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"Inside the walls?" I took it out, as well as with the preceding phrase, which may or may not have been vandalism; for "inside the walls" I think it's too long of a stretch from intramuros to downtown- in fact, I have never heard the term "inside the walls" used quite like that.
As for the other one, I'm pretty sure it's self explanatory.
Piotr
"English breakfast calques French déjeuner (which now means lunch)" Déjeuner needs to be parsed so that we understand that a "fast" is being "broken"? Is it, in fact? If not, then it's not a calque. Fancy terms need accurate examples. Wetman 20:14, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This is not a calque. If it were, the French would be rompe-jeûne* or something similar, or, as Iopq says, the English would be "defast"*, "unfast"* (or "disfast"*, even). — 217.46.147.13 ( talk) 16:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I played around with the structure of the article a bit--I thought it would be more logical to group calques by language rather than by part of speech. Hopefully we'll be able to come up with calques in languages other than English (I checked out the calque page in the French Wikipedia and found it to be unhelpful). Psp 05:21, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have to say that this entry is a bit confusing. It's not clear from the examples gathered if a calque is a word that's translated literally but then takes on a different meaning, or one that's translated literally but used for a different meaning or used for the same meaning.
As I understand it, the definition could be rewritten more clearly thusly: 1. In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is the borrowing of a phrase from a foreign language by the literal translation of the original word or phrase. The new word or phrase may retain the original meaning or evolve to have a different meaning.
The examples given are questionable or unclear. Not being a liguist (in either French, German, Spanish or Hebrew) I can't judge the veracity of the examples, but I have never heard that breakfast evolved from dejeuner (I always thought the meaning was literal) and I need an explanation of how the French word for pomegranate evolved into 'Adam's apple'. How empathy (a Latin word.. or is it Greek?) comes from the German Einfühlung is beyond me, especially since Einfühlung is not a particularly common German word. The connection between Commonwealth and Res publica is also unclear (publica=common and res=thing=wealth??). Is this really the result of a literal translation or is it a native English derivation?
Finally, if I really do understand the definition of calque correctly, I will offer one in German: Wolkenkratzer from skyscraper. [-- anon]
Does this really belong here?
Is tankki really a calque, isn't it a loanword?
Quoth the article:
Is that really a calque from Chinese? How much contact have the Finnish had with the Chinese? It seems much more plausible that "aivopesu" calques the English "brainwash"—what the English word happens to do would be irrelevant. — Felix the Cassowary 12:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Empathy is a greek word which was used before germans were historically relvant. Therefore I removed it. -- Gigantas 10:38, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Presumably, whoever originally cited "empathy" as a calque of the German Einfühlung got the directionality backwards, and intended to say that the German word is a calque of the Greek original (Ein - fühlung = em - pathy = "in feeling") Throbert McGee 01:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I added one because in Ukrainian there are a lot of calques from Russian. Can someone add more?
The element "chop" in the Chinese examples came from imitating the pronunciation of an actual Chinese word (tsap). I took "chop chop" and "chopsticks" out and left the true calques. -- Cam 13:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Eh? Funny indenting, there. Anyway, most of the entries look OK to me. I removed one false entry. -- Kjoon lee 05:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that it would be useful to include one of the most famous examples of loanwords from Latin - gospel (Old English 'godspell', literally good news" from Latin evangelium.
Don't calques require more literal translations than that?
72.83.108.40 (
talk)
21:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I checked Dictionary.com because I was confused as to whether this was Latin or Greek, which what the article says it is. Greek is correct, so I created a new section, "From other languages," below, in which to discuss this one. 68.84.215.58 ( talk) 07:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Gospel - If this is a calque, I think the listing needs to include the explanation about it coming from the Old English "godspell", etc., listed above in the "Latin loanwords" section, because when I read the article, I had no idea why that was a calque, as "gospel" is not a compound word made from any two Modern English words. It only made sense when I read the above comment on this talk page.
Also, while the Old English "godspell" may have been a calque of the Greek "evangelion," I don't think that the Modern English corruption "gospel" really counts as a calque. Rather, I think that this is really just an interesting etymological anecdote, because of the fact that the expression "the Good News" is today used to mean the Gospel. 68.84.215.58 ( talk) 07:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't the Ukrainian words be written in the Cyrillic alphabet (as the Russian words are) and not transliterated?
Does anyone know if pourielle is also a calque or is it a french neologisme. It's used here in Manitoba and translates to junk mail(when it's email) so junk e-mail. Any how seeing as how it sounds more like rotten e-mail pu + courielle = pourielle. Does that seem like a calque? Also whoever said weekend is only used in france is wrong, I hear it here all the time, even though it's discouraged, and I would go for fin de semaine being a calque because good grammar would get fin de la semain, but a calque might drop that la since english doesn't use it.
Do we really think merciless is a calque? Wiki Wikardo 02:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
comes via English thought the origin is Gaelic) fr:Lobbying fr:Think tank fr:Spin doctor.... all loans. Man vyi 19:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
EnthusiastFRANCE 20:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)~
EnthusiastFRANCE 08:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
EnthusiastFRANCE 09:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
In English the verb "to storm" also means "to assault" so the two would be synonyms in a millitary context - I'm assuming "assault" can translate "sturm"? My German isn't good enough to answer that question Reynardthefox 18:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I've taken out quite a few non-examples from the German-to-English list:
I suggest that diseases where the name of the disease is adopted as is with the English 'disease' substituted for 'Krankheit', as it must be, is not a loan-translation, but it's certainly arguable. Klippa ( talk) 23:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
More removals:
-- SigPig | SEND - OVER 07:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Isn't French "pellicule (photographique)", Spanish "película (fotográfica)", Portuguese "película (fotográfica)" and Italian "pellicola (fotografica)" calques of (photographic) film, with both words originally referring to skin or hide?
