Quick and Loan

A quick explanation: Words vs. cognates

Similar words are spoken in all tongues of the globe. However, it probably began in Telugu, Tamil or Malayalam. Persian, Arabic and Old French were used from there to make it into English. So you see how words on the other side of the globe manage to establish themselves in a certain speech.

Words in different tongues are similar because they are either loan words or have a shared pedigree (cognates). Either term is used to identify the source of a particular term. Both cases trace the origins of the term back to find out where it came from, and often, but not always, it came entirely from another one.

When new words are adapted to a particular speech, changes are often made, but no matter what phonetic adaptations are made, both "loan words" and "cognitive" still relate to the respective origins of a given term. Cognitives are of particular interest to historic linguistics as they can serve to reconstruct the ancient origins of contemporary tongues.

Whereas both concepts relate to the custom of accepting words in different tongues, their difference begins with genetic science. Loan words in the widest sense are taken from another source without any kind of relation. Let's take the "orange" example from above - English just took the French words and adjusted them.

Following the "genetic" methaphor, loan words are like steps or adopted brothers and sisters. So if English is part of the Teutonic dynasty, but words are stolen from Spanish or German, then these are loan words. However, cognitive words are words that divide a genetical descent - they are more likely to be your real brothers and sisters, since both come from the same origin (your mom and dad or, in the case of words, a shared ancient language).

This is also true of the Spaniard'padre' and the french'père', both of which are derived from the Lateinic 'pater'. The words in the different language are related in both cases. However, as is so often the case with language concepts, there are some who do not agree with such adefinitions. Comparing David Crystal's definitions of "cognate" with those of Campbell and Mixco, we find that they have somewhat different opinions on this issue.

In order to make things even more complicated, it is also clear that words that come from an older release of a given locale are related, but often not regarded as such. As an example - "brodor" is Old English for "brother" and, at least according to some explanations, the words are related. When all the tongues of the globe are related and then look back far enough, you will find a shared forebear for much of the contemporary terminology and the term "loanword" will disappear substantially.

Moreover, language is constantly changing. Today, what is regarded as either Spanish or the French language is actually only contemporary Latin. So where exactly do you draw the line in a state of flux to see where a phrase from an older release becomes a brandy? In spite of these issues, the common perception is that a distinction is made between credit and recognition by means of genetics.

Loan words are just parts of the vaccabulary that has been taken from another tongue (it's not like they're actually returned) to support the dictionary. Conversely, related words are related in the genetical meaning of the word and thus have the same descent. But if you are willing to do the work, both can actually help you study your foreign tongue, as you will find a great deal of conversational terminology.

Norvegian is part of the North German group of Indo-European Arabic spoken there.