What do you believe about loanwords? Do they destroy or beautify a language? The borrowing of words amongst languages is a timeless phenomenon. Some people are sceptical about it and others approach i

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Pantazis Stougianas

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What do you believe about loanwords? Do they destroy or beautify a language? The borrowing of words amongst languages is a timeless phenomenon. Some people are sceptical about it and others approach it with pleasure. What do you think?

9 de dic. de 2016 23:10

Comentarios · 8

This is such a difficult question. Personally, I don't mind loanwords that have been around for a while, and I definitely don't mind using a foreign word when a new thing shows up, due to technology development and such, that we simply don't have our word for. But I get a bit irritated when people decide to replace a nice Serbian word by a new loanword that hasn't even been around for long enough to be officially considered part of the language. And when a person just decides to use an English word because they "can't remember" the Serbian word it makes me crazy! I'm aware that these are double standards in a way, because these are all parts of the same process, but that's how I feel about it.

9 de diciembre de 2016

I understand your point of view, guys, and I agree. Sometimes it gets irritating for me, too, when people use foreign words in order to impress others. But, there are also loanwords from other languages, which are the only words for a specific meaning. I think that this is very interesting because we can learn the new "thoughts" and "concepts" of different cultures. It shows how other civilisations think, by creating unique words of a unique meaning. It is quite fascinating :)

10 de diciembre de 2016

Thank you, Verna, for your kind words! :)

This planet is full of languages sharing words. We could say that this is the way languages do communicate with each other, by sharing the human thoughts of such an interesting world! :D

11 de diciembre de 2016

Interesting topic! I enjoyed reading the perspectives stated here. :)

I looked up the definition of loan words, then looked up lists of English loan words from other Countries/Languages of Origin and realized it would be difficult for me to even state a full sentence without using a loan word! Yikes!

Based on this discovery, I would have to say that I very much enjoy loan words and see that they have enhanced the language that I speak. :)

That being said, I think part of maintaining a culture is maintaining the language. In this world, where everything is so easily overlapped, this might be a challenge.

Great topic!

10 de diciembre de 2016

Hello,

I think using loanwords and mixing languages while speaking are two different things. Now it is fashionable to mix our language with some English words (sometimes adapted to our grammar rules what looks strange). Some people like to show that they are educated because they know foreign languages (or a few foreign words at least). Now English is in fashion, in 19th century it was French, earlier Italian and Latin.

The loanwords which we have in our language for centuries are not bad and sometimes essential to make the clear sentence. Long time ago I came across the text, in which the author tried to show how strange would look our language like after removing all non-Slavic loanwordsand replace them with Slavic equivalents and neologisms. It would be the completely different language. Because of some historical issues our language has a lot of loanwords, mainly from Latin (official language for documents and literature during 10-th-15th centuries), but also German, French, Italian, and recently English. Sometimes there are Slavic equivalents, but they are not necesarilly used in formal speech. Some of these loanwords are not recognizable to native speakers of original languages because of adopting them to our language rules. Sometimes they changed their meaning - my Spanish friends wonder why the thing we use against the rain is called 'parasol' in Polish (but we have no word to replace it) ;-)

10 de diciembre de 2016

Pantazis Stougianas

Competencias lingüísticas

Inglés, Francés, Griego, Griego (antiguo), Latín, Otro

Idioma de aprendizaje

Inglés, Francés, Otro

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