It seems that words from English are flooding into just about every language these days. Governments and official organizations charged with preserving the culture and language of their own people are trying as hard as they can to put a stop to it. The following news item illustrates such an attempt at keeping English words out:

TEHRAN, Iran (July 29, 2006)–Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as “pizzas”, which will now be known as “elastic loaves”. –Associated Press.

The problem, as seen by the Iranian leaders, is that foreign words are used too often in Persian. People are using non-Persian words, even though one can always make a native Persian word out of native word parts to express the same meaning. So, the leaders order a fix: replace the foreign word with a newly-created native word, and make official bodies use it. The idea is that hopefully, ordinary speakers will soon follow suit, once they hear the new native word.
However, what usually happens in these cases is that people continue to use the foreign word. In fact, by the time the authorities recognize that people are using the “wrong” word, it is probably already so prevalent that it is no longer felt by speakers as “foreign”. Such words are called loanwords, words used so often that they now are part of the vocabulary, or conventional word stock, of the language adopting the new word.

Once a word has gained currency as a loanword, and is no longer simply a little-known foreign word, it is typically already modified to some degree to fit into the native sound structure and grammar of the adopting language. For example, the plural form of loanwords is often a usual plural formation of the adopting language, and not the plural form of the source language. The longer the word has been in the adopting language and the more it is used, the more likely it is to take on the native plural morphology and other characteristics of the adopting language. The plural of English memorandum, for example, was for a while memoranda, when the people who used the word knew the original Latin plural form. But now many or most people would say or write memorandums. Likewise, the vowels in the word are now completely anglicized. The most obvious case of this is the third vowel, which would have been pronounced like a short “ah” sound in Latin. But in Modern English, it is now a quite different-sounding a-sound, namely the “ae” of English apple.

Why do people prefer to use a loanword instead of using a native word? There are various reasons. Often the loanword names a kind of thing new to the culture of the adopting language. This is the case for pizza in Iran. And in the case of such cultural novelties, the loanword arrives right along with the new thing. So the new word gets established before there is any made-up (and thus non-conventional) native equivalent, and by then it is too late for the native word to supplant the loanword. Linguistic convention, like any convention, is an extremely strong force.

In some cases, there is already an existing native word in the language that adopts the loanword, with a meaning that seems to be the same or ‘close enough’ to the loanword to justify using the native word. And yet people still use the loanword.

A case like this can be seen in present-day French, in which there is a compound word fin de semaine which means something like ‘weekend’. And yet, there is also a loanword from English, le weekend. Both terms are used. When we look closely, it turns out that a weekend in French is not the same as a fin de semaine. Le weekend is a time for leisure, travel, entertainment, and relaxation. It is a cultural feature of modern life, based on the usual practices of the labor force, which is allowed to stop working on Friday afternoon (sometimes earlier) until the following Monday morning. The fin de semaine, on the other hand, is just a descriptive term, without any of the cultural overtones of le weekend which are essential to the nature of the category.

It is probably always true that a new loanword always brings something new to the language–a new cultural category, however similar it may at first seem to an existing category. In this way, English acquired many “synonyms”, actually near-synonyms, such as fatherly and paternal, royal and regal, and lovely and beautiful.

It is often the case that a whole parade of loanwords from a single language comes into another language during a particular period. Whenever a language has some perceived cultural advantages, it becomes a frequent source of loanwords. This has happened time and again in history. Latin and Greek were languages from which other languages borrowed in ancient times, and indeed up to the present. French was a source of loanwords in all the European languages for centuries, and still serves as a loanword language to a certain extent. Arabic has deeply influenced many languages from other linguistic families, from the languages of Africa to languages of the Caucasus, including many in between, notably Turkish and Persian itself.

In the case of English, the vast extent of its worldwide cultural influence and importance cannot be denied. Much of the worldwide media and entertainment industries, which spread popular cultural influence, are conducted in English. The economic, political, and military power of the the U.S. and to a lesser extent Britain, is also a factor. Because of the current ascendency of these English-speaking countries, people in many other countries are learning English as fast as they can, and this increases the influence of English still more. As a result of these factors, many languages are in the middle of a period of absorbing large waves of loanwords from English.

Whatever an individual speaker’s precise motivation for using a loanword instead of a corresponding native word at a given time, such reasons add up and create a powerful force for using loanwords from important or ‘high prestige’ languages. English is currently in the position of being such a language. For many people, it represents modernity, change, and a break with parochialism.

The authorities may try to stop the influx, but it is like trying to hold back the sea. As long as English is the most important language on the planet, it will be the source of many, many loanwords around the world. If it is any comfort, such ‘top-dog’ status can change in a couple of generations. Perhaps the next major source of loanwords in the world will be Mandarin Chinese.