...I removed the following:
There are a few others I'm concerned about, but I won't touch them until I have done further research. Nor will I add any calques I know of until I can find a decent cite (like "captain of industry"). -- SigPig 05:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Webhat 02:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
From the article (Skyscrapers section): Telugu: ""అంబరచుంబితం"" ("aMbaracuMbitaM") appears to be a phonetic. Is there a literal translation? Otherwise, this may be vandalism. Mzmadmike ( talk) 06:27, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
It would be very helpful if both non-Latin character sets and Latin-charset transliterations were used when giving terms in Greek, Chinese, Russian, etc. Without the latter, the non-Latin text is meaningless "noise" to most readers. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 23:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
If someone would like to find sources, I could recommend the sites http://www.etymonline.com , http://www.dictionary.com and http://www.m-w.com . Try to avoid guesswork. 惑乱 分からん 12:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Further explanation is needed with regard to those items under Latin, since it will not at all be evident to the average reader how these are actually calques through deity name substitution, in several cases. The source quoted for Wedenesday actually covers all of them, and the one for Tuesday appears to be a mis-cite, since it does not address "Tuesday" at all. Didn't look at the rest of them. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 19:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I think it's useful to have a few well established examples of calques as well as a few non-calques, but an exhaustive list of calques seems for one to serve little purpose but also to be doomed to failure, considering that there must be 10s of thousands of calques in various languages, probably hundreds in English alone. This is not even taking into account the rather cursory standards of verifiability encountered in most of the etymologies used as sources. OK, a dictionary is cited - where did the dictionary get it from? - a conventional dictionary without citations is not a reliable source for much else besides widely accepted meanings and spelling conventions. Tarchon 01:02, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I removed the following (English calques of German):
The others that got flushed with the revert, I'm putting back in, with either a cite (if I can find one) or a fact tag. -- SigPig | SEND - OVER 05:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there a special word for this concept????
This is for all the phrases in the english language using the name of a foreign country to describe something.
English Phrase using a foreign countries as and adjective for a better formatting see:
http://foreignnames.wikispaces.com/
What they call it in the adjectival country's language What the foreign phrase literally means translated into English Meaning in English Contributor
French kiss
Turkish Delight rahat lokum,
Brazil nuts castanhas-do-Pará chestnuts from Pará",
French Leave
French Polish
Dutch courage
Russian roulette
Turkey
Dutch courage
Spanish fly
La vice anglais: French slang ( argot ) meaning English-vice , sadomasochistic sexual activities involving flagellation.
Greek fire
French windows
Prussian Blue
Eau de Cologne
Danish Blue
Spanish Bowline
Dutch Cap
Swede "kålrot" (cabbage root).
Rusian vine
Scotch mist Scotch Mist refers to a light, steady drizzle, the name being typical of the Scottish penchant for understatement.
Chinese Burn
Maltese cross
The English Disease Jerry Williams
Welsh Rarebit Jerry Williams
Polish Spirit Jerry Williams
Swiss Roll Jerry Williams
Mexican Wave Jerry Williams
China (porcelein) Jerry Williams
Sex is rife with examples: - Mal de Naples French Letters a Brazilian Jerry Williams
Danish pastry Bob Carne
Indian summer Bob Carne
Portuguese Man of War Bob Carne
Sardines? Bob Carne
Eau de Cologne Bob Carne
Venetian blinds BobCarne
Mexican Stand-off Dave Andrews
german shepherd Bob Carne
scotch eggs
Bob Carne
Chinese Whispers Andrew Garside
China syndrome Jerry Williams
Cullinary examples Jerry Williams
Baked Alaska Jerry Williams
Norwegian Omelette Jerry Williams
Spanish Omlette Jerry Williams
French Beans Jerry Williams
Chinese Walls
Yorkshire puddings Bob Carne creme anglais Custard
Russian vine
Yorkshire pudding Yorkshire
Lancashire hotpot
hotpot —Preceding unsigned comment added by Engineman ( talk • contribs) 15:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Even though this expression does sound like the sort that would come from the Chinese language, I do remember reading in a general-interest book that this expression came from Native Americans. If so, then the source I read doesn't agree with the one posted on the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charizardpal ( talk • contribs) 00:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Here is a simple links that support that this phrase is actually a native-american one. Having personally read about this at least once from a printed source, I don't totally trust wikipedia and the internet on the consensus that the phrase is of Chinese origin. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=long
Furthermore, I have just clicked on the reference given by the original author and found a dead link. Therefore I'm going to remove the sentence, although it's interesting, until someone can provide a reputable citation. I'll post the removed section for record here:
Lots of Chinese in the nineteeth century American west; perhaps what the linguistics world needs (or may already have) is a name for the creole that the injuns and the rail workers and the bastard cowboys and everyone else used when they were drinking together in frontier saloons and a-hootin and a-hollerin and whatnot and yippee ki yi yay.
