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In linguistics, a calque (pronounced /kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, "word-for-word" (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.

The common English phrase "flea market" is a phrase calque that literally translates the French "marché aux puces" [1]

Going in the other direction, from English to French, provides an example of how a compound word may be calqued by first breaking it down into its component roots. The French "gratte-ciel" is a word-coinage inspired by the model of the English "skyscraper" — "gratter" literally translates "scrape", and "ciel" translates "sky".

Used as a verb, "to calque" means to loan-translate from another language so as to create a new lexeme in the target language.

"Calque" itself is a loanword from a French noun, and derives from the verb "calquer" ("to copy"). [2] "Loan translation" is itself a calque of the German "Lehnübersetzung". [3]

To prove that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than an untranslated loanword, since in some cases it's quite conceivable that a similar phrase could have arisen in both languages independently. This is less so when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the language proposed to be borrowing, or the calque contains less obvious imagery.

English

From Chinese

[2][3][4]

From French

Teuto-Dutch

From Dutch

From German

From Latin

Note: the Latin planetary names, as found in the names of the weekdays, in turn calque the Greek names, which calque the ancient Babylonian names (e.g. Friday, and the planet Venus, were named after Freia. See [4].)

From Spanish

From other languages

Latin

  • Latin compassio calques Greek sympathia "sympathy" (Latin: "suffering with", Greek: "suffering together")
  • Latin insectus calques Greek entomos
  • Latin musculus "muscle" (= "common house mouse", literally "little mouse" from mus "mouse") calques Greek mys "muscle" (= "mouse")
  • Latin magnanimus calques Greek μεγαλοψυχος (megalopsuchos)
  • Lat. root magnus = Gr. μεγαλος (megalos) = "great; large"
  • Lat. root animus = Gr. ψυχη (psuchē) = "soul"[5]

Romance Languages

Examples of Romance language expressions calqued from foreign languages include:
  • French lune de miel, Catalan lluna de mel, Spanish luna de miel, Portuguese lua-de-mel, Italian luna di miele abd Romanian luna de miere calque English honeymoon
  • French gratte-ciel, Catalan gratacels, Spanish rascacielos, Portuguese arranha-céus and Italian grattacielo calque English skyscraper
  • French sabot de Denver calques English Denver boot
  • French jardin d'enfants, Spanish jardín de infancia and Portuguese Jardim de infância calque Garden of Infants/children, from German Kindergarten(children's garden)

French

  • French courriel (contraction of courrier électronique) calques English email (electronic mail)
  • French disque dur calques English hard disk
  • French en ligne calques English online
  • French haute résolution calques English high resolution
  • French disque compact calques English compact disc
  • French haute fidélité calques English hi-fi (high fidelity)
  • French large bande calques English broadband
  • French modulation de fréquence calques English frequency modulation (FM)
  • French média de masse calques English mass media
  • French surhomme calques German Ãœbermensch (Nietzsche's concept)
  • French OVNI (Objet Volant Non Identifié) calques English UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)
  • In some dialects of French, the English term "weekend" becomes la fin de semaine ("the end of week"), a calque, but in some it is left untranslated as le week-end, a loanword.

Spanish

Many calques found in Southwestern US Spanish, come from English:
  • Spanish escuela alta calques English high school (secundaria or escuela secundaria in Standard Spanish)
  • Spanish grado (de escuela) calques English grade (in school) (nivel in Standard Spanish)
  • Spanish colegio calques English college (universidad in Standard Spanish; colegio, in standard Spanish, is synonymous with escuela and means school)
  • Spanish librería calques English library (biblioteca in Standard Spanish; librería in Standard Spanish means bookshop)
See also: Spanglish.

Also technological terms calqued from English are used throughout the Spanish-speaking world:
  • Spanish tarjeta de crédito calques English credit card
  • Spanish alta tecnología calques English high technology
  • Spanish disco compacto calques English compact disc
  • Spanish correo electrónico calques English electronic mail
  • Spanish alta resolución calques English high resolution
  • Spanish enlace calques English link (Internet)
  • Spanish sitio web calques English web site
  • Spanish página web calques English web page
  • Spanish ratón calques English mouse (computer)

Germanic Languages

Afrikaans and Dutch

  • Afrikaans aartappel and Dutch aardappel calque French pomme de terre ("earth apple")
  • Afrikaans besigheid calques English business
  • Afrikaans e-pos calques English e-mail
  • Afrikaans hardeskyf and Dutch harde schijf calque English hard disk
  • Afrikaans klankbaan calques English sound track
  • Afrikaans kleurskuifie calques English colour slide
  • Afrikaans pynappel calques English pineapple calques French pomme de pin
  • Afrikaans sleutelbord calques English keyboard
  • Afrikaans tuisblad calques English homepage
  • Afrikaans wolkekrabber and Dutch wolkenkrabber calque English skyscraper

German

  • Fernsehen from "television"
  • Fernsprecher from "telephone"
The latter, as well as the corresponding fernsprechen (verb: to [tele]phone [so.]), has been on the retreat in recent years in favor of (orthographically normalized) Telefon.

Icelandic

  • Icelandic rafmagn, "electricity," is a half-calqued coinage that literally means "amber power."
  • raf translates the Greek root ηλεκτρον (elektron), which means "amber"
  • magn, "power," is descriptive of electricity's nature but not a direct calque from the source word "electricity"

Slavic languages

Russian

The poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799 - 1837) was perhaps the most influential among the Russian literary figures who would transform the modern Russian language and vastly expand its ability to handle abstract and scientific concepts by importing the sophisticated vocabulary of Western intellectuals.

