Loanword and its usage

Loanword and its usage

HASANIC, Adela

In this paper my aim is to explain the use of loanwords as well as their prevalence in most languages. For foreign language learners understanding the foreign or second language is much easier if it contains similarities with native language. Various language users find many ways to expand vocabulary. There are loanwords which are words borrowed from one language to be used in another one. People use them unconsciously in their daily life. There are direct and indirect borrowings depending on their origin and translation. The use of different meaning, idiom or lexical item may be considered as borrowing. Loanwords are usually words from dominant fields of different activities, so grammatical words are borrowed in very rare situations and they are unchangeable within each language. They have little lexical meaning but function to express grammatical relationships with other words on the part of speech. Such exposure of a loanword may confuse people's minds because it is important to emphasize the difference between 'foreign word' and 'loan word'. As we said before a loan word is an integrated word from a foreign language with an orthography adapted for the language that receives the new word. Contrary to that there is a foreign word as a non-integrated word from a foreign language where spelling is not changed. Several changes happen during borrowing process such as the change in meaning, the change in spelling and in the pronunciation depending on different factors which have an influence on language. In obvious need for expanding the vocabulary words come-in with a different meaning than that in the language from which it is taken. The same case is when phrases are literary translated (word-for-word) that is known as a calque.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2013

1424