I also rm the following:
I'm not overly comfortable with "pineapple": only cite is a gardener's website; and while I do not deny he may be an expert in that field, it does not make him an expert linguist. None of the dictionaries I checked - Merriam-Webster, AskOxford, Dictionary.com, Online Etymology, Chambers - makes any reference to Dutch. The only reference to a non-English origin that I can find is Robert Hendrickson's The Facts On File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (1997, Checkmark Books, NY, ISBN: 0-8160-4088-5) which says "The Spanish conquistadores named this fruit piña because of its pine-cone shape and the English translated piña to pineapple, which they also called the cones of the pine tree." (p. 527) Word Detective only mentions "Europeans" naming the fruit to an existing English word. -- SigPig | SEND - OVER 15:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Do pidgin phrases really count as calques? They're more a combination of two languages than one language borrowing entirely from another, especially since phrases like "long time no see" didn't exist until such pidgin sprung up.
Additionally, is "long time no see" (most of the Chinese-English pidgin phrases, for that matter) really a calque from Chinese? It's more of a phrase that originated in English out of necessity. 72.83.108.40 ( talk) 21:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Chashmal is not a Hebrew calque of Greek's Electra, and is actually a new twist for an old word found in the book of Prophets to describe a fiery power or substance. I recommend that it be removed from the article. You can see a longer explanation of Chashmal here: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/chashmal.html 24.185.44.84 ( talk) 03:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Despite the given source at etymonline.com, the correct term in german is "Intelligenzquotient" or "Intelligenz-Quotient". -- 80.136.83.143 ( talk) 17:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
"The modern Macedonian language inherits much of its lexicon from Old Church Slavonic. The Saints Cyril and Methodius who developed the language in the 9th century(...)"
This is silly at best. I suggest removal. Rosier ( talk) 18:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Since the English word for burning is "burning", and not "brandy", then brandywine is clearly not a calque. It is just a plain borrowing, respelt using English spelling conventions. TharkunColl ( talk) 19:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
A lot of the examples mentioned under German may not be calques but words that share a common development ("world war," "beer garden," "loan word," "thought experiment," etc.). The compounding process is very similar in English and German and more importantly, both languages share basic idioms and syntatical relationships. It's inevitable then that either identical compound words would appear simultaneously in both languages or the development of a new word in one would be imitated immediately in the other.
What distinguishes a calque from a word of common origin for me is the tendency for a calque have a strangeness to it if one thinks about it literally. This is not the case for most of the words listed under German except perhaps "superman," "antibody," "standpoint," etc. G. Csikos, 26 June 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.245.242.195 ( talk) 23:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree generally (although not specifically with "beer garden", see my comments above in "Is this really the right approach for this article?"). It is possible for phrases in different languages to have a common syntactical basis. For someone bilingual, the natural (or perhaps lazy) way to select a phrase in one language is to use a phrase they already know in another language.
The "strangeness" of a calque is key. It's something beyond the peculiarity of an idiom, because it's an important enough concept in a foreign culture that it's been imported. There's likely a cultural background. An idiom doesn't necessarily have that distinction. Understanding that "beer garden" comes from modern German, one can go to German sources for a comprehensive explanation. An idiom, somewhat oppositely, may have originated within a language; its meaning is likely to become obscured by the passage of time; its original meaning may be unrecoverable or speculative.
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard ( talk) 18:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Chinese vocabulary uses innumeral calques from Greek and other western languages for scientific (ie. hippopotamus, is translated word-for-word as "river horse"), political, and economic words. Should I try to put in some of them? Le Anh-Huy ( talk) 17:21, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
The page says,
"mandag (Monday), from Old Norse mánadagr ("moon day") calques Latin dies lunae.[64] The name of every day of the week, except lørdag (Saturday), are loan-translations from Latin."
This is incorrect. Tuesday through Friday are all from Norse gods.
Tirsdag (Tuesday) is from the god Tyr; onsdag (Wednesday) is from Odin; torsdag (Thursday) is from Tor/Thor; and fredag (Friday) is Frey/Freya.
Whomever is involved in the editing of the page should correct this accordingly. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.66.208.36 ( talk) 00:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
After a quick glance at the article it's pretty clear to me that there needs to be a more in-depth and better-structured page solely dealing with topics like:
and the rest of the content (the long, currently messy list) should be split to List of calques.
Also, this talk page is getting quite hairy, and I can only imagine that most of the questions raised here have been dealt with. Someone who's been watching this article for longer than I have could offer a better assessment. Greg Ravn ( talk) 20:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
This seems like a terrible example to me. Unlike every other item listed on the page, the Chinese phrase has not been adopted into any other language; it has merely been translated in order to explain the joke. – Smyth\ talk 21:55, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's a translation, nothing more. Most straight word-for-word translations are not calques, because the key attribute of a calque, like a loanword, is that it must actually have been adopted into the target language, to the extent of being listed in dictionaries of that language. All the other examples on this page meet this criteria.