Although some Western vocabulary entered the language as loanwords -- e.g., Italian salvietta, "napkin," was simply Russified in sound and spelling to салфетка (salfetka) -- Pushkin and those he influenced most often preferred to render foreign borrowings into Russian by calquing. Compound words were broken down to their component roots, which were then translated piece-by-piece to their Slavic equivalents. But not all of the coinages caught on and became permanent additions to the lexicon; for example, любомудрие (ljubomudrie) was promoted by 19th-century Russian intellectuals as a calque of "philosophy," but the word eventually fell out of fashion, and modern Russian instead uses the loanword философия (filosofija).
  • Russian любомудрие (ljubomudrie) calqued Greek-derived "philosophy":
  • Russ. root любить (ljubit' ) = Gr. φιλειν (filein) = "to love";
  • Russ. root мудрость (mudrost' ) = Gr. σοφία (sofia) = "wisdom"
  • Russian зависимость (zavisimost' ) calques Latin-derived "dependence":
  • Russ. root за (za) = Lat. de = "down from"
  • Russ. root висеть (viset' ) = Lat. pendere = "to hang; to dangle"
  • Russian полуостров (poluostrov) calques German Halbinsel, both meaning "peninsula":
  • Russ. root полу- (polu-) = Ger. halb = "half; semi-"
  • Russ. root остров (ostrov) = Ger. Insel = "island"
  • Russian детский сад (detskij sad) calques German Kindergarten, both literally suggesting "children's garden"

Ukrainian

  • велике спасибі (velyke spasybi) calques Russian большое спасибо (bol'shoe spasibo), both literally "a big thank-you"
  • необхідний (neobkhidnyj) calques Russian необходимый (neobkhodimyj), both meaning "necessary"

Finnish

  • Germanic passive agent marker — There is no passive voice in Finnish, but an impersonal, where the agent is never mentioned. Due to the influence of Germanic languages, the word toimesta "from the action" has been constructed in order to mention the agent, i.e. to function like the word "by". (It is impossible to translate the word "by" itself, because there is no direct equivalent.) For example, "Lentokonetta lennetään ohjaajan toimesta", approximately "The plane is being flown, from the action of the pilot." This is grammatically incorrect, but used abundantly in legal documents and sloppy translations.
  • Swedish future marker kommer att or German werden calqued as tulla + (verb in third infinitive illative) — There is no future tense in Finnish, and the calque is produced by translation from Swedish and German. Note that the verb tulla takes up the inflection, and is to be placed into the appropriate tense and person. The calque corresponds to English "is going". For example, tullaan muuttamaan "is going to be changed". This is considered incorrect grammar, but perfectly understandable and found in translations, political speech and even in legal documents..
  • English you-impersonal calqued; e.g. sä et elä jos sä et syö is word-for-word "you don't live if you don't eat", unlike the native Syömättä ei elä. Note that this phenomenon is not always traceable to English. Here contraction sä of spoken language is used instead of the sinä of written language..
Since Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, differs radically in pronunciation and orthography from Indo-European languages, most loans adopted in Finnish either are calques or soon become such. Examples include:
  • from Greek: sarvikuono (rhinoceros, from Greek "rinokeros"),
  • from Latin: viisaudenhammas (wisdom tooth, from Latin "dens sapientiae"),
  • from English: kovalevy (English "hard disk"),
  • from French: kirpputori (flea market, French "marché aux puces"),
  • from German: lastentarha (German "Kindergarten"),
  • from German: panssarivaunu (German "Panzerwagen"),
  • from Swedish: moottoritie (highway, from Swedish "motorväg"),
  • from Chinese: aivopesu (brainwash, from Chinese "xi nao"),
  • from Spanish: siniverinen (blue-blooded, from Spanish "de sangre azul")

Hebrew

When Jews make an aliyah to Israel, they sometimes change their name to a Hebrew calque. For instance, Imi Lichtenfield, founder of the martial art Krav Maga, became Imi Sde-Or. Both last names mean "light field".
  • tappuach adamah (potato) from French pomme-de-terre
  • gan yeladim from German Kindergarten
  • chashmal for "electricity" from Greek ēlektron (amber)

See also

References

1. ^ However, Online Etymology Dictionary says that the phrase is "imitative of Amer[icanIndian speech]]" and dates to 1900. [6]
2. ^ Novotná, Z., "Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese", Archiv Orientalni, (Prague), No.35 (1967), pp.613-648. (In English; examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)
3. ^ Novotná, Z., "Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese", Archiv Orientalni, (Prague), No.36 (1968), pp.295-325. (In English; examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)
4. ^ Novotná, Z., "Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese", Archiv Orientalni, (Prague), No.37 (1969), pp.48-75. (In English; examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)

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flea market is a place where vendors come to sell or trade their goods. The goods are usually inexpensive and range in quality depending on several factors, which might include urban or rural location, part of the country, or popularity or size of the flea market.
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skyscraper is a very tall, continuously habitable building. There is no official definition or a precise cutoff height above which a building may clearly be classified as a skyscraper.
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verb is a word belonging to the part of speech that usually denotes an action (bring, read), an occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand).
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In linguistics, a calque (pronounced /kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, "word-for-word" (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.
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A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of words that are different forms of the same word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running
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A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.
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In linguistics, a calque (pronounced /kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, "word-for-word" (Latin: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.
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