TwicebittenThasme
WesDymEnglish has two different terms for words that come into English from other languages. A 'calque' is translated from the source language. (E.g., flea market, beer garden, paper tiger) A 'loanword' is ported in its original form. (E.g., cafe, bazaar, kindergarten) Perhaps ironically, the word 'calque' is a loanword, while 'loanword' is a calque (from Ger. 'lehnwort').
Kansas Grant@wesdym It's hard to believe that there was once a viable trade in fleas.
Mathias Hasselmann@KansasGrant @wesdym The fleas sit in the old clothes that are traded at the flea market.
Insecurity Princess 🌈💖🔥@taschenorakel @wesdym Seems reasonable.
Jeremy Kahn@wesdym "flea market" is a calque?
Iron Curtain (Chiptunes)@wesdym And then there are half-and-half "loan-calques", such as "iceberg".
Oriel Jutty 
@IronCurtain @wesdym Or "eigenvalue"!
PirateJoie
Sam Clark@wesdym love this, didn't know there was a word for the changed, but phoenetically similar words.
@wesdym i wonder if there's a term for when american names just double verbage....e.g. "Hardstark"
Patrick Johanneson 🚀 🇨🇦@samrocksc @wesdym Or the possibly apocryphal etymology of Torpenhow Hill aka "Hill Hill Hill Hill" (which has some "Major Major Major Major" energy).
@pjohanneson @wesdym i have no googled the definition of apocryphal....good stuff
@pjohanneson @wesdym and no i have learned about Torpenhow Hill...and i'm a huge fan of this theme.
Timo@wesdym I would translate loanword to „leihwort“. I‘m german
Armin Fritz@arminfritz danke. Das Wort war mir nicht geläufig
@wesdym As some have already clarified. The “Lehnwort" is the right translation. Its funny because “loan" means “leihen" in german. But “Leihwort" isn’t actually a real word. Nonetheless I feel like “Leihwort" does a better job of explaining the meaning than “Lehnwort" does.
M. P. Seipolt@wesdym English sure is a fascinating language... when it isn't being a pain in the arse.
Antonius Marie ⚧@wesdym Ah, English. We love it so much >.>
Albert CardonaAh, the English language, my old fiend*
*fiend:
$ wn fiend -over
Overview of noun fiend
The noun fiend has 3 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (3) monster, fiend, devil, demon, ogre -- (a cruel wicked and inhuman person)
2. (1) devil, fiend, demon, daemon, daimon -- (an evil supernatural being)
3. fanatic, fiend -- (a person motivated by irrational enthusiasm (as for a cause); "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject"--Winston Churchill)
Isa@wesdym I love this, thanks for sharing!
Dylan SmithThe English word 'airport' has a fascinating profile across languages, betraying -- I believe -- the naval heritage that preceded it. But I'm not sure whether it's a calque or a loanword.
Related: Tripped over this video short recently re 'calculator.' Well-intended humour. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-QELtsISN4k
ifluent | how to say Calculator in different languages | Calculator by ifluent | #shorts
William Hamilton@wesdym Though in practice, the English language doesn’t acquire loanwords so much as it acquires mugwords:
“Ooh, that’s a *nice* word.”
[taps baseball bat into palm of free hand]
“I *like* that word.”
[taps baseball bat into palm of free hand]
“I’m *taking* that word.”
Michael Gisiger 
@wesdym To make things even more complicated, in German, we distinguish between loan translations (Lehnübersetzung; completely translated terms from other languages) and loan transfers (Lehnübertragung), where only part of the word is translated correctly. Here is an example: a skyscraper in German is a Wolkenkratzer, i.e. a cloud scraper.
David Mankins@wesdym
I think my favorite loan word is "caucus". It sounds so Latin! And it's about politics, and one's mind goes to caucusing in the Roman Senate.