"Grass mud horse" does not qualify, because the phrase's entire current life in English and other languages consists of discussions of the original Chinese joke. It has no independent existence from the Chinese phrase. It is not part of any other language, and due to its nature as homophonic pun, probably never will be. Can you find a reliable source indicating that a significant number of regular English speakers are now, in day-to-day communication outside of the context of this joke, using "grass mud horse" as a euphemism for "motherfucker" or "victim of censorship"? If not, it doesn't belong on this list. – Smyth\ talk 16:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
What does "running dog" mean? The link goes to a book! -- 213.130.255.33 ( talk) 22:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't this article have a link to the List of Calques, and vice-versa? -- clahey ( talk) 15:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I distrust the explanation of bienvenue as used in Quebec French. Welcome in English can be used in two contexts, i.e. a) "Welcome to our city (our country, our home)" and b) in the exchange, "Thank you...You're welcome". However, standard French has only the first. (For the second, one would say "De rien" or similar.) It is generally thought that the second usage was introduced into Quebec French by native speakers of English who (incorrectly) used bienvenue in this sense. However, I cannot document this.
I agree. "Bienvenue" doesn't belong, unless we're saying that it was borrowed from English, even though it already existed in French with a different meaning, which isn't likely. This use of "bienvenue" is more accurately called a "loanshift", using the terminology of Einar Haugen (a native word that shifts its meaning as a result of foreign language contact). It would be better off in the Language Contact article, or at least Loanword. 98.236.186.230 ( talk) 04:16, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
It's unclear to me exactly why all these words are calques. What is the original language from which they are calqued? If it is Latin, then the article must state explicitly that translatio is Latin for "translation" (which it doesn't currently). The mother-daughter relationship between Latin and the Romance languages makes these cases especially tricky. Grover cleveland ( talk) 02:41, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
German is full of calques because, at times, Germans have taken pride in avoiding Latin and Greek. Thus "Fernsprecher" where everybody else says telephone and "Mitleidigkeit" for condolence, sympathy. (Since the war Germans have adopted words enthusiastically: "handy" for mobile phone even though they do not usually use the letter y.)
Japanese makes up Chinese words the way we make up Greek ones. Sometimes this gives a calque. "Sekiyuu" is written with two Chinese characters. The first is used on its own for the word ishi, stone, but seki in compounds; the second is abura, oil on its own but yuu in compounds. So sekiyuu is stone-oil - petroleum. Since the war they have borrowed words so now they say gasorin and write it phonetically.
Bukovets ( talk) 15:08, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
So, um, wtf, people? A 13k article with a 70k talk page?? Only in linguistics. :D Anyways, the section that talks about the word "translation" seems to state that it both is and is not a calque. The first line says its derived from translatio, but it is also listed as a word calqued from traducere. So which is it? Eaglizard ( talk) 02:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
The previous sentence is incorrect. Both of the phrases noted are standard english and there is no indication in any source anywhere that they are calqued from french sources. This is an example of why Wikipedia is absurd -- things go unchallenged because some dumbass thinks he can get away with it, and no one else cares. In other words CITATION NEEDED.
Above comment by User:207.237.88.130 User talk207.237.88.130 moved here from the article. Mcewan ( talk) 07:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
As far as the descriptions and examples go, these are pretty much the same thing, it seems. I see no difference in nature between "flea market" > Dutch "vlooienmarkt" and "skyscraper" > Dutch "wolkenkrabber". The article claims that the latter is a loan translation while the former is a phraseological calque. The latter, however, isn't a perfect calque because it means "cloudscraper" not "skyscraper". CodeCat ( talk) 17:49, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I think an example should be given in the first example. The examples in the second paragraph are too meta/recursive to help. - Reagle ( talk) 19:28, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
It's a noun-noun compound, that just happens to be written as two words because of English spelling rules. It's not a phrase, syntactically. So there should be a more appropriate example for phraseological calques. Rua ( mew) 15:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Loppmarknad, but no such page there . Xx236 ( talk) 08:08, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Calaq. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed, Rosguill talk 21:14, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
When language X directly borrow a word from language A and same time semantic loaned directly from language B, what the term for this situation? Rex Aurorum ( talk) 19:49, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
Everything from “ The Latin word translātiō ("a transferring")… ” on in the meat of the article seems tacked on like something a student would do to fluff out their word count.
It goes for three paragraphs describing the etymology of various languages’ adoptions of two forms of “translate” in Latin, and ultimately concludes that none of them are calques.
While this seems superficially relevant, there’s no indication that anyone would think “translation” is a calque, so there’s no reason to do three paragraphs worth of text to explain that something isn’t what nobody thought it was.
It’s sort of like if the article on Elvis ended with several paragraphs explaining why he can’t possibly secretly be alive and pretending to be Obama. Sure, it’s true, and I guess it’s Elvis related, but... nobody thought that, you know? 2601:1C2:5000:1472:D94D:40C7:4731:A8DD ( talk) 11:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
English 39.38.189.56 ( talk) 11:06, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
I can't seem to determine the actual source used in references #10, #12, and #13, which all show a variation of:
"[ ... ] listed in the 3:30, 12 September 2020 edition of the "Calque" article."
Does anyone know what source material these are referencing? Search engine results limited to the date 9/12/2020 for articles named "Calque" did not uncover an answer for me and I'm very interested in referencing the original material cited several times in this Wiki.
Evdevreed (
talk)
20:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
@ Nardog: As has been mentioned before on this talk page there is a long and pointless discussion at the end of the article about the Latin word "translātiō" and the English word "translate" and how it infact isn't a calque. I don't see any reason for it being here other than taking up space in the article. Unless you can give a good reason why it should stay I think it should be removed. FishandChipper 🐟 🍟 07:19, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
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"Inside the walls?" I took it out, as well as with the preceding phrase, which may or may not have been vandalism; for "inside the walls" I think it's too long of a stretch from intramuros to downtown- in fact, I have never heard the term "inside the walls" used quite like that.
