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| Friday's Phrase: "loan words" |
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| Sunday, 12 September 2004 | |
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10 September, 2004: Unlike many of the categories of jargon we profile,
this one goes back centuries and yet has been given a new twist by the
rise of technology: "loan words"… Since the earliest times of spoken and written communication, different languages have borrowed greedily one from another. As a symptom of 'globalisation', this one pre-dates Naomi Klein by several centuries. In recent decades, the two most common explanations for the exchange of 'loan words' have been the terminology of science/technology or for reasons of what, in English (and now in many other languages!), is colloquially referred to as "cool". For anyone who takes any pleasure from the workings of language, these cross-border cross-pollinations of words and the hybrids which result are an absolute joy. Some self-appointed bodies that attempt to safeguard the 'purity' of a national language would take exception to this, with some small justification, but their efforts are likely to be overwhelmed by the flood of usage which such 'new' words attract among the public at large. Eat it and weep In recent history, it is a fair generalisation to say that loan words being borrowed the world over from two particular languages – English and US English – are counterbalanced by a tide of non-English words flowing in the opposite direction. To simplify still further, loan words originating in the various English-speaking camps tend to relate to business and technology; those going in the opposite direction relate to culture, style and cuisine (the latter word itself being a case in point). If you try to find a suitable English equivalent to saltimbucco, for instance, the damned veal will be overcooked by the time you've thought it up and uttered it aloud (although, oddly, an anglicised version, 'saltimbocca', does exist. Odder still, it's recommended that chicken is used, rather than veal. Something to do with Dr Atkins?). If you have started to wonder where all this is going, fear not: that was just an aperitif ahead of the main course of vital (not vitello) linguistic issues surrounding loan words. Dejitaru debaido If you think you know far too much about everything on this subject to be in any need of reading on, you'll obviously have already understood what the phrase 'dejitaru debaido'* means. If you are Japanese, you are apparently not much more likely to understand it than western folk, even though it's now a Japanese 'word', because research from the National Institute for Japanese Language (NIJL) has included this in its latest list of 33 loan words that, it claims, are often used without any full understanding of their meaning. Put it this way, if you are currently reading this on the 'intaanetto'**, you are probably not on the wrong side of the 'dejitaru debaido'. We're quite familiar with the French taking exception to the import of foreign, especially American/English, words. 'Le weekend' sticks in the throats of many French-speakers, even if the indigenous alternative takes until Sunday lunchtime to spit out. Especially when Saturday's lunch is organised by the Académie Française and includes vol-au-vents, boeuf en croute, tarte tatin and the rest of the items regularly exported as loan words to the rest of the world. More crass, however, was the French refusal to countenance acronyms derived from English: hence ISDN became 'RNIS'. Likewise, imagine the horror when the acronym GSM was appropriated from the original French language working party title to stand instead for 'Global System for Mobile'. In French, that would have been 'SGM' or somesuch. Not so much tarte tatin as tant pis. The situation in Japan, home to the phrase 'dejitaru debaido', is more complex. Although the Japanese borrowed words and an entire written language system ('Kanji' characters) from China about 1,500 years ago, recent practice sees foreign loan words (except those from China) rendered in a different, phonetic system of characters (known as 'Katakana'). Just as, in China from the 1970s, 'pinyin' was designed to render western pronunciation of Chinese words more accurately (this is when Peking/Pékin became 'Beijing' to most westerners), Katakana uses phonetic radicals to reproduce Japanese pronunciation of foreign words and put them into character form. Despite this added link of complexity, the campaign run by the NIJL is not about an erosion of cultural or linguistic values. It is about the fact that words rendered via foreign languages into Katakana are not understood by many Japanese in speech or in writing. The NIJL proposes using new Kanji forms of the approximately 140 loan words which are mis-used or misunderstood by a significant percentage of the population. On its latest list, produced earlier this year, are such gems as 'akauntabiriti'***, 'mobiritii'****, 'botorunekku'***** and 'gabanansu'******. These join old favourites, dating back to the first NIJL list in 2002, such as 'onrain'*******. RSVP In short, what the National Institute for Japanese Language is attempting to achieve is to make the users of jargon, especially in business and technology, actually understand what they are saying or hearing. As this is a cause dear to the heart of Friday's Phrase, I would further recommend that a similar policy be adopted when it comes to same-language jargon, not least 'loan words' migrating from one camp of the English-speaking world to another. And with that, it'sarrigato and bonne nuite. Jim Chalmers * - 'digital divide' ** - 'Internet' *** - 'accountability' **** - 'mobility' ***** - 'bottle neck' ****** - 'governance' ******* - 'online' |
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