USAGE: Borrowing (was: I'm back, sort of)
From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
Date: | Friday, September 26, 2003, 10:50 |
Nik Taylor scripsit:
> No, no, it's not the life -> raifu that surprised me. Raifu is
> perfectly normal as an adaptation of "life", but it's the fact that it
> was adapted at all that's depressing. :-)
Well, fine. English has a word for "life" too, and yet we found it
worthwhile borrowing the phrase "elan vital", even though it's only the
"elan" that lacks a clearcut native equivalent. If "campus life"
looks like a sufficiently foreign concept, it's not exactly surprising
that the expression for it should be borrowed, even if it's a phrase
in the language borrowed from.
--
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with a Morgul-knife that remains in the http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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