But, no -- it has a much more interesting heritage: it comes from the Algonquin family of languages, along with, it turns out, a lot of other ideas about freedom, politics, and economy as the monarchical Europeans encountered the societies of the Americas and had their eyes opened to many novel ways of organizing societies.
Castedo EllermanDoesn't "caucus" mean "drinking vessel" in Latin?
It seems far more likely that the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Caucus that met in a tavern to enjoy drinks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_(cocktail), was named after a Latin word for a drinking vessel. And this group influenced American political jargon with members like Samual Adams and John Adams.
You could be right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucus gives several possible etymologies -- both the Algonquian and the drinking-vessel among them.
Native American politics was well known at the time (Franklin held them up as an example the colonies could learn from, and I think Jefferson discussed them as well).
@castedo One of several Latin terms for various drinking vessels, I believe -- of the goblet variety, I believe. (There is a goblet-shaped fungus named Ciboria caucus.) It's the hypothesis I personally prefer, because it seems to me to require the fewest and least extravagant assumptions. But to my knowledge, there is no solid proof for this or any other hypothesis so far.
@lain_7 My understanding is that the origin of this term is currently uncertain. The most direct reference is the Colonial-era Caucus Club of Boston, but no one seems certain where they got their name. A good candidate is Algonquin 'caucauasu' (advisor, speaker). But there are other possibilities, including Latin and other English words, and without more evidence we just don't know right now.
Ell 🏳️⚧️@wesdym Yes!! This is one of my very favorite language facts, thank you for this excellently succinct statement of it!
May Keable 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@wesdym Is Calque a word from English or did we steal that from somewhere too?
Andrew Benedict-Nelson@wesdym this post alone justifies the existence of Mastodon
Stuart Celarier ❌👑@wesdym
This is huge! HUGE!
This is huge! HUGE!
Blake 🇵🇸@wesdym I feel like it's appropriate to be pedantic in this situation. Isn't loanword simply a cognate and not a calque? As much as I want this to be true.
@blake You could be correct, I don't know. Several sources I consulted and feel pretty good about all say it's a translation of German 'Lehnwort' ("lean-word") (late C19), but I don't know German or German etymology, so I can only trust those sources.
utzer [Friendica]"Linguistik: Wort, das aus einer anderen Sprache übernommen wurde und an die aufnehmende Sprache lautlich, orthographisch und/oder grammatisch mehr oder weniger angepasst wurde"
in the wiktionary
which Deepl translates to
That is more or less what you found/wrote, is it?
Mans R@utzer @wesdym @blake For those who read German: https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/sprachratgeber/Fremdwort%20oder%20doch%20nicht%253F
Spokes(wo)man@wesdym I would expect no less of English.
Feodora 🐈⬛(🐈)🐾🐾😺(😺)@wesdym I once heard that the Islanders didn’t take words from other languages but if there is a new thing like “computer” or “mobile phone” they try to find a new expression in the own language
Ben Aveling@wesdym you can call them loanwords if it makes you happy but don’t think we’re giving them back.
Stoneface Vimes@wesdym I never knew that - it's now my favourite grammar snippet.
DopeGhoti@wesdym
English is full of these self-contradictory coincidences. Like how 'little' is twice as big as 'big', or how 'abbreviation' is such a long word. Or how one drives on a parkway but parks on a driveway. Or how when parcels are transported on a ship they are termed 'cargo' but when transported in a car they are a 'shipment'.
English is full of these self-contradictory coincidences. Like how 'little' is twice as big as 'big', or how 'abbreviation' is such a long word. Or how one drives on a parkway but parks on a driveway. Or how when parcels are transported on a ship they are termed 'cargo' but when transported in a car they are a 'shipment'.
DennyWord of the Week suggestion for @kevlin 🙂
Kevlin Henney@denny Thanks. Interestingly, calque was one that I did in the early days:
https://twitter.com/KevlinHenney/status/63861068417613824
https://twitter.com/KevlinHenney/status/63861068417613824
hoshlearned something new, thanks