loanwords and biblical greek

Christian Alexander
Christian Alexander Member Posts: 3,008 ✭✭
edited November 21 in English Forum

I am trying to understand loanwords and biblical Greek terms. I looked up "loanwords" in the Cambridge Dictionary and it said, "a word taken from one language and used in another." I am trying to find out how this works for biblical Greek language studies. This is what BARD said, "When a new term is introduced into a language where an existing word of a similar kind already exists, the two usually coexist peacefully, with the new word typically adopting a distinct register from the older one. Scholars would suggest that although the old word does not frequently vanish, it happens sometimes. When a new word is adopted from the source language, it might be challenging to define and ascertain whether or not a similar word already exists in the host language. Depending on how similar they must be in order for them to qualify. They typically add something to the host language, though occasionally it's only something little like register." I do not understand. 

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  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith Member, MVP Posts: 53,066 ✭✭✭✭✭

    how this works for biblical Greek language studies. 

    The same as in most other languages. Turkic languages have an uncommon method of using a loan word and a (proposed) Turkic term side by side until the Turkic term becomes widely known IIRC. Or look up "Torpenhow Hill" in Cumbria, England. Or where I grew up, the state ignorantly named the swale, "Swale Creek" - not a loanword but a similar ignorance of meaning. Consider Rio Grande in Texas - the river is named in Spanish adopted into English. Do a block diagram/text flow on the Dictionary entry if you don't understand it. Look up loanwords in Wikipedia and linguistic oriented dictionaries online.

    If you find understanding the Cambridge Dictionary because the concept "register" is unfamiliar to you, I don't find it in Glossary of Linguistic Terms | (sil.org) my usual source for linguistic terms. Wikipedia has an article on register in sociolinguistics which should get you on the right track.

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