Arabic Zuckermann analyses the evolution of the word
artichoke. Beginning in Arabic ( "the artichoke", it was adapted into
Andalusian Arabic alxarshofa, then
Old Spanish alcarchofa, then
Italian alcarcioffo, then
Northern Italian arcicioffo >
arciciocco >
articiocco, then phonetically realised in English as
artichoke. The word was eventually
phono-semantically matched back into colloquial
Levantine Arabic (for example in
Syria and
Lebanon) as (, consisting of ( "earthly" and ( "thorny". Arabic has made use of phono-semantic matching to replace blatantly imported new terminology with a word derived from an existing
triliteral root. Examples are:
Dutch A number of PSMs exist in
Dutch as well. One notable example is ("hammock"), which is a modification of Spanish , also the source of the English word. Natively, the word is transparently analysed as a "hang-mat", which aptly describes the object. Similarly: • In ("anchovy"), the second part was modified to resemble ("fish"), although the word originates in Spanish
anchova; • In ("scurvy"), the word parts were modified to resemble (stem of , tear open) and ("belly, stomach"), although the word originates in Middle Low German ; • In (an alternative name for , "February"), the first part was modified to resemble ("gather wood"), although the word originates in Latin
spurcalia; • In (a variety of apple with a very soft, thin, yellow skin), the word parts were modified to resemble ("silken") and ("shirt; small shirt; vest"), although the word actually denotes the place
Sydenham where the apple originates. • Dutch dictionary
Van Dale describes as a particularly notable example. • Other examples are , , , , , , , and .
English A few PSMs exist in English. The French word ("
Carthusian monastery") was translated to the English
charterhouse. The French word , itself an adaptation of the
Choctaw name for the
bowfin, has likewise been
Anglicized as , although it is unrelated to the
pikes. The French name for the
Osage orange, '''' ( "
bow-wood"), is sometimes rendered as "bowdark". The second part of the word
muskrat was altered to match
rat, replacing the original form ''
, which derives from the Abenaki or Massachusett native word moskwas''. The use of
runagates in
Psalm 68 of the
Anglican Book of Common Prayer derives from phono-semantic matching between Latin and English
. The name "crayfish" comes from the
Old French word '
(Modern French '). The word has been modified to "crayfish" by association with "fish" (
folk etymology) and the largely
American variant "crawfish" is similarly derived.
German "applies the concepts of multisourced neologisation and, more generally, camouflaged borrowing, as established by to Modern German, pursuing a twofold aim, namely to underline the significance of multisourced neologisation for language contact theory and secondly to demonstrate that together with other forms of camouflaged borrowing it remains an important borrowing mechanism in contemporary German."
Icelandic demonstrate how Icelandic camouflages many English words by means of phono-semantic matching. For example, the Icelandic-looking word
eyðni, meaning "AIDS", is a PSM of the English acronym
AIDS, using the pre-existent Icelandic verb
eyða, meaning "to destroy", and the Icelandic nominal suffix
-ni. Similarly, the Icelandic word
tækni, meaning "technology, technique", derives from
tæki, meaning "tool", combined with the nominal suffix
-ni, but is, in fact, a PSM of the Danish
teknik (or of another derivative of Greek ), meaning "technology, technique".
Tækni was coined in 1912 by Dr Björn Bjarnarson from Viðfjörður in the East of Iceland. It had been in little use until the 1940s, but has since become common, as a lexeme and as an element in new formations, such as
raftækni, lit. "electrical technics", i.e. "electronics",
tæknilegur "technical" and
tæknir "technician". Other PSMs discussed in the article are
beygla,
bifra bifrari,
brokkál,
dapur dapurleiki -
depurð,
fjárfesta -
fjárfesting,
heila,
guðspjall,
ímynd,
júgurð,
korréttur,
Létt og laggott,
musl,
pallborð pallborðsumræður,
páfagaukur,
ratsjá,
setur,
staða,
staðall staðla stöðlun,
toga togari,
uppi and
veira.
