Calque

Template:Short description Template:Distinguish In linguistics, a calque (Template:IPAc-en) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new word or phrase (lexeme) in the target language. For instance, the English word skyscraper has been calqued in dozens of other languages,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in German, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Portuguese, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Dutch, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Spanish, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Italian, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Turkish, and matenrō {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Japanese.

Calques, like direct borrowings, often function as linguistic gap-fillers, emerging when a language lacks existing vocabulary to express new ideas, technologies, or objects. This phenomenon is widespread and is often attributed to the shared conceptual frameworks across human languages. Speakers of different languages tend to perceive the world through common categories such as time, space, and quantity, making the translation of concepts across languages both possible and natural.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching: while calquing includes semantic translation, it does not consist of phonetic matching—i.e., of retaining the approximate sound of the borrowed word by matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existing word or morpheme in the target language.<ref name="palgrave.com">Template:Cite book</ref>

Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword because, in some cases, a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the borrowing language, or when the calque contains less obvious imagery.

TypesEdit

One system classifies calques into five groups. This terminology is not universal:<ref>Smith, May. The Influence of French on Eighteenth-century Literary Russian. pp. 29–30.</ref>

Phraseological calques: idiomatic phrases are translated word for word. For example, "it goes without saying" calques the French {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Fowler, H. W. [1908] 1999. "Vocabulary § Foreign Words." chap. 1 in The King's English (2nd ed.). New York: Bartelby.com.</ref>
Syntactic calques: syntactic functions or constructions of the source language are imitated in the target language, in violation of their meaning. For example, the use of "by" instead of "with" in the phrase "fine by me" is thought to have come from Yiddish Template:Transliteration, namely from the 1930s Yiddish Broadway musical song title Bei Mir Bistu Shein, Template:Literal translation.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Loan-translations: words are translated morpheme by morpheme, or component by component, into another language.
Semantic calques (also known as semantic loans): additional meanings of the source word are transferred to the word with the same primary meaning in the target language. As described below, the "computer mouse" was named in English for its resemblance to the animal; many other languages have extended their own native word for "mouse" to include the computer mouse.
Morphological calques: the inflection of a word is transferred. Some authors call this a morpheme-by-morpheme translation.<ref name="gilliot">Gilliot, Claude. "The Authorship of the Qur'ān." In The Qur'an in its Historical Context, edited by G. S. Reynolds. p. 97.</ref>

Some linguists refer to a phonological calque, in which the pronunciation of a word is imitated in the other language.<ref name=":0">Yihua, Zhang, and Guo Qiping. 2010. "An Ideal Specialised Lexicography for Learners in China based on English-Chinese Specialised Dictionaries." Pp. 171–92 in Specialised Dictionaries for Learners, edited by P. A. F. Olivera. Berlin: de Gruyter. p. 187. Template:ISBN</ref> For example, the English word "radar" becomes the similar-sounding Chinese word Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Lang-zh),<ref name=":0" /> which literally means "to arrive (as fast) as thunder".

PartialEdit

Template:Anchor Template:Anchor Template:Anchor Partial calques, or loan blends, translate some parts of a compound but not others.<ref>Durkin, Philip. The Oxford Guide to Etymology. § 5.1.4</ref> For example, the name of the Irish digital television service {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} is a partial calque of that of the UK service "Freeview", translating the first half of the word from English to Irish but leaving the second half unchanged. Other examples include "liverwurst" (< German Template:Wikt-lang)<ref>Template:Cite OED</ref> and "apple strudel" (< German Template:Wikt-lang).<ref>Template:Cite OED</ref>

SemanticEdit

The "computer mouse" was named in English for its resemblance to the animal. Many other languages use their word for "mouse" for the "computer mouse", sometimes using a diminutive or, in Chinese, adding the word "cursor" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}), making {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "mouse cursor" (Template:Zh).Template:Citation needed Another example is the Spanish word ratón that means both the animal and the computer mouse.<ref name="DPD - ratón">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

ExamplesEdit

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The common English phrase "flea market" is a loan translation of the French Template:Wikt-lang ("market with fleas").<ref name="autogenerated1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At least 22 other languages calque the French expression directly or indirectly through another language.

The word loanword is a calque of the German noun {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. In contrast, the term calque is a loanword, from the French noun Template:Wikt-lang ("tracing, imitation, close copy").<ref>Knapp, Robbin D. 27 January 2011. "Robb: German English Words." Robb: Human Languages.</ref>

Another example of a common morpheme-by-morpheme loan-translation is of the English word "skyscraper", a kenning-like term which may be calqued using the word for "sky" or "cloud" and the word, variously, for "scrape", "scratch", "pierce", "sweep", "kiss", etc. At least 54 languages have their own versions of the English word.

Some Germanic and Slavic languages derived their words for "translation" from words meaning "carrying across" or "bringing across", calquing from the Latin {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.<ref>Christopher Kasparek, "The Translator's Endless Toil", The Polish Review, vol. XXVIII, no. 2, 1983, p. 83.</ref>

The Latin weekday names came to be associated by ancient Germanic speakers with their own gods following a practice known as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}: the Latin "Day of Mercury", {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (later {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in modern French), was borrowed into Late Proto-Germanic as the "Day of Wōđanaz" (Wodanesdag), which became {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Old English, then "Wednesday" in Modern English.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

HistoryEdit

Since at least 1894, according to the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, the French term calque has been used in its linguistic sense, namely in a publication by Louis Duvau:<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Template:Verse translation

Since at least 1926, the term calque has been attested in English through a publication by the linguist Template:Interlanguage link:<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

[...] such imitative forms are called {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (or {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) by French philologists, and this is a frequent method in coining abstract terminology, whether nouns or verbs.