calques

Calques are linguistic items created by translating components of a word or expression from one language into another. They occur when speakers reproduce the form of a foreign expression rather than adopting the term itself. Calques can be lexical, translating a single word or compound; phrasal or idiomatic calques, translating an entire phrase or fixed expression; or semantic calques, translating the underlying meaning of a term.

Common examples include flea market, a translation of the French marché aux puces; culture shock, widely cited as a calque from the German Kultur-Schock; long time no see, often traced to a direct rendering of Chinese 好久不见; and in French, gratte-ciel, a calque of the English skyscraper, meaning sky-scraper.

Calques appear in many languages and have historically aided the introduction of new ideas, technologies, or social concepts. They are distinct from loanwords, which preserve the original form, and from semantic borrowing, which reuses a word with a new meaning. Calques can facilitate rapid expansion of a language’s vocabulary but may be opaque to speakers unfamiliar with the source language. The study of calques sheds light on contact between language communities and the processes by which languages adapt foreign concepts.