English Gerunds as Loan Words

A casual observation. It seems English gerunds or present participles, such as 'streaming', 'jogging', 'rock climbing', are fairly popular as loan words in other languages. Of course, any part of speech can become a loan word (and English has been a fruitful source of nouns and verbs), but I'm particularly fascinated by the popularity of the gerunds.

A handful of examples - my Russian professor in college spoke with special venom about English loanwords in Russian such as 'jogging' and 'rock climbing.' You can see such an example below:

In Russian, the official is ЛЕДОЛАЗАНИЕ (ledolazanie) but we also have АЙС КЛАЙМИНГ (ais klaiming).

In French, 'going jogging' is 'faire du jogging'.

In Japanese, there is the loan word 'トレーニング' (toreeningu, training) which can be turned into a verb by adding 'suru'.

In Spanish, the word 'streaming' has been borrowed for live digital transmissions, as in 'hacer streaming.'

My interest is in whether gerunds are especially popular as loan words. I can understand borrowing a noun, verb, or adjective, but the present participle of a verb being used as a noun? That's quite specific. No other verbal derivation seems popular. Past participles (bitten, ridden) don't seem to be borrowed much. Verbs are usually borrowed in their dictionary form, not a conjugated form (so no past tense or third person singular).

The simple explanation may be that since gerunds function as nouns ("I love swimming! Climbing is my favorite hobby. Labored breathing is a bad sign."), it doesn't really matter that they were derived from verbs. Gerunds are also very common in English and easy to form.

Why borrow gerunds then? There is a certain cosmopolitan cool factor in English loan words, and English gerunds are quite distinctive. I wonder, though, if it's really just that. I have an inkling gerunds may somehow be more convenient. There is already a word for 'ice climbing' in Russian, so why the English calque?

It is certainly easier to say 'hacer streaming' than to say 'hacer transmision en directo.' It's also much more compact - instead of using a noun phrase with an embedded prepositional phrase, you can just use this shorter noun phrase. (It helps that 'streaming' is a more particular activity than 'transimision en directo', which refers to any live streaming of data. A meteorologist on television may rely on live streaming data, but she is not a 'streamer.')

It may also be a matter of ignorance. If you somehow don't know how to say 'ice climbing' in Spanish ('escalada en hielo') but you know the English for some reason, instead of trying to figure out how you would say it (is there a single word for it, or is it a phrase?), you can just borrow the English and add 'hacer' to it if you need to turn it into a verb. Google search results gives 3 results for 'hacer ice climbing', so it's definitely very rare, but not unprecedented.

Link Haul - YouTube Edition

Hello! December was a very busy and personally important month to me. While I am still working on some very big stuff behind the scenes, nothing is quite ready for publishing. What is ready is some interesting finds I've made. We've got a wide variety of languages covered today!

If you're a millennial, you may recall the direct-to-video sequel "The Lion King 2," which featured a song titled "Upendi." One of the characters asks whether "upendi" means love, though she doesn't receive a response. I looked it up and it turns out that "upendo" is the Swahili word for "love", but "upendi" is not a Swahili word:

We need some basic grammar here. The Swahili root -pend- means "like, love". The root -pind- means "bend". The most basic form of a verb is the imperative singular, which is just the root and the most general verb ending -a, so penda means "love/like!" and pinda means "bend!" (addressed to one person). The infinitive prefix is ku-, so you might also see verbs listed with that: kupenda "(to) like/love".

The imperative plural changes the ending -a to -eni: so pendeni "love/like!" (addressed to two or more).

Subjects are indicated by prefixes: nipenda "I love/like", tupenda "we love/like". The second person singular prefix is u-: upenda "you (sg.) love/like". This is the simple or general present, which has no tense marker. Other tenses have a prefix between the person and the verb: ninapenda "I am liking", nilipenda "I liked", etc.

