language borrowing
Words crossing borders
Language borrowing is the adoption of words, phrases, or structures from one language into another.
English has borrowed extensively—*café* from French, *kindergarten* from German, *tsunami* from Japanese.
The process is natural and ongoing: languages in contact inevitably exchange material.
Borrowed words often adapt to their new language's pronunciation and grammar over time.
- creolizationPidgin maturing into mother tongue
- borrowed wordsForeign terms adopted into language
- colonialismDomination through foreign settlement
- globalizationWorldwide economic and cultural integration
- trade networksSystems for exchanging goods
trade routes · silk road · code-switching · pidginization · false friends · migration · acculturation · transliteration · scientific terminology · bilingualism · native speaker · mother tongue · syncretism · foreign · cultural assimilation · colonial legacy · hybrid · contact
language borrowingneologism
Newly created expression
derivation · compounding · patrimony · word formation · calque
language borrowinglinguistic purism
Resistance to language change
nativism · Anglicization · Germanization · language preservation