Borrowed Word Borrowing

A word from one language that has been adapted for use in another is called a loanword or a borrowed word. Borrowing arises in a context where two or more languages come into contact. When languages co-exist, or when they are in contact, the tendency is that words can be borrowed by both. This means that borrowing can go in both directions between the two or more languages in question. The words borrowed are referred to as borrowings or loanwords. The two words are used metaphorically because in actual fact there is no literal lending and borrowing process taking place between the languages concerned.

Hocket (1958) thinks that borrowing from one language into another is primarily motivated by what he calls the “need filling motive” although

The interaction between the Europeans and the indigenous population was in an English-based Pidgin especially on the plantations that were established by the Germans in the coastal region of Cameroon. This is where the Awing people came into contact with English. Since these plantations needed mostly unskilled labour, the Awing people like any other Cameroonians streamed to the coast to earn their living. As they worked on the plantations, they needed to communicate not only with their European employers but also with their fellow Cameroonians who spoke mutually unintelligible languages. Linguists have described Cameroon's linguistic landscape as one of the most complex not only in Africa but in the world at large. The country is home to over 250 mutually unintelligible indigenous languages (see Ethnologue, 2009), a dominant English-based pidgin and two received languages, English and French which function as official languages. Even though English and French and to an extent Pidgin English were not part of the linguistic landscape at the time of the contact between Awing and English, the numerous indigenous languages were there and posed a huge challenge to the workers on the plantation who came from different ethnic groups. Caught up in this tower of Babel, they needed some sort of a link language or better

In the case of Awing, labourers from the plantations returned with these new words and the Awing monolinguals then learnt them with all the difficulties and so reshaped the pronunciation of these words and sometimes their meanings and forms. In this paper we shall lay more emphasis on those loanwords that have no direct equivalents in Awing but would also highlight the difference between the younger and the older generation of Awing speakers. The loanwords from the plantations and used by the older generation tend to be more integrated and more assimilated into the language than the borrowings that came in as a result of the introduction of formal education. Although our intention is to avoid projecting instances of code switching and code mixing as far as possible, we may be obliged to once in a while bring in words that have direct equivalents in Awing, mostly used by Awing-English bilinguals who have been exposed to so much