The negative is basically formed with the prefix ha-. The verb ending changes to -i, so tupenda "we love/like", hatupendi "we do not love/like". But there is some merger: hupendi "you (sg.) do not like/love" (for ha-u-), and sipendi "I do not like/love" (for ha-ni-). Note this is a second verb form that can end in -i; the imperative plural (above) is another. As Wazona says, this hupendi is the closest verb form to a supposed 'upendi'. (Or the subjunctive upende "that you may love".) I don't know where The Lion King got that word.

Nouns are mostly formed with prefixes, and abstract nouns usually have the prefix u-. Thus a word beginning with u- could be either an abstract noun or a second person singular verb. When verb roots are made into nouns they often take a different vowel suffix too. Thus the noun "love" is upendo (-o is a common suffix for actions), and the noun "bow" (the weapon) is upinde.

For more etymological fun, I recommend this video I found on the etymology of "Lloegyr", the Welsh name for England. Long story short, the popular folk etymology that it means "lost lands" is false. I recommend watching the video to see how it is that this etymology spread, and the danger of thinking that plausible = probable.

And rounding off fun linguistics videos, here's a video by comedian/software programmer Ólafur Waage on whether Icelandic is just the Scandinavian languages with an extra -ur on the end. He discusses how a famous Icelandic movie in Sweden led to Swedes becoming familiar with the phrase "Þungur hnífur" (lit. heavy knife). In Swedish, "heavy knife" is "tung kniv." Both words are cognate with Icelandic, with an added -ur. Ólafur investigates how deep the -ur connection goes, using the power of Python.

That's all for now! Thank you for being with me this final month of 2025.

- Karen

Billy Joel

Today's topic is Billy Joel and the inconsistent appearance of the New York accent in his music. Billy Joel, being born and raised in New York City, has some New York-ish features in his speech, such as a COT-CAUGHT distinction. Noticeably, his interviews don't seem to show any non-rhoticism.

• The beatles for a l[ɔ]ng time (source)
• Paul McC[ɑɹ]tney specifically, as a melody writ[ɚ] (source)
• Who th[ɔ]ght (source)

On his own music, he tends to use the non-rhotic accent that was typical of working-class New Yorkers. The stressed 'er' vowel, as in 'bird', is always rhotic, but other cases of Vr have the r dropped.

Anthony's Song (Movin' Out)
• "Ah but workin' too h[ɑ]d can give you a h[ɑ]t attack
• S[ɑ]geant O'Leary is walkin' the beat
• At night he becomes a bartend[ə]

"We didn't start the fire"
• M[ɑ]rciano

"Still Rock and Roll To Me"
• What's the matt[ə] with the c[ɑ] I'm driving?

He has some other features typical of New York English in his songs, such as the MARRY-MERRY distinction and using the LOT vowel for words like orange. He avoids using a diphthongized THOUGHT vowel in his music despite using it in his own speech. This suggests to me that some features to him are automatic. He probably doesn't think that the MARRY-MERRY distinction is an 'accent' thing. He is probably aware that the diphthongized THOUGHT vowel is viewed negatively outside of New York. Non-rhoticism seems to walk a middle ground between recognizably New York but not stigmatized, so he plays them up as part of a working-class-but-not-too-working-class New Yorker persona.

• And a bright [ɑ]range pair of pants?
• M[æ]rilyn Monroe
• "H[æ]rry Truman, D[ɑ]ris Day"

A major exception to his non-rhotic vowels is the song "Uptown Girl", where he uses rhoticized vowels basically every chance he gets. This song is an homage to Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons. Frankie uses rhoticized vowels, but he never uses this degree of rhoticism that he does. He is coming in hard and really lengthening the 'errrr' more than he does in his own speech. It's curious to me since he sounds more like a 'downtown boy' with his usual sung accent than he does here, but perhaps he associated exaggerated rhoticism with the music of his youth.

Uptown Girl
• Uptown g[ɚ]l
• I bet h[ɚ] mamma never told her why
• I bet she's nev[ɚ] had a backstreet guy
• She's been living in h[ɚ] white-bread w[ɚ]ld