Japanese In modern Japanese, loanwords are generally represented phonetically via
katakana. However, in earlier times loanwords were often represented by
kanji (Chinese characters), a process called when used for phonetic matching, or when used for semantic matching. Some of these continue to be used; the characters chosen may correspond to the sound, the meaning, or both. In most cases the characters used were chosen only for their matching sound or only for their matching meaning. For example, in the word (
sushi), the two characters are respectively read as and , but the character means "one's natural life span" and means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food this is . Conversely, in the word () for "
tobacco", the individual kanji respectively mean "smoke" and "herb", which corresponds to the meaning, while none of their possible readings have a phonetic relationship to the word this is . In some cases, however, the kanji were chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is () for "
club", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together-fun-place" (which has since been borrowed into Chinese during the early 20th century with the same meaning, including the individual characters, but with a pronunciation that differs considerably from the original English and the Japanese, ). Another example is () for the
Portuguese , a kind of
raincoat. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed resembles a bird with wings folded together.
Mandarin Chinese PSM is frequently used in
Mandarin borrowings. An example is the
Taiwanese Mandarin word , which literally means "powerful and hard" and refers to
Viagra, the drug for treating
erectile dysfunction in men, manufactured by
Pfizer. Another example is the Mandarin form of
World Wide Web, which is (), which satisfies "www" and literally means "myriad dimensional net". The English word
hacker has been borrowed into Mandarin as (, "dark/wicked visitor").
Modern Standard Chinese / "
sonar" uses the characters / "sound" and / "receive, accept". The pronunciations and are phonetically somewhat similar to the two syllables of the English word. Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been a better phonetic fit than , but not nearly as good semantically consider the syllable '''' (cf. 'deliver, carry, give (as a present)', 'pine; loose, slack', / 'tower; alarm, attract' etc.), '''' (cf. 'search', 'old man', / 'sour, spoiled' and many others) or '''' (cf. 'receive, accept', 'receive, accept', 'hand', 'head', / 'beast', 'thin' and so forth). According to Zuckermann, PSM in Mandarin is common in: • brand names, e.g., / , "
Coca-Cola" translates to "tasty [and] entertaining", / itself genericised to refer to any
cola. • computer
jargon, e.g., the aforementioned word for "World Wide Web". • technological terms, e.g., the aforementioned word for "sonar". •
toponyms, e.g., the name / , "
Belarus" combines the word , "White" with the name / , "
Russia", therefore meaning "White Russia" just like the endonym "". From a monolingual Chinese view, Mandarin PSM is the 'lesser evil' compared with Latin script (in
digraphic writing) or
code-switching (in speech). Zuckermann's exploration of PSM in Standard Chinese and
Meiji-period Japanese concludes that the
Chinese writing system is multifunctional:
pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g.,
logographic),
cenemic ("empty" of
meaning, e.g., phonographic - like a
syllabary), and
phono-logographic (simultaneously cenemic and pleremic). Zuckermann argues that
Leonard Bloomfield's assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used" is inaccurate. "If Chinese had been written
using roman letters, thousands of Chinese words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms". Evidence of this can be seen in the
Dungan language, a Chinese language that is closely related to Mandarin, but written phonetically in
Cyrillic, where words are directly borrowed, often from Russian, without PSM. A related practice is the
translation of Western names into Chinese characters.
Modern Hebrew Often in phono-semantic matching, the source language determines both the root word and the noun-pattern. This makes it difficult to determine the source language's influence on the target language
morphology. For example, "the phono-semantic matcher of
English dock with
Israeli Hebrew mivdók could have usedafter deliberately choosing the phonetically and semantically suitable
root '''' meaning 'check' (Rabbinic) or 'repair' (Biblical) the noun-patterns
mi⌂⌂a⌂á,
ma⌂⌂e⌂á,
mi⌂⌂é⌂et,
mi⌂⌂a⌂áim etc. (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted). Instead,
mi⌂⌂ó⌂, which was not highly productive, was chosen because its [o] makes the final syllable of
mivdók sound like English
dock."
Miscellaneous Old High German widarlōn ("repayment of a loan") was rendered as
widerdonum ("reward") in
Medieval Latin. The last part corresponds to the Latin
donum ("gift").
Viagra, a brand name which was suggested by Interbrand Wood (the consultancy firm hired by Pfizer), is itself a multisourced neologism, based on
Sanskrit ''
("tiger") but enhanced by the words vigour
(i.e. strength) and Niagara'' (i.e. free/forceful flow). Other than through
Sinoxenic borrowings,
Vietnamese employs phono-semantic matching less commonly than Chinese. Examples include ("matrix", from the words for "magic" and "battle array"), ("apply", from the words for "press down" and "use"), and (
Huey P. Long, from "yellow flying dragon", evoking the
Huey P. Long Bridge). ==Motivations==