ONlwSG

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v1.0
Published 01/10/24

Loans

Words may be borrowed from one language and more or less assimilated into another; even though they are borrowed, they are treated for the most part as belonging to the lexical stock of the receiving language. Similarly, names may be borrowed and treated as part of the onomastic stock of the receiving language.

Because of the presence of a large number of Old Norse place-names in Gaelic Scotland, it is important to emphasise the distinction between the terms Old Norse loan-word and Old Norse loan-name. Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic are Old Norse words that have been borrowed into Scottish Gaelic; Old Norse loan-names are Old Norse place-names created by Old Norse speakers that have been borrowed – as place-names – into Scottish Gaelic. Borrowed personal names are a category of loan-names.

The Scottish Gaelic words sgarbh ‘cormorant’ and sgeir ‘(marine) rock’ were borrowed from ON skarf acc. m. ‘cormorant’ and ON sker nt. ‘(marine) rock’, respectively; they are Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic and, in addition to being used in the everyday Scottish Gaelic language, are found in several Scottish Gaelic place-names created by Scottish Gaelic speakers, e.g. Sgeir nan Sgarbh ‘the skerry of the cormorants’ (e.g. NB405573). This is not the case, however, with the place-name SG Sgairbhsgeir (e.g. NB447599), a name borrowed into Scottish Gaelic from ON *Skarfasker ‘(the) skerry of the cormorants’, whose constituent parts just happen to be ON skarfa (gen. pl.) and ON sker. The name Sgeir nan Sgarbh attests to the use of the words sgeir and sgarbh as loan-words in Scottish Gaelic, but the name Sgairbhsgeir does not (Cox 2022, 29–32). (For examples of supposed Old Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic that are probably loan-names or elements of loan-names, see under amar, -bhal, Borgh and port.)


Phonological adaptation
Words are adapted phonologically from one language to another language in a number of ways (Haugen 1950, 214–15):

  • Loan-words involve morphemic importation, with more or less phonemic substitution, 

    Essentially, the shape of the word in the donor language is borrowed, but individual sounds or groups of sounds modified according to the sound system of the receiving language.

    e.g. ON akkeri nt. > SG acaire ‘anchor’; ON ármann acc. m. > SG àrmann ‘hero, warrior’; ON fors m. > SG fors ‘waterfall’; ON hǫfn f. > SG hamn ‘harbour, haven’; ON skarf acc. m. > SG sgarbh ‘cormorant’; ON sker nt. > SG sgeir ‘skerry’; ON þrosk acc. m. > SG trosg ‘codfish’; and ON urð f. > SG urrdh ‘pile of boulders’.
  • Loan-shifts involve complete morphemic substitution, 

    Essentially, the shape of the word in the donor language is borrowed, but adapted to an existing word (or series of words, or parts of words such as suffixes) in the receiving language.

     e.g. ON geirfugl → SG gearrbhall, where SG geàrr ‘short’ + ball ‘?spot’ displaces the Norse form entirely.
  • Loan-blends involve part morphemic importation and part morphemic substitution: they are a mix of loan-name and loan-shift, e.g. ON halsa vb ⇒ SG abhsadh ‘slackening sail’; ON *haf-svala sb. ⇒ SG asaileag ‘storm petrel’; ON maga obl. m. ⇒ SG baghan ‘stomach, paunch’; ON baunir f. pl. ⇒ SG pònair ‘bean(s)’; ON ryt acc. m. ⇒ SG ruideag ‘kittiwake’; and ON súla f. ⇒ SG sùlaire ‘northern gannnet’.
  • Note that the term Loan-word used generically has the sense ‘loan-word, loan-shift or loan-blend’.

Folk etymology
Folk etymology operates on the basis of the loan-shift or loan-blend. For example, SG aisleag is said to mean ‘the little ferryman’, based on SG aiseag ‘ferry’, whereas it is really a variant of SG asaileag (a loan-blend from ON *haf-svala); SG biorsamaid ‘a steelyard balance; spring balance’ is said to derive from SG bior sa mhaide, with bior ‘small pointed object’, sa ‘in the’ and (len.) maide ‘stick or rod’, but it is more likely to be a loan-blend from Scots bismar; and the Gaelic reflexes of Old Norse loan-names in original final -fjall ‘mountain’ are sometimes spelt -mheall (as opposed to -bhal, s.v.), on the basis that the element is really (lenited) SG meall ‘hill etc.’.

Language of origin
Some Scottish Gaelic words previously claimed to be borrowed from Old Norse, whether as loan-words, loan-shifts or loan-blends, do indeed appear to derive from Old Norse. Some, however, appear to derive from Scots, less commonly from English, a few from Latin, French or Dutch. Yet others are really native words. The origin of a small number of words seems impossible to determine with any certainty, and in a few cases we appear to be dealing with loan-names rather than loan-words (see above), sometimes with ghost words.

Ghost words are words that are not in real use, though they may appear in reference works where they have often been artificially adopted from another language (e.g. †callair).

 For a list of loan-words and their etymons by language of origin, see under Register; for a classification of loan-words by meaning, see under Semantic Fields.