In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Dictionary Etymologies of South Asian Loanwords into English: Some Suggestions for Improvement T! Michael C. Shapiro mat the English language contains many loanwords of South Asian origin is hardly a well-kept secret. R. E. Hawkins, in Common Indian Words in English (1984), a publication compiled as a supplement to the Indian edition of the Little Oxford Dictionary , and which mines the OED, Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (1886, 1903), and Whitworth's Anglo-Indian Dictionary (1885) for material, contains some two thousand lexical entries, not all of which, however, if the truth be told, can be thought of as "common" English words (e.g., husbulhookum 'official order, passport' or tindal 'boatswain'). The Indian words in English are of diverse etymology, comprising words from Old1 (dharma, avatar, yoga), Middle (Theravada), and New IndoAryan (NIA) (shampoo, mongoose, thug), Dravidian (catamaran, pariah, cheroot), and Tibeto-Burman (polo, lama). In many cases South Asian languages have been the conduits through which words ultimately of non-South Asian pedigree (particularly of Turkic [Urdu, begum (?)], Persian [khaki, purdah] or Arabic [sahib] origin) have made their way into English. Conversely, some words ultimately of South Asian origin have been borrowed into English via non-South Asian intermediaries (mandarin [fr. Sanskrit mantrin/mantrĂ¯ 'minister of state, advisor' via 1In this paper the designation "Old Indo-Aryan" is used interchangeably with "Sanskrit," the most well-known exemplar of the Old Indo-Aryan stage of development of Indo-Aryan as a whole. Dictionaries:Journal ofthe Dictionary Society ofNorth America 22 (2001) 146Michael C. Shapiro Portuguese and perhaps other languages]). English loanwords of South Asian lexical items have included words whose "Indianness" is intrinsic to the semantics of items (e.g., pandit, ashram, sepoy, parcheesi, yeti, nirvana, curry) , words that have been more thoroughly nativized to English and where an Indian provenance may not be entirely obvious (punch, bungalow, cheetah, thug, dungarees, cheese [as in "a big cheese in the stock market"] , juggernaut) , and items whose Indian pedigree is contested or ultimately undeterminable (e.g., coolie or the damn of "I don't give a damn"). Over the past three decades, during which I have taught Hindi and related things at the University of Washington, I often have had occasion to consult standard monolingual English dictionaries in order to look up the putative etymologies given for English words of South Asian provenance. More often than not, I do this because I have been telling my students that such and such a word in English is actually derived from Hindi and that they should check this out for themselves in a standard English dictionary. I generally check, however, to make sure that what the dictionaries say matches what I've told the students . Often what I find surprises me. Over the years I have often been struck, not by outright inaccuracies in which I read about the Indie sources of South Asian words, for in few cases are etymologies flat out wrong, but rather by subtle inaccuracies or misleading statements. All too often, I have found, the etymological sections of these lexical entries don't get things quite right. However, in order to explain why many such etymological statements are subtly inaccurate, I need to present some background information about the complexities of lexicons of South Asian languages. These complexities have ramifications for the ways in which the etymologies of Indian loan vocabulary in English ought properly to be stated. I have no desire to make high-handed (and cheap) criticisms of distinguished works of English lexicography, but wish merely to offer some modest, practical suggestions as to how etymologies of South Asian loan words into English might be written in the future, so as to be in greater accord with the known facts of the histories of South Asian languages. Consider guru, an almost totally acculturated English lexeme that has made it into such expressions as "mega vitamin guru" and "IMF currency restructuring guru." The Random House Webster's College Dictionary (RHWCD) (1991), after giving an earliest citation date of 1820-30, derives the form from Hindi gurĂº, which is said to be from Sanskrit guru 'venerable, weighty'. Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Die- Dictionary Etymologies of South Asian...

pdf

Share