The Syriac-script, trilingual (Syriac-Arabic-Turkish) biweekly Leshono d'Umtho, or Tongue of the Nation. Beirut, 1928. (British Library) For those who have learnt foreign languages, the presence of a ...

For those who have learnt foreign languages, the presence of a loanword can be both comforting and surreal. In languages written in non-Roman scripts, a borrowed word – take computer as an example – ...