A loanword is a word that one language has taken from another and at least partly assimilated, such as English "bazaar" from Persian. Nothing is actually lent: the donor language keeps the word, and the borrowing language never returns it.
Key takeaways
- A loanword is taken over in more or less its original form, unlike a calque, which translates the parts of a foreign expression word for word.
- A loanword is evidence that two language communities met at some point.
- Borrowing words does not move a language into another family, because families are about descent.
- Haitian takes most of its words from French but is listed on our map as its own language, with about 9.6 million speakers (Nationalencyklopedin, 2007).
How loanwords work
A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language, the donor, into another through borrowing [1]. English has plenty: "café" from French, "bazaar" from Persian, "kindergarten" from German, and "tofu" from Japanese, which itself comes from Chinese [1].
The "loan" is a metaphor. Nothing is removed from the donor language, and the borrowing language is not expected to give the word back [1]. Both words simply exist afterwards.
Borrowed words are usually adapted to the sounds and spelling habits of the new language, and over time speakers may stop noticing they came from elsewhere. That makes loanwords useful as evidence. A word of foreign origin points to a time when two communities met, whether through trade, migration, conquest or schooling.
A calque is different. It translates the parts of a foreign expression word for word into the existing words of the recipient language, so no foreign word enters [1]. Even the English word "loanword" is a calque, of German Lehnwort [1].
An example from our data
The clearest case in our data is Haitian. Most of its words come from French, yet it is its own language with its own grammar, and Glottolog lists it separately. The map shows it in Haiti and Dominican Republic, with about 9.6 million first-language speakers (Nationalencyklopedin, 2007, approximate).
English shows the other direction. Our language page gives about 379 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019, approximate) across 146 countries. English has absorbed words from many languages, as the examples above show, and Glottolog still places it in the Indo-European family.
The map holds no vocabulary data, so it cannot show which words were borrowed. What it does show is where languages sit next to each other, which is where borrowing tends to happen.
The thing people get wrong
People assume that a language full of borrowed words must belong to the family of the language it borrowed from. It does not. Language families are groups of languages descended from a common ancestor [2], so borrowing words from a neighbour does not move a language into that neighbour's family. English is a good test: it has borrowed from French, Persian, German and Japanese, among others, yet it is classed in the Indo-European family. Borrowed vocabulary changes the language's word stock, not its ancestry.
Frequently asked questions
Why are loanwords called loans if they are never returned?
Borrow and loan are metaphors that are well established in linguistics despite their flaws. Nothing is taken from the donor language, and the borrowing language is not expected to give anything back.
Is every word borrowed from another language a loanword?
Most are, though a calque is not. A calque copies the meaning of a foreign phrase by translating its parts, so no foreign word enters the language.
Sources
- Loanword, Wikipedia.
- Language family, Wikipedia.
- Every figure from our own map is worked out from the datasets on the data sources page (checked against Glottolog and Glottography, retrieved 13 October 2026).