As for the other one, I'm pretty sure it's self explanatory.
Piotr
"English breakfast calques French déjeuner (which now means lunch)" Déjeuner needs to be parsed so that we understand that a "fast" is being "broken"? Is it, in fact? If not, then it's not a calque. Fancy terms need accurate examples. Wetman 20:14, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This is not a calque. If it were, the French would be rompe-jeûne* or something similar, or, as Iopq says, the English would be "defast"*, "unfast"* (or "disfast"*, even). — 217.46.147.13 ( talk) 16:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I played around with the structure of the article a bit--I thought it would be more logical to group calques by language rather than by part of speech. Hopefully we'll be able to come up with calques in languages other than English (I checked out the calque page in the French Wikipedia and found it to be unhelpful). Psp 05:21, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have to say that this entry is a bit confusing. It's not clear from the examples gathered if a calque is a word that's translated literally but then takes on a different meaning, or one that's translated literally but used for a different meaning or used for the same meaning.
As I understand it, the definition could be rewritten more clearly thusly: 1. In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is the borrowing of a phrase from a foreign language by the literal translation of the original word or phrase. The new word or phrase may retain the original meaning or evolve to have a different meaning.
The examples given are questionable or unclear. Not being a liguist (in either French, German, Spanish or Hebrew) I can't judge the veracity of the examples, but I have never heard that breakfast evolved from dejeuner (I always thought the meaning was literal) and I need an explanation of how the French word for pomegranate evolved into 'Adam's apple'. How empathy (a Latin word.. or is it Greek?) comes from the German Einfühlung is beyond me, especially since Einfühlung is not a particularly common German word. The connection between Commonwealth and Res publica is also unclear (publica=common and res=thing=wealth??). Is this really the result of a literal translation or is it a native English derivation?
Finally, if I really do understand the definition of calque correctly, I will offer one in German: Wolkenkratzer from skyscraper. [-- anon]
Does this really belong here?
Is tankki really a calque, isn't it a loanword?
Quoth the article:
Is that really a calque from Chinese? How much contact have the Finnish had with the Chinese? It seems much more plausible that "aivopesu" calques the English "brainwash"—what the English word happens to do would be irrelevant. — Felix the Cassowary 12:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Empathy is a greek word which was used before germans were historically relvant. Therefore I removed it. -- Gigantas 10:38, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Presumably, whoever originally cited "empathy" as a calque of the German Einfühlung got the directionality backwards, and intended to say that the German word is a calque of the Greek original (Ein - fühlung = em - pathy = "in feeling") Throbert McGee 01:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I added one because in Ukrainian there are a lot of calques from Russian. Can someone add more?
The element "chop" in the Chinese examples came from imitating the pronunciation of an actual Chinese word (tsap). I took "chop chop" and "chopsticks" out and left the true calques. -- Cam 13:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Eh? Funny indenting, there. Anyway, most of the entries look OK to me. I removed one false entry. -- Kjoon lee 05:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that it would be useful to include one of the most famous examples of loanwords from Latin - gospel (Old English 'godspell', literally good news" from Latin evangelium.
Don't calques require more literal translations than that?
72.83.108.40 (
talk)
21:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I checked Dictionary.com because I was confused as to whether this was Latin or Greek, which what the article says it is. Greek is correct, so I created a new section, "From other languages," below, in which to discuss this one. 68.84.215.58 ( talk) 07:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Gospel - If this is a calque, I think the listing needs to include the explanation about it coming from the Old English "godspell", etc., listed above in the "Latin loanwords" section, because when I read the article, I had no idea why that was a calque, as "gospel" is not a compound word made from any two Modern English words. It only made sense when I read the above comment on this talk page.
Also, while the Old English "godspell" may have been a calque of the Greek "evangelion," I don't think that the Modern English corruption "gospel" really counts as a calque. Rather, I think that this is really just an interesting etymological anecdote, because of the fact that the expression "the Good News" is today used to mean the Gospel. 68.84.215.58 ( talk) 07:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't the Ukrainian words be written in the Cyrillic alphabet (as the Russian words are) and not transliterated?
Does anyone know if pourielle is also a calque or is it a french neologisme. It's used here in Manitoba and translates to junk mail(when it's email) so junk e-mail. Any how seeing as how it sounds more like rotten e-mail pu + courielle = pourielle. Does that seem like a calque? Also whoever said weekend is only used in france is wrong, I hear it here all the time, even though it's discouraged, and I would go for fin de semaine being a calque because good grammar would get fin de la semain, but a calque might drop that la since english doesn't use it.
Do we really think merciless is a calque? Wiki Wikardo 02:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
comes via English thought the origin is Gaelic) fr:Lobbying fr:Think tank fr:Spin doctor.... all loans. Man vyi 19:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
EnthusiastFRANCE 20:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)~
EnthusiastFRANCE 08:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
EnthusiastFRANCE 09:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
In English the verb "to storm" also means "to assault" so the two would be synonyms in a millitary context - I'm assuming "assault" can translate "sturm"? My German isn't good enough to answer that question Reynardthefox 18:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I've taken out quite a few non-examples from the German-to-English list:
I suggest that diseases where the name of the disease is adopted as is with the English 'disease' substituted for 'Krankheit', as it must be, is not a loan-translation, but it's certainly arguable. Klippa ( talk) 23:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
More removals:
-- SigPig | SEND - OVER 07:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
Isn't French "pellicule (photographique)", Spanish "película (fotográfica)", Portuguese "película (fotográfica)" and Italian "pellicola (fotografica)" calques of (photographic) film, with both words originally referring to skin or hide?
