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A Wanderwort (plural Wanderwörter; German for "wandering word") is a word that has spread as a loanword among numerous languages and cultures, usually in connection with trade. At a sufficient time depth, it can be very difficult to establish in which language or language family it originated and in which it was borrowed. == Examples == Typical examples of wanderwörter are ''sugar'', ''ginger'', ''copper'',〔 ''silver'', ''cumin'', ''mint'', and ''wine'', some of which can be traced back to Bronze Age trade. Tea, with its maritime variant ''tea'' and Eurasian continental variant ''chai'' (both variants have entered English), is an example〔 whose spread occurred very late in history and is therefore fairly well understood: ''tea'' is from Hokkien, specifically Amoy, from the Fujianese port of Xiamen, hence maritime, while ''cha'' (whence ''chai''〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Chai )〕) is used in Cantonese and Mandarin. See etymology of tea for further details. Another example is ''orange'', which originated in a Dravidian language (likely Telugu or Malayalam), and whose likely path to English included, in order, Sanskrit, Persian, possibly Armenian, Arabic, Late Latin, Italian, and Old French. See Orange: etymology for further details. The word ''arslan'' (lion) of Turkic origin, whose variants are now widely distributed from Hungarian, Manchu to Persian, although merely serving as personal names in some languages; used as Aslan in the English novel series ''The Chronicles of Narnia''. Some ancient loanwords are connected with the spread of writing systems, an example would be Sumerian ''musar'', Akkadian ''musarum'' 'document, seal', apparently loaned to Proto-Indo-Iranian '' *mudra-'' 'seal' (Middle Persian ''muhr'', Sanskrit ''mudrā''). Some even older, late neolithic, wanderwörter have been suggested, e.g. Sumerian ''balag'', Akkadian ''pilakku-'', or PIE ''pelek'u-'' 'axe'. However, Akkadian ''pilakku-'' really means 'spindle', and Sumerian ''balag'' is properly transcribed ''balaĝ'' (''ĝ'' stands for ), means 'a large drum or harp' and was borrowed into Akkadian as ''balangu-''.〔(The Pennsylvanian Sumerian Dictionary )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「wanderwort」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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