Linguistics lexicon handout
for long compounds to be reduced to the first elements of the subcompounds they contain, so
that Japanese too-kyo dai-gakku `Tokyo University', literally `east-capital big-school' is
usually referred to as too-dai literally `east-big' but more idiomatically translated as
something like `TU'). German abbreviations/acronyms are often based not on the first letter
of the component words, but on the letters for the onset and nucleus of the first syllable of
the component words, e.g. Gestapo from GEheimSTAatsPOlizei `secret state police'.
The other obvious way in which languages get new words is from other languages. These
take two principal forms: A loanword is a word in one language taken from another
language (e.g. English chair, table, restaurant, gateau from French; note that the first two feel
less foreign than the second two, primarily because they were borrowed much earlier and
have adapted in various ways to the phonological patterns of English). A calque is a word in
annaabi.ee 