...I removed the following:
There are a few others I'm concerned about, but I won't touch them until I have done further research. Nor will I add any calques I know of until I can find a decent cite (like "captain of industry"). -- SigPig 05:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Webhat 02:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
From the article (Skyscrapers section): Telugu: ""అంబరచుంబితం"" ("aMbaracuMbitaM") appears to be a phonetic. Is there a literal translation? Otherwise, this may be vandalism. Mzmadmike ( talk) 06:27, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
It would be very helpful if both non-Latin character sets and Latin-charset transliterations were used when giving terms in Greek, Chinese, Russian, etc. Without the latter, the non-Latin text is meaningless "noise" to most readers. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 23:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
If someone would like to find sources, I could recommend the sites http://www.etymonline.com , http://www.dictionary.com and http://www.m-w.com . Try to avoid guesswork. 惑乱 分からん 12:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Further explanation is needed with regard to those items under Latin, since it will not at all be evident to the average reader how these are actually calques through deity name substitution, in several cases. The source quoted for Wedenesday actually covers all of them, and the one for Tuesday appears to be a mis-cite, since it does not address "Tuesday" at all. Didn't look at the rest of them. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 19:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I think it's useful to have a few well established examples of calques as well as a few non-calques, but an exhaustive list of calques seems for one to serve little purpose but also to be doomed to failure, considering that there must be 10s of thousands of calques in various languages, probably hundreds in English alone. This is not even taking into account the rather cursory standards of verifiability encountered in most of the etymologies used as sources. OK, a dictionary is cited - where did the dictionary get it from? - a conventional dictionary without citations is not a reliable source for much else besides widely accepted meanings and spelling conventions. Tarchon 01:02, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I removed the following (English calques of German):
The others that got flushed with the revert, I'm putting back in, with either a cite (if I can find one) or a fact tag. -- SigPig | SEND - OVER 05:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there a special word for this concept????
This is for all the phrases in the english language using the name of a foreign country to describe something.
English Phrase using a foreign countries as and adjective for a better formatting see:
http://foreignnames.wikispaces.com/
What they call it in the adjectival country's language What the foreign phrase literally means translated into English Meaning in English Contributor
French kiss
Turkish Delight rahat lokum,
Brazil nuts castanhas-do-Pará chestnuts from Pará",
French Leave
French Polish
Dutch courage
Russian roulette
Turkey
Dutch courage
Spanish fly
La vice anglais: French slang ( argot ) meaning English-vice , sadomasochistic sexual activities involving flagellation.
Greek fire
French windows
Prussian Blue
Eau de Cologne
Danish Blue
Spanish Bowline
Dutch Cap
Swede "kålrot" (cabbage root).
Rusian vine
Scotch mist Scotch Mist refers to a light, steady drizzle, the name being typical of the Scottish penchant for understatement.
Chinese Burn
Maltese cross
The English Disease Jerry Williams
Welsh Rarebit Jerry Williams
Polish Spirit Jerry Williams
Swiss Roll Jerry Williams
Mexican Wave Jerry Williams
China (porcelein) Jerry Williams
Sex is rife with examples: - Mal de Naples French Letters a Brazilian Jerry Williams
Danish pastry Bob Carne
Indian summer Bob Carne
Portuguese Man of War Bob Carne
Sardines? Bob Carne
Eau de Cologne Bob Carne
Venetian blinds BobCarne
Mexican Stand-off Dave Andrews
german shepherd Bob Carne
scotch eggs
Bob Carne
Chinese Whispers Andrew Garside
China syndrome Jerry Williams
Cullinary examples Jerry Williams
Baked Alaska Jerry Williams
Norwegian Omelette Jerry Williams
Spanish Omlette Jerry Williams
French Beans Jerry Williams
Chinese Walls
Yorkshire puddings Bob Carne creme anglais Custard
Russian vine
Yorkshire pudding Yorkshire
Lancashire hotpot
hotpot —Preceding unsigned comment added by Engineman ( talk • contribs) 15:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Even though this expression does sound like the sort that would come from the Chinese language, I do remember reading in a general-interest book that this expression came from Native Americans. If so, then the source I read doesn't agree with the one posted on the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charizardpal ( talk • contribs) 00:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Here is a simple links that support that this phrase is actually a native-american one. Having personally read about this at least once from a printed source, I don't totally trust wikipedia and the internet on the consensus that the phrase is of Chinese origin. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=long
Furthermore, I have just clicked on the reference given by the original author and found a dead link. Therefore I'm going to remove the sentence, although it's interesting, until someone can provide a reputable citation. I'll post the removed section for record here:
Lots of Chinese in the nineteeth century American west; perhaps what the linguistics world needs (or may already have) is a name for the creole that the injuns and the rail workers and the bastard cowboys and everyone else used when they were drinking together in frontier saloons and a-hootin and a-hollerin and whatnot and yippee ki yi yay.
