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Quick thought: Loanwords from one language to another

Something I’ve noticed when studying languages is that loanwords from that language in English don’t always mean the same thing in the donor language as they do in English.

An example: “jungle” comes from a Hindustani word meaning forest. In India, a jungle could be any forest—from the dense tropical forests that the name connotes in English, to the thorn-forests of central India, or even the coniferous forests of the foothills of the Himalaya.

I think we can all agree that this is a jungle.

I think we can all agree that this is a jungle. (Garo Hills, Meghalaya)

But what about this? It is a jungle in Hindi but not English. (Himachal Pradesh)

But what about this? It is a jungle in Hindi but not English. (Himachal Pradesh)

Another example: “sombrero” is of course a word that American English has picked up from Mexican Spanish, but again the word has a broader meaning in the donor language than in English. For English-speakers north of the border, a sombrero is a particularly Mexican kind of hat, with a very broad brim. But south of the border, a sombrero is any kind of hat—or at least, any kind of hat with a brim.

Now that is what I would call a sombrero. (Emiliano Zapato from Wikimedia Commons)

Now that is what I would call a sombrero. (Emiliano Zapata from Wikimedia Commons)

The hat your blogger is wearing is a sombrero in Spanish but not English. (Teotiuhuacán, Estado de México)

The hat your blogger is wearing is a sombrero in Spanish but not English. (Teotiuhuacán, Estado de México)

I think of the adoption of loanwords as a bit like technology transfer: the meaning of the word changes as it moves from one language to the next, just as the form and function of a technology have to change to fit the recipient culture.

In the case of both jungle and sombrero, the meaning of the word in English is linked to the culture that the word came from. India has its share of dense tropical forests, and Mexico has—or at least had—many of the traditional wide-brimmed hats. English already had a generic word for forest and hat, but it was in the market for a specific word to represent forests in (parts of) India and hats in Mexico.

Yes sir, you want tuk-tuk?

Are these rickshaws or tuk-tuks? It depends on whom you ask.

Are these rickshaws or tuk-tuks? It depends on whom you ask.

When I first went to northeast India in 2009, I learned that the little round three-wheeled taxis that plied the roads were known as rickshaws, just like the two-wheeled hand-drawn carts that I had read about in books. I also heard people call the motorized taxis “auto-rickshaws” or just “autos.”

Then when I went to visit Delhi, I discovered that many of the city’s rickshaw drivers called their own vehicles “tuk-tuks.” I could hardly step outside without a driver chasing me down and yelling, “Yes sir, you want tuk-tuk?” The word was obviously onomatopoeia for the put-putting sound made by some of the vehicles’ two-stroke engines.1 I assumed that “tuk-tuk” was just a regional name for auto-rickshaws.

It turns out that the term “tuk-tuk” did not originate in Delhi, or anywhere nearby. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded texts using the term refer to the three-wheeled taxis used in Thailand. Unfortunately, the OED doesn’t say how and when the term got from Thailand to India. During a summer term in Jaipur last year, one of my fellow students claimed that tourists imported the term “tuk-tuk” from Thailand. It’s not hard to imagine a dazed westerner arriving in India and remarking, “I say, Edward, there are tuk-tuks in India too.”

There are other possibilities too, of course. Business travelers may have introduced the term.

The case of rickshaws and tuk-tuks illustrates that names for technologies, as well as the technologies themselves, move ineffably across borders. In this case, three-wheeled motorized taxis originated in India and spread elsewhere in Asia. One name for the vehicles, though, originated in Thailand and traveled back to the country where the technology got its start.

  1. Not all auto-rickshaws run on two-stroke engines; some have four-stroke engines, which run more smoothly. []

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