Calque
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, a calque (icon) or loan translation is a word
or phrase
borrowed from another language by literal
, word-for-word (Latin
: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.
, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components so as to create a new lexeme
in the target language
.
"Calque" itself is a loanword
from a French noun
, and derives from the verb
"calquer" (to trace, to copy), while loanword is a calque of the German
"Lehnwort", and loan translation — a loan translation of "Lehnübersetzung".
Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword, since in some cases a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the language proposed to be borrowing, or the calque contains less obvious imagery.
Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching
. While calquing includes (semantic) translation
, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound
of the borrowed
word
through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word
or morpheme
in the target language
).
" is a phrase calque that literally translates the French "marché aux puces" ("market where one acquires fleas").
Another example is "bienvenue" ("welcome"), in Canadian French
sometimes used for "You're welcome" in response to "Thank you", instead of the standard-French "Je vous en prie" ("I beg you to") or "avec plaisir" ("with pleasure"). These phrases are also found as calques in English
, as "It was my pleasure" and "The pleasure was [or "is"] mine."
s. The French "gratte-ciel" is a word-coinage inspired by the English "skyscraper
" — "gratter" means "to scrape", and "ciel" means "sky". Many languages have constructed their own calques:
", etymologically
, means a "carrying across" or "bringing across": the Latin
"translatio" derives from "transferre" ("trans", "across" + "ferre", "to carry" or "to bring").
Some European languages have calqued their words for the concept
of "translation" on the kindred Latin "traducere" ("to lead across" or "to bring across", from "trans", "across" + "ducere", "to lead" or "to bring").
European languages of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic branches have calqued their terms for the concept of translation
on these Latin models.
Romance languages
:
Germanic languages
:
Slavic languages
:
, the larger the number of contributing languages that have a structurally identical expression, the more likely that that expression will be calqued into the target language.
In Israeli Hebrew, one uses "má nishmà" ("what's heard?"), meaning "What's up?" Zuckermann argues that this is a calque not only of the Yiddish expression "vos hert zikh" (usually pronounced "v(o)sérts´kh"; "What's heard?", "What's up?") but also of the parallel expressions in Polish, Russian and Romanian. Whereas most Hebrew-revivalists were native Yiddish-speakers, many first-speakers of Modern Hebrew also spoke Russian or Polish. So a Polish-speaker in the 1930s might have used "má nishmà" not (only) due to the Yiddish "vos hert zikh" but also due to the Polish "co słychać". A Russian Jew might have used "ma nishma" due to "chto slyshno", and a Romanian Israeli would echo "ce se aude". According to Zuckermann, such multi-sourced calquing is a manifestation of the congruence principle.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, a calque (icon) or loan translation is a word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
or phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
borrowed from another language by literal
Literal
Literal may refer to:*Literal and figurative language, taken in a non-figurative sense*Literal translation, the close adherence to the forms of a source language text...
, word-for-word (Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
: "verbum pro verbo") or root-for-root translation.
Calque
Used as a verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components so as to create a new lexeme
Lexeme
A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN...
in the target language
Target language
Target language may refer to:*Target language, in applied linguistics and language education, the language which a person is learning, also called second language*Target language, in translation, the language to which a source text is translated...
.
"Calque" itself is a loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
from a French noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
, and derives from the verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
"calquer" (to trace, to copy), while loanword is a calque of the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
"Lehnwort", and loan translation — a loan translation of "Lehnübersetzung".
Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword, since in some cases a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the language proposed to be borrowing, or the calque contains less obvious imagery.
Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root....
. While calquing includes (semantic) translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
of the borrowed
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
or morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
in the target language
Target language
Target language may refer to:*Target language, in applied linguistics and language education, the language which a person is learning, also called second language*Target language, in translation, the language to which a source text is translated...
).
Examples
The common English phrase "flea marketFlea market
A flea market or swap meet is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. It may be indoors, such as in a warehouse or school gymnasium; or it may be outdoors, such as in a field or under a tent...
" is a phrase calque that literally translates the French "marché aux puces" ("market where one acquires fleas").
Another example is "bienvenue" ("welcome"), in Canadian French
Canadian French
Canadian French is an umbrella term referring to the varieties of French spoken in Canada. French is the mother tongue of nearly seven million Canadians, a figure constituting roughly 22% of the national population. At the federal level it has co-official status alongside English...
sometimes used for "You're welcome" in response to "Thank you", instead of the standard-French "Je vous en prie" ("I beg you to") or "avec plaisir" ("with pleasure"). These phrases are also found as calques in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, as "It was my pleasure" and "The pleasure was [or "is"] mine."
