Internationalism (linguistics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In linguistics an internationalism is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. Pronunciation and orthography are similar so that the word is understandable between the different languages. It is debated how many languages are required so that a word is an internationalism. Note that this term is not very common in English linguistics.

Many European internationalisms originate in Latin or in Greek, but there are also a lot of European internationalisms from other languages (also from non-European languages).

Internationalisms may spread in different ways. They often spread together with the innovations they designate. Accordingly, there are semantic fields of internationalisms that are dominated by specific languages, e.g. the computing vocabulary which is mainly English with internationalisms such as computer, disk, spam.

[edit] Samples

• Airport
• Academy
• Automobile
• Center (Centre)
• Computer
• Design
• Hospital
• international
• Internet
• Literature
• Métro
• Microscope
• OK
• Politics
• Police
• Psychology
• Radio
• Sport
• Stress
• Studio
• Taboo
• Television
• Telescope
• Tennis
• Ticket
• Tokamak
• Tomahawk
• Tsunami

[edit] Literature

• Peter Braun, Burkhard Schaeder, Johannes Volmert (eds.): Internationalismen II. Studien zur interlingualen Lexikologie und Lexikographie (Reihe Germanistische Linguistik. Band 246), Tübingen: Niemeyer 2003, ISBN 3-484-31246-7.