Every language borrows words from other languages. English is no exception. In fact, only about 30% of English words are ‘native English’; the rest are borrowed from other languages, particularly French, Latin, and Greek. French (or Old Norman) started coming into the English language in 1066 when William the Conqueror became the first Norman king of England. Because the Normans (i.e., French) were the ruling class, certain words that were borrowed from French had a greater prestige. For example the word mansion comes from Latin via Old French. Originally it simply meant a place where someone stays, but because the ruling Norman class lived more extravagantly than the English, the word has come to mean a large, impressive house.
English borrows from other languages as well. The word sabbatical comes from the Hebrew word shabat, which means rest. The word tortilla comes from Spanish, meaning little cake. There is no logical reason why we couldn’t call it a thin pancake, but I suppose that the first time an English speaker encountered a tortilla and asked what it was, the Spanish speaker simply said tortilla, and the name stuck. The word tsunami comes from the Japanese words tsu (‘harbor’) and nami (‘wave’), which explains why it starts with the letters ts. It is quite uncommon in English for a word to start with ts in English. Consequently, most English speakers simply say sunami instead of tsunami. I remember a conversation I once had with a young married couple about the word tsunami. The husband was American, and the wife was Japanese. The husband kept saying sunami, and the wife kept insisting that his pronunciation was wrong. He couldn’t hear the difference. Having the letter ts at the beginning of the word is so strange for English speakers that we just drop the t without realizing it was ever there.
Tok Pisin, the main trade language in Papua New Guinea, consists almost entirely of borrowed words, although, like the word tsuanami in English, the pronunciation often changes. I remember when I was first preparing to travel by public motor vehicle to Enga with my language teacher Reuben. I was asking him about the condition of the road, and he told me that there were a lot of fotos on the road. I assumed that he meant photos or pictures, and I couldn’t quite understand what that meant or how it was that there were photos on the road. Finally I realized that he was talking about potholes!
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| Driving over some ‘fotos’ on the way to Enga |
Not only do changes in pronunciation sometimes make it difficult to understand borrowed words, but words are not always borrowed as one would expect. I remember a time when we were staying in Enga and had an urgent need for a toilet plunger. I was going around to all of the small hardware stores in town asking for a plunja, trying to pronounce the word as I believed Enga speakers would pronounce it. Now in Papua New Guinean culture it would be shameful for someone to say, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” So instead they say, “Sori, pinis,” which means, “Sorry, finish.” (In other words, “Sorry, but we don’t have any more of those in stock.”) Finally, as I was visiting my third or fourth store and again asking for a plunja, and the store employee was again saying, “Sori, pinis,” I saw a plunger hanging on the wall. So I said, “That! I want that! What do you call that?” And the employee said, “O, han pum,” which means, “Oh, hand pump”!
The dialect of English that words are borrowed from can also cause problems. In Papua New Guinea, words borrowed from English often come from Australian English. So people say spana (‘spanner’), loli (‘lolly’), and ruba (‘rubber’) instead of wrench, candy, and eraser. And because the word napkin has quite a negative connotation in Australian English, the word serviette (borrowed from Old French) is used instead. But Papua New Guineans often just say tisu (‘tissue’), which is also borrowed from Old French.
Enga speakers also borrow many words from English, often twisting the meaning. I remember when there was a wedding ceremony in Wabag town and a couple dozen pigs were cooked in a ground oven similar to a luau (which, incidentally, is borrowed from Hawaiian). As men were butchering the pigs, I heard the master of ceremonies say “Operatimi laa,” which basically means, “Operate it.” In other words, “Perform an operation on the pig.” Of course, in English the word operate is used with reference to cutting open patients in surgery; it is not used with reference to butchering pigs.
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| Performing an ‘operation’ on a pig |
As we translate the Bible into Enga, we often have no other option than to borrow words, particularly for things that are not a part of traditional Enga culture. So we use words like breta, waene, and sipisipi for bread, wine, and sheep because there is just no equivalent in the Enga language. Fortunately, Engans now have enough knowledge of outside cultures to know what those things are, and today you can find each of those things in Enga. Even words like ailene (‘island’) and solowata (’saltwater’, i.e., ‘ocean’) need to be borrowed, because Enga is in the mountains. One of the most interesting borrowed words used in the Enga translation is kakopai (‘cargo boy’), which can be used to talk about addiction. For example, 1 Timothy 3:8 says that deacons “must not be addicted to much wine.” In Enga we have translated this as, “Dikenes (borrowed) ... should not tell the [practice] of drinking much wine to take [them] as [its] cargo boy.” This hearkens back to a time when Papua New Guineans often carried cargo on their backs for the ruling Australian class. Although they were not slaves, they were very much in a subservient role, and deacons should not be subservient to wine!
Thankfully God has created languages to be flexible, always adapting to the world around them. For that we can say Hallelujah and Amen (which are both borrowed from Hebrew by the way)!