I also rm the following:
I'm not overly comfortable with "pineapple": only cite is a gardener's website; and while I do not deny he may be an expert in that field, it does not make him an expert linguist. None of the dictionaries I checked - Merriam-Webster, AskOxford, Dictionary.com, Online Etymology, Chambers - makes any reference to Dutch. The only reference to a non-English origin that I can find is Robert Hendrickson's The Facts On File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (1997, Checkmark Books, NY, ISBN: 0-8160-4088-5) which says "The Spanish conquistadores named this fruit piña because of its pine-cone shape and the English translated piña to pineapple, which they also called the cones of the pine tree." (p. 527) Word Detective only mentions "Europeans" naming the fruit to an existing English word. -- SigPig | SEND - OVER 15:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Do pidgin phrases really count as calques? They're more a combination of two languages than one language borrowing entirely from another, especially since phrases like "long time no see" didn't exist until such pidgin sprung up.
Additionally, is "long time no see" (most of the Chinese-English pidgin phrases, for that matter) really a calque from Chinese? It's more of a phrase that originated in English out of necessity. 72.83.108.40 ( talk) 21:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Chashmal is not a Hebrew calque of Greek's Electra, and is actually a new twist for an old word found in the book of Prophets to describe a fiery power or substance. I recommend that it be removed from the article. You can see a longer explanation of Chashmal here: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/chashmal.html 24.185.44.84 ( talk) 03:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Despite the given source at etymonline.com, the correct term in german is "Intelligenzquotient" or "Intelligenz-Quotient". -- 80.136.83.143 ( talk) 17:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
"The modern Macedonian language inherits much of its lexicon from Old Church Slavonic. The Saints Cyril and Methodius who developed the language in the 9th century(...)"
This is silly at best. I suggest removal. Rosier ( talk) 18:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Since the English word for burning is "burning", and not "brandy", then brandywine is clearly not a calque. It is just a plain borrowing, respelt using English spelling conventions. TharkunColl ( talk) 19:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
A lot of the examples mentioned under German may not be calques but words that share a common development ("world war," "beer garden," "loan word," "thought experiment," etc.). The compounding process is very similar in English and German and more importantly, both languages share basic idioms and syntatical relationships. It's inevitable then that either identical compound words would appear simultaneously in both languages or the development of a new word in one would be imitated immediately in the other.
What distinguishes a calque from a word of common origin for me is the tendency for a calque have a strangeness to it if one thinks about it literally. This is not the case for most of the words listed under German except perhaps "superman," "antibody," "standpoint," etc. G. Csikos, 26 June 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.245.242.195 ( talk) 23:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree generally (although not specifically with "beer garden", see my comments above in "Is this really the right approach for this article?"). It is possible for phrases in different languages to have a common syntactical basis. For someone bilingual, the natural (or perhaps lazy) way to select a phrase in one language is to use a phrase they already know in another language.
The "strangeness" of a calque is key. It's something beyond the peculiarity of an idiom, because it's an important enough concept in a foreign culture that it's been imported. There's likely a cultural background. An idiom doesn't necessarily have that distinction. Understanding that "beer garden" comes from modern German, one can go to German sources for a comprehensive explanation. An idiom, somewhat oppositely, may have originated within a language; its meaning is likely to become obscured by the passage of time; its original meaning may be unrecoverable or speculative.
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard ( talk) 18:00, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Chinese vocabulary uses innumeral calques from Greek and other western languages for scientific (ie. hippopotamus, is translated word-for-word as "river horse"), political, and economic words. Should I try to put in some of them? Le Anh-Huy ( talk) 17:21, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
The page says,
"mandag (Monday), from Old Norse mánadagr ("moon day") calques Latin dies lunae.[64] The name of every day of the week, except lørdag (Saturday), are loan-translations from Latin."
This is incorrect. Tuesday through Friday are all from Norse gods.
Tirsdag (Tuesday) is from the god Tyr; onsdag (Wednesday) is from Odin; torsdag (Thursday) is from Tor/Thor; and fredag (Friday) is Frey/Freya.
Whomever is involved in the editing of the page should correct this accordingly. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.66.208.36 ( talk) 00:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
After a quick glance at the article it's pretty clear to me that there needs to be a more in-depth and better-structured page solely dealing with topics like:
and the rest of the content (the long, currently messy list) should be split to List of calques.
Also, this talk page is getting quite hairy, and I can only imagine that most of the questions raised here have been dealt with. Someone who's been watching this article for longer than I have could offer a better assessment. Greg Ravn ( talk) 20:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
This seems like a terrible example to me. Unlike every other item listed on the page, the Chinese phrase has not been adopted into any other language; it has merely been translated in order to explain the joke. – Smyth\ talk 21:55, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's a translation, nothing more. Most straight word-for-word translations are not calques, because the key attribute of a calque, like a loanword, is that it must actually have been adopted into the target language, to the extent of being listed in dictionaries of that language. All the other examples on this page meet this criteria.
