Linguistic borrowing as evidence of the social history of the Senegalese speech community

Abstract

Language always carries along the social, cultural, and political history of its speakers. Deroy (1956: 316) pointed out that loanwords are evidence of the major historical events of a society. In other words, by analyzing lexical borrowings between languages, one can see the social, political, ideological, or cultural forces that once shaped or still influence a given community. In this respect, lexical borrowings constitute a reservoir of crystallized verbal forms used to refer to past or current foreign beliefs, practices, or way of life that have influenced a given community.Rather than offering a comprehensive theory of borrowings in Wolof (the major lingua franca spoken by over 80% of the Senegalese population, as either a first language or a second language), this study only examines the cultural and sociohistorical aspects of loans in the Senegalese speech community. The study uses loanwords as a means of understanding how the linguistic and sociohistorical systems cooperate in a multilingual and multicultural society such as Senegal (both in the past and in present times). It demonstrates that lexical borrowing does not occur randomly but is the product of social, cultural, political, or ideological interventions. First, the study intends to decode the social, political, cultural, and ideological history of Senegal encoded in French, Arabic, English, and Spanish lexical loanwords in Wolof. Second, the paper analyzes the linguistic nature of loanwords and their current sociolinguistic implications in Senegal today.

Investigating the Translation Strategies that English Language Students' Utilized in Translation Diverse Topics

“…The results of this study are in line with the results of Ngom (2002), Elshakry (2008), Al-Ghazalli (2010), Al-Athwary (2016), Li-na (2016), Salih andDweik, (2021), andJameel (2023). Ngom (2002) investigated linguistic borrowing as a window into the social history of the Senegalese speech community.…”

A Pragmatic Analysis of Loanwords Used in the Egyptian Media

“…The SL community is usually an advantageous society that is characterized by power, prestige and/or wealth at one point in time (Ngom, 2002). Accordingly the RL society starts to borrow words from it and this is for two main reasons.…”

“…English loanwords have entered the languages of countries all over the world in a very fast way through pop songs, culture of the youth, technology, the media and advertising. It has thus invaded, among other languages, German (Onysko, 2004), Korean (Boersma & Hamann, 2009), Spanish (Cortes et al, 2005), Senegal (Ngom, 2002), Japanese (Shepherd), Scandinavian languages (Greenall, 2005) and Jordanian Arabic (AlBatoush, 2014).…”

Phonological Processes of English Loanwords From French: A Transformational Generative Phonology Approach

“…The main reason for loaning according to Darwish (2015) is the need to acquire new vocabulary or lexical items for new places, things, and concepts. According to Ngom (2002), speakers sometimes borrow words that are not available in their own language, so that they can express an idea or concept. This is in line with Rao (2018) who states that the main reason for borrowing is to provide a word from the source language variety when there is no suitable existing word in the target language.…”