Loan words and their re-classification in Bantu languages: the case of French laon words in Tshiluba

Abstract

“Borrowing” “refers to linguistic forms being taken over by one language or dialect from another”. Such “borrowings” are usually known as “loan words”. Borrowing is a universal linguistic process in that where two languages or dialects are in contact, that process must necessarily take place. Generally, it is from the master's language that words will be borrowed by the language spoken by those who are, or consider themselves to be, in a weak position to express some of the concepts known already in the master's language. In this paper, by master's language, we mean the language which was spoken by the Belgians, once colonizers of Congo Kinshasa. That language was French. The loan words we are dealing with in this paper are from the French language.

Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 1 2004: 31-39