"Skyscraper"
Going in the opposite direction, English-to-French, provides an example of how a compound word may be calqued by first breaking it down into its component rootRoot (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
s. The French "gratte-ciel" is a word-coinage inspired by the English "skyscraper
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
" — "gratter" means "to scrape", and "ciel" means "sky". Many languages have constructed their own calques:
- Afrikaans: "wolkekrabber" ("cloud-scraper")
- ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
: "摩天大楼" (mótiān dàlóu, "sky-scraping big building") - CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
and SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
: "mrakodrap" ("cloud-scraper") - DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
: "skyskraber" ("cloud-scraper") - DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
: "wolkenkrabber" ("cloud-scraper") - EstonianEstonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
: "pilvelõhkuja" ("cloud-breaker") - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: "gratte-ciel" ("skyscraper") - GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: "Wolkenkratzer" ("cloud-scraper") - GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
: "ουρανοξύστης" ("skyscraper") - Hebrew: "גורד שחקים" ("sky-scraper")
- HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
: "felhőkarcoló" ("cloud-scraper") - ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
: "grattacielo" ("scrape-sky")
- JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
: "摩天楼" (matenrou, "sky-scraping tower") - NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
: "skyskraper" ("cloud-scraper") - PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
: "آسمانخراش" ("skyscraper") - PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
: "drapacz chmur" ("cloud-scraper") - PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
: "arranha-céu" ("skyscraper") - RomanianRomanian languageRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
: "zgârie-nori" ("cloud-scraper") - RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: "небоскрёб" ("skyscraper") - Serb: "neboder" ("sky-ripper")
- SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: "rascacielos" ("skyscraper") - SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
: "skyskrapa" ("skyscraper") - TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
: "gökdelen" ("sky-piercer") - VietnameseVietnamese languageVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
: "nhà chọc trời" ("sky-poker")
"Translation"
The word "translationTranslation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
", etymologically
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
, means a "carrying across" or "bringing across": the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
"translatio" derives from "transferre" ("trans", "across" + "ferre", "to carry" or "to bring").
Some European languages have calqued their words for the concept
Concept
The word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic disciplines. Particularly in philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct ". However, the meaning of the term concept is much...
of "translation" on the kindred Latin "traducere" ("to lead across" or "to bring across", from "trans", "across" + "ducere", "to lead" or "to bring").
European languages of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic branches have calqued their terms for the concept of translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
on these Latin models.
Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
:
- FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: "traduction" - ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
: "traduzione" - PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
: "tradução" - RomanianRomanian languageRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
"traducere" - SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: "traducción"
Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
:
- DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
: "oversættelse" - EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: "translationTranslationTranslation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
" - GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: "Übersetzung" - NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
: "oversettelse" - SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
: "översättning" "putting across"
Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
:
- CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
: "překlad" - PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
: "przekład" - RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: "перевод" - Serb: "prevod" "leading across" or "bringing across"
Multiple causation
According to linguist Ghil'ad ZuckermannGhil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is an Israeli-Italian-British-Australian linguist, expert of language revival, contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity...
, the larger the number of contributing languages that have a structurally identical expression, the more likely that that expression will be calqued into the target language.
In Israeli Hebrew, one uses "má nishmà" ("what's heard?"), meaning "What's up?" Zuckermann argues that this is a calque not only of the Yiddish expression "vos hert zikh" (usually pronounced "v(o)sérts´kh"; "What's heard?", "What's up?") but also of the parallel expressions in Polish, Russian and Romanian. Whereas most Hebrew-revivalists were native Yiddish-speakers, many first-speakers of Modern Hebrew also spoke Russian or Polish. So a Polish-speaker in the 1930s might have used "má nishmà" not (only) due to the Yiddish "vos hert zikh" but also due to the Polish "co słychać". A Russian Jew might have used "ma nishma" due to "chto slyshno", and a Romanian Israeli would echo "ce se aude". According to Zuckermann, such multi-sourced calquing is a manifestation of the congruence principle.
See also
- AnglicismAnglicismAn Anglicism, as most often defined, is a word borrowed from English into another language. "Anglicism" also describes English syntax, grammar, meaning, and structure used in another language with varying degrees of corruption.-Anglicisms in Chinese:...
- Chinese-ordered EnglishChinese-Ordered EnglishChinese-ordered English is the use of English words to represent the meaning of Chinese phrases and sentences that maintains the word order of the original Chinese....
- Chinese Pidgin EnglishChinese Pidgin EnglishChinese Pidgin English is a Pidgin language between English and Chinese. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, there was also Chinese Pidgin English spoken in Cantonese-speaking portions of China...
- CognateCognateIn linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
- GallicismGallicismA Gallicism can be:* a mode of speech peculiar to the French;* a French idiom;* in general, a French mode or custom.* loanwords, words or phrases borrowed from French....
- GermanismGermanismGermanism can mean or be confused with any of the following:* German loan words and expressions in English* Pan-Germanism* Germanisation* Germanism...
- List of calques
- LoanwordLoanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
- MetatypyMetatypyMetatypy is a type of morphosyntactic and semantic language change brought about by language contact involving multilingual speakers. The term was coined by linguist Malcolm Ross.Malcolm Ross gives the following definition:...
- Semantic loanSemantic loanA semantic loan is a process of borrowing semantic meaning from another language, very similar to the formation of calques. In this case, however, the complete word in the borrowing language already exists; the change is that its meaning is extended to include another meaning its existing...
- Translation
- Wasei-eigoWasei-eigoare Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms: English constructions not used in the English-speaking world or by native English speakers, but that appear in Japanese. This should not be confused for foreign words gairaigo, which generally refer to words from European languages, especially American English...