List of calques


A calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or word-for-word translation. This list contains examples of calques in various languages.

English

From Chinese

From Greek

Latin calques many terms from Greek, many of which have been borrowed by English.
Examples of Romance language expressions calqued from foreign languages include:
Many calques found in Southwestern US Spanish, come from English:
Also technological terms calqued from English are used throughout the Spanish-speaking world:

Afrikaans and Dutch

Note: From a technical standpoint, Danish and the bokmål standard of Norwegian are the same language, with minor spelling and pronunciation differences. For this reason, they will share a section.

Serbian

In more recent times, the Macedonian language has calqued new words from other prestige languages including German, French and English.
Some words were originally calqued into Russian and then absorbed into Macedonian, considering the close relatedness of the two languages. Therefore, many of these calques can also be considered Russianisms.

Russian

The poet Aleksandr Pushkin was perhaps the most influential among the Russian literary figures who would transform the modern Russian language and vastly expand its ability to handle abstract and scientific concepts by importing the sophisticated vocabulary of Western intellectuals.
Although some Western vocabulary entered the language as loanwords – e.g., Italian salvietta, "napkin", was simply Russified in sound and spelling to салфетка – Pushkin and those he influenced most often preferred to render foreign borrowings into Russian by calquing. Compound words were broken down to their component roots, which were then translated piece-by-piece to their Slavic equivalents. But not all of the coinages caught on and became permanent additions to the lexicon; for example, любомудрие was promoted by 19th-century Russian intellectuals as a calque of "philosophy", but the word eventually fell out of fashion, and modern Russian instead uses the loanword философия.
Since Finnish, a Uralic language, differs radically in pronunciation and orthography from Indo-European languages, most loans adopted in Finnish either are calques or soon become such as foreign words are translated into Finnish. Examples include:
When Jews immigrate to Israel, they often Hebraize their surnames. One approach to doing so was by calque from the original surname. For instance, Imi Lichtenfield, founder of the martial art Krav Maga, became Imi Sde-Or. Both last names mean "light field". For more examples and other approaches, see the article on Hebraization of surnames.
According to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the more contributing languages have a structurally identical expression, the more likely it is to be calqued into the target language. In Israeli one uses má nishmà, lit. "what's heard?", with the meaning of "what's up?". Zuckermann argues that this is a calque not only of the Yiddish expression Was hört sich?, but also of the parallel expressions in Polish, Russian and Romanian. Whereas most revivalists were native Yiddish-speakers, many first speakers of Modern Hebrew spoke Russian and Polish too. So a Polish speaker in the 1930s might have used má nishmà not due to Yiddish Was hört sich? but rather due to Polish Co słychać? A Russian Jew might have used ma nishma due to Что слышно? and a Romanian Israeli would echo ce se aude. According to Zuckermann, such multi-sourced calquing is a manifestation of the Congruence principle.

Malayalam

Modern Malayalam is replete with calques from English. The calques manifest themselves as idioms and expressions and many have gone on to become clichés. However standalone words are very few. The following is a list of commonly used calque phrases/expressions.All of these are exact translations of the corresponding English phrases.
  1. Simha bhagam - Lion's share
  2. Varikalkidayil vaayikuka reading between the lines
  3. Chuvarazhuthu the writing on the wall
  4. Moola kallu cornerstone
  5. Naazhikakallu milestone
  6. Ooshmala varavelppu warm welcome
  7. Thanuppan prathikaranam cold response
  8. Sheetayuddham Cold war
  9. Hridayabhedakam Heart rending/breaking
  10. Chekuttaanum kadalinumidayilbetween the devil and the sea
  11. vazhivittu sahaayikkuka go out of one's way
  12. kuthira kachavadam horse trading
  13. mrigeeya bhooripaksham monstrous majority
  14. kavya neethi poetic justice.
  15. ambara chumbikal skyscrapers literally skykissers