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Encyclopedia > Calques

In linguistics, a calque (pronounced [kælk]) or loan translation (itself a calque of German Lehnübersetzung) is a phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word translation. Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ...


The word is also used as a verb: to calque means to loan translate from another language to create a new lexeme in the target language. Definition A lexeme is a unit of linguistic analysis. ...

Contents

English

Calques from French

  • English breakfast calques French déjeuner (which now means lunch).
  • English forget-me-not calques French ne m'oubliez pas
  • English Governor-General calques French gouverneur général
  • English free verse calques French vers libre
  • English old guard calques French Vieille Garde (the imperial guard of Napoleon I)
  • English Adam's apple calques French pomme d'Adam, meaning pomegranate (which in turn was influenced by Arabic rummāna)
  • English flea market calques French marché aux puces

Breakfast is a meal, often light, usually eaten in the morning. ... Lunch is a meal that is taken at noon or in the early afternoon. ... Species about 50 The Forget-me-nots are the genus Myosotis of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. ... Governor-General (or Governor General) is a term used both historically and currently to designate the appointed representative of a head of state or their government for a particular territory, historically in a colonial context, but no longer necessarily in that form. ... Free verse (or vers libre) is a style of poetry that is based on cadences that are more irregular than those of traditional poetic meter. ... Free verse (or vers libre) is a style of poetry that is based on cadences that are more irregular than those of traditional poetic meter. ... The human larynx rests in a frame of cartilage bound by ligaments and muscle. ... Species L. Balf. ... A flea market is a place where vendors come to sell their goods. ...

Calques from German

Superman, nicknamed The Man of Steel, is a fictional character and superhero who first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938 and eventually became the most popular comic book hero of all time. ... In Thus spake Zarathustra (in German, Also sprach Zarathustra), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explains the steps through which man can become an Übermensch: By his will to power, manifested destructively in the rejection of, and rebellion against, old ideals and moral codes; By his will to power, manifested creatively... A world view, also spelled as worldview is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung (look onto the world). The German word is also in wide use in English, as well as the translated form world outlook. ... Schematic of antibody binding to an antigen An antibody is a protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects like bacteria and viruses. ... In philosophy, physics, and other fields, a thought experiment (from the German Gedankenexperiment) is an attempt to solve a problem using the power of human imagination. ... A beer garden (or in the German language, Biergarten) is an open-air drinking establishment that originated in Bavaria, where beer gardens in general are distinguished from traditional beer gardens today. ...

Calques from Latin

  • English commonplace calques Latin locus commūnis (referring to a generally applicable literary passage), which itself is a calque of Greek koinos topos
  • English devil's advocate calques Latin advocātus diabolī, referring to an official appointed to present arguments against a proposed canonization or beatification in the Catholic Church
  • English dog days calques Latin diēs canīculāris
  • English wisdom tooth calques Latin dēns sapientiae
  • English vicious circle calques Latin circulus vitiōsus
  • English Milky Way calques Latin via lactea

During the Renaissance (especially in England), commonplaces (or commonplace books) were for some people a popular way to compile knowledge, usually done by writing information into books. ... Formerly, during the canonization process by the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith (Latin Promotor Fidei), or Devils Advocate (Latin advocatus diaboli), was a canon lawyer appointed by the Church to argue against the canonization of the proposed candidate. ... The Dog Days are the period from three weeks before to three weeks after the star Sirius, the Dog Star, and the Sun are aligned. ... Wisdom teeth are third molars that usually appear between the ages of 18 and 20 (although they may appear when older, or fail to appear at all). ... The term vicious circle has the following meanings: Circular logic, a kind of logical fallacy. ... The Milky Way (a translation of the Latin Via Lactea, in turn derived from the Greek Galaxia Kuklos) is the galaxy in which the Earth is found. ...

Calques from Spanish

  • English blue-blood calques Spanish sangre azul
  • English moment of truth calques Spanish el momento de la verdad

Blue (from Old High German blao shining) is one of the three primary additive colors; blue light has the shortest wavelength (about 470 nm) of the three primary colors. ...

French

Examples of French expressions calqued from foreign languages include:

  • French lune de miel calques English honeymoon
  • French gratte-ciel calques English skyscraper
  • French sabot de Denver calques English Denver boot
  • French jardin d'enfants calques German Kindergarten

A honeymoon is the traditional trip taken by newlyweds to celebrate their marriage, and presumably, consummate it. ... Taipei 101, the worlds tallest skyscraper by roof height on high rise. ... A wheel clamp is a device that is designed to stop vehicles from moving. ... In the United States and Germany, kindergarten (German for garden of children) refers to the first level of a childs formal education. ...

German

  • German Wolkenkratzer calques English skyscraper (but literally means cloud scraper)
  • German Nashorn calques the ultimately Greek rhinoceros
  • German Großmutter and Großvater calque French grand-mère and grand-père, respectively
  • German Fernsehen calques the English coinage, half-Greek and half-Latin, television.

Taipei 101, the worlds tallest skyscraper by roof height on high rise. ... Species Ceratotherium simum Dicerorhinus sumatrensis Diceros bicornis Rhinoceros unicornis Coelodonta antiquitatis (extinct) A rhinoceros (commonly called a rhino for short) is any of five surviving species of odd-toed ungulate in the family Rhinocerotidae. ...

Finnish

  • There is no passive mood, of the same kind English has, in Finnish. For example, a sentence such as a "The plane is being flown by a pilot" must be expressed in the active mood, i.e. "The pilot flies the plane". However, possibly due to the influence of Finland-Swedish, there is a word toimesta "from the action" that functions like the word "by". (It is impossible to translate the word "by" itself, because there is no direct equivalent.) For example, "Lentokonetta lennetään ohjaajan toimesta", approximately "The plane is being flown, from the action of the pilot." This is grammatically incorrect, but used abundantly in legal documents.
  • There is no future tense in Finnish, but again, to translate, a direct calque of Swedish "kommer att + (verb)" has been constructed: tulee + (verb in third infinitive illative). Here, the verb tulla is in the present tense, placed into the appropriate voice. It corresponds to English "is going". For example, tullaan muuttamaan "is going to be changed". Similarly, this is incorrect, but found in political speech and legal documents.

The term passive mood is sometimes confused with the grammatical concept passive voice. ... Finland-Swedish is a variety of Swedish spoken in Finland. ... In linguistics, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by a verb as not having happened yet, but expected to in the future. ... This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. ...

See also


  Results from FactBites:
 
The Mavens' Word of the Day (316 words)
A calque is a technical term in linguistics, another name for a loan translation.
The usual meaning of calque is 'a compound word or expression formed by the literal translation of each element of the compound from another language'.
Though it is not the usual sense, I often use calque to refer to the literal translation of a figurative sense of a word when that figurative sense does not exist in the borrowing language.
  More results at FactBites »


 
 

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