We are pleased to announce the World Loanword Database, a fully
open-access online resource, which has been released this week.
The World Loanword Database contains detailed comparable
information about 58.000 words from 41 languages, contributed by
41 (teams of) specialists, and edited by Martin Haspelmath and
Uri Tadmor from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology. The open-access online version was programmed by
Robert Forkel from the Max Planck Digital Library (Munich). The
World Loanword Database answers questions such as: - How many
languages have a borrowed word for Œeye¹? (answer: 3 clear cases
out of 41) - How many languages have a non-borrowed word for
Œpolice¹? (answer: 8 clear cases out of 41) - Which semantic
areas of words are the most resistant to borrowing? (answer:
words expressing spatial relations, body parts, and sense
perception) - Which languages did English borrow words from, and
how are they distributed geographically? (see the map) These
data will allow us to distinguis