Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

On Wed, 4 Sep 2002 10:45:20 -0400, John Cowan <jcowan@...>
wrote:

>There seems to be some evidence that for speakers of a language, there is
>some other specific language that all foreign words are assumed to be in.
>For English, it's French.
>
>A lot more on this at http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/6/6-555.html#1
>
>ObConlang: how do people's conlangs handle foreign words?  Lojban has an
>elaborate mechanism for borrowing (the Lojban idiom is "taking" -- they
>aren't returned) foreign words and applying native prefixes that both make
>them fit Lojban's morphology and give a clue to Lojban-speakers who don't
>recognize the foreign word what it might be about.  Thus cidjrspageti
>is spaghetti, but the prefix "cidj-" reflects Lojban *cidja* 'food'.
Borrowed words in Tirelat (the word used is _mahvanazha_, from _mahva_ "to
imitate") are adapted to Tirelat phonology and treated as nouns, e.g.,
piitsa "pizza". Calques are more common than borrowing: klhagisarhk
"wrench" < German "Schraubenschlüssel", tanigira "peninsula" < German
"Halbinsel", Japanese "hantou". Names of countries often end in -vor, and
the corresponding languages in -lhat: ingglavor "England", ingglalhat
"English language"; frangsevor "France", frangselhat "French language";
svenskavor "Sweden", svenskalhat "Swedish language". Other place names are
borrowed without any particular ending: nu-djyrzi "New Jersey", pahii
"Paris (France)", peidzing "Beijing".

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