"Grass mud horse" does not qualify, because the phrase's entire current life in English and other languages consists of discussions of the original Chinese joke. It has no independent existence from the Chinese phrase. It is not part of any other language, and due to its nature as homophonic pun, probably never will be. Can you find a reliable source indicating that a significant number of regular English speakers are now, in day-to-day communication outside of the context of this joke, using "grass mud horse" as a euphemism for "motherfucker" or "victim of censorship"? If not, it doesn't belong on this list. – Smyth\ talk 16:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
What does "running dog" mean? The link goes to a book! -- 213.130.255.33 ( talk) 22:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't this article have a link to the List of Calques, and vice-versa? -- clahey ( talk) 15:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I distrust the explanation of bienvenue as used in Quebec French. Welcome in English can be used in two contexts, i.e. a) "Welcome to our city (our country, our home)" and b) in the exchange, "Thank you...You're welcome". However, standard French has only the first. (For the second, one would say "De rien" or similar.) It is generally thought that the second usage was introduced into Quebec French by native speakers of English who (incorrectly) used bienvenue in this sense. However, I cannot document this.
I agree. "Bienvenue" doesn't belong, unless we're saying that it was borrowed from English, even though it already existed in French with a different meaning, which isn't likely. This use of "bienvenue" is more accurately called a "loanshift", using the terminology of Einar Haugen (a native word that shifts its meaning as a result of foreign language contact). It would be better off in the Language Contact article, or at least Loanword. 98.236.186.230 ( talk) 04:16, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
It's unclear to me exactly why all these words are calques. What is the original language from which they are calqued? If it is Latin, then the article must state explicitly that translatio is Latin for "translation" (which it doesn't currently). The mother-daughter relationship between Latin and the Romance languages makes these cases especially tricky. Grover cleveland ( talk) 02:41, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
German is full of calques because, at times, Germans have taken pride in avoiding Latin and Greek. Thus "Fernsprecher" where everybody else says telephone and "Mitleidigkeit" for condolence, sympathy. (Since the war Germans have adopted words enthusiastically: "handy" for mobile phone even though they do not usually use the letter y.)
Japanese makes up Chinese words the way we make up Greek ones. Sometimes this gives a calque. "Sekiyuu" is written with two Chinese characters. The first is used on its own for the word ishi, stone, but seki in compounds; the second is abura, oil on its own but yuu in compounds. So sekiyuu is stone-oil - petroleum. Since the war they have borrowed words so now they say gasorin and write it phonetically.
Bukovets ( talk) 15:08, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
So, um, wtf, people? A 13k article with a 70k talk page?? Only in linguistics. :D Anyways, the section that talks about the word "translation" seems to state that it both is and is not a calque. The first line says its derived from translatio, but it is also listed as a word calqued from traducere. So which is it? Eaglizard ( talk) 02:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
The previous sentence is incorrect. Both of the phrases noted are standard english and there is no indication in any source anywhere that they are calqued from french sources. This is an example of why Wikipedia is absurd -- things go unchallenged because some dumbass thinks he can get away with it, and no one else cares. In other words CITATION NEEDED.
Above comment by User:207.237.88.130 User talk207.237.88.130 moved here from the article. Mcewan ( talk) 07:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
As far as the descriptions and examples go, these are pretty much the same thing, it seems. I see no difference in nature between "flea market" > Dutch "vlooienmarkt" and "skyscraper" > Dutch "wolkenkrabber". The article claims that the latter is a loan translation while the former is a phraseological calque. The latter, however, isn't a perfect calque because it means "cloudscraper" not "skyscraper". CodeCat ( talk) 17:49, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I think an example should be given in the first example. The examples in the second paragraph are too meta/recursive to help. - Reagle ( talk) 19:28, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
It's a noun-noun compound, that just happens to be written as two words because of English spelling rules. It's not a phrase, syntactically. So there should be a more appropriate example for phraseological calques. Rua ( mew) 15:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Loppmarknad, but no such page there . Xx236 ( talk) 08:08, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Calaq. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed, Rosguill talk 21:14, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
When language X directly borrow a word from language A and same time semantic loaned directly from language B, what the term for this situation? Rex Aurorum ( talk) 19:49, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
Everything from “ The Latin word translātiō ("a transferring")… ” on in the meat of the article seems tacked on like something a student would do to fluff out their word count.
It goes for three paragraphs describing the etymology of various languages’ adoptions of two forms of “translate” in Latin, and ultimately concludes that none of them are calques.
While this seems superficially relevant, there’s no indication that anyone would think “translation” is a calque, so there’s no reason to do three paragraphs worth of text to explain that something isn’t what nobody thought it was.
It’s sort of like if the article on Elvis ended with several paragraphs explaining why he can’t possibly secretly be alive and pretending to be Obama. Sure, it’s true, and I guess it’s Elvis related, but... nobody thought that, you know? 2601:1C2:5000:1472:D94D:40C7:4731:A8DD ( talk) 11:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
English 39.38.189.56 ( talk) 11:06, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
I can't seem to determine the actual source used in references #10, #12, and #13, which all show a variation of:
"[ ... ] listed in the 3:30, 12 September 2020 edition of the "Calque" article."
Does anyone know what source material these are referencing? Search engine results limited to the date 9/12/2020 for articles named "Calque" did not uncover an answer for me and I'm very interested in referencing the original material cited several times in this Wiki.
Evdevreed (
talk)
20:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
@ Nardog: As has been mentioned before on this talk page there is a long and pointless discussion at the end of the article about the Latin word "translātiō" and the English word "translate" and how it infact isn't a calque. I don't see any reason for it being here other than taking up space in the article. Unless you can give a good reason why it should stay I think it should be removed. FishandChipper 🐟 🍟 07:19, 26 July 2022 (UTC)