CALQUE IN ARABIC: THE BRIGHT SIDE OF BORROWING

Arab scholars, linguists, and particularly grammarians have always been haunted by the idea of keeping Arabic, the language of the Glorious Qur'an, pure and void of foreign elements. Proponents of this view have deemed any development in the language as corruption and any semantic change as solecism. People and their societies live not only in the middle of change but in the expectation of change as well. The present study argues that not all elements borrowed from other languages are harmful to the structure and identity of the borrowing language. On the contrary, loans from other languages, especially by means of calque, contribute to the betterment and development of the language, Arabic in our case, since they produce neologisms and refresh language expression. The study has come to the conclusion that, contrary to what traditional scholars propagate, calque has been a good source of new concept to Arabic in all walks of life and an element that keeps the language in pace with what is going on in the globe.