best interest of the country to adopt such policies as it seems that the language is consistently evolving into a sub-variety of English and as a result, the younger generation are quickly ignoring their heritage and contributing to an uncertain future for Japanese language and traditions.
Affixing: It is evident that many of the words in the English language have come via foreign languages as loanwords. As stated in the previous section, loanwords comprise nearly ten percent of the Japanese language. However, aside from the borrowing of foreign words, there is also the grammatical aspect of word formation. 'The most productive source of new words is affixing, which accounts for 30 to 34 percent of the innovations in recent English'
Affixing can be defined as the adding of prefixes, circumfixes (non-English), infixes (non-English), and suffixes to words to form new words. Motives for affixing in language range from forming negatives (clear/unclear), changing the tenses of verbs (walk/walked), pluralizing (jacket/jackets), and changing adjectives to verbs (plural/pluralize).
It is interesting how we incorporate affixes to everyday speech. Our knowledge of the morphemes in our language allows us to interpret new words even if there is no previous reference to the new word. In everyday conversation, we construct new words through the use of affixing literally 'off the top of our heads'.
Although one would never find such a word in an English dictionary, affixed words, as such, find their way into the English lexicon through natural grammatical construction as well as conversational situations as shown in the Seinfeld example.
Compounding: 'Affixing is closely followed by compounding which comprises 28 to 30% of new words entering the English Language'
Compound words can be simply defined as 'a word composed of two words: i.e. dishcloth.)As pointed out by Fromkin, Blair, & Collins, there are a few simple rules that English compounding follow: When compound words are formed from two words from the same grammatical category, the compound will assume the same category. (ie. Noun + Noun =Noun). Examples of compounds that follow this formula include baseball, suitcase, and ceiling-fan. Other such formulas include (Adjective + Adjective = Adjective). Words following this formula include 'icy-cold, red-hot, and worldly-wise' Compound words that are formed from two words from different grammatical categories assume the category of the word appearing finally in the word. (ie. Noun + Adjective = Adjective). Words following this rule include 'lifelong, watertight and headstrong'
Finally, compounds formed with a preposition are in the category of the non-prepositional part of the compound: overtake, hanger-on, undertake, afterbirth, downfall, uplift'. The phenomenon of compounding is essentially limitless in the creation of new words in the English language. A compound may be used in any grammatical function: noun (wishbone), pronoun (anyone), adjective (foolproof), adverb (overhead), verb (overtake), conjunction (whenever), or preposition (without)'.).
Shifting the use of already existing words: 'The next most productive process (in the acquisition of new words to the English language) is shifting the use of already existing words; it accounts for 26 to 14 percent of the new items'
'Shifting' (or 'conversion') could be described as changing the function of a word (such changing a noun to a verb or vice versa) without changing the word itself (i.e. the spelling). This phenomenon can be seen in the words that describe parts of the body. 'One may head to a meeting, elbow one's way through a crowd, or hand in one's papers.'
The four ways in which words enter language discussed in this report are arguably the most productive methods. However, there are other, less productive ways discussed below that are worth mentioning:
Acronyms: Acronyms are words that are created from the initials of the words in the original phrase. The most popular examples in English today are: AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), CD (compact disk), VCR (Video Cassette Recorder), and the Japanese loanword; 'peto bottoru' (polyethylene terraphthallate bottle).
Back-formation: Words created in this fashion could be described as words that have lost an affix in the derivation of a new word. Examples include: (television - televise).
Blending: This describes the way that two words are 'blended' together to form one word. In creating the new word via this process, the two words lose certain sounds in the creation of the new word. Examples of Japanese loanwords that have been blended include: pahsocon (personal computer), alumihoil (aluminum foil), and waishatsu (white shirt).
Shortening/Clipping: Words are created in this fashion when multi-syllabic words are shortened and the new words become part of the language's lexicon. Examples include: (refrigerator - fridge).
Words from Names & Word Coinage: These words are usually derived from the names of the people or organizations that invented or coined the correlating entities. Examples include: sandwich (named after The Earl of Sandwich), Rollerblade (the name of the company that first produced in-line skates) and Xerox (name of the company that invented the photocopier).
The varieties of ways words enter language have just been discussed, some in more detail than others. The initial four ways discussed following the introduction (word borrowing, affixing, compounding, and shifting) are arguably the most common ways words enter the English language as well as other commonly used languages throughout the world. The transformation of language over time through the production of new words is an interesting phenomenon indeed. As shown via the examples of the changes Japanese is going through, it makes one wonder to what state the language will end up after a few hundred years of language evolution. Only time will tell, but it is truly fascinating to be witness to such changes taking place in as time moves on.
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