A primer on getting neologisms from foreign languages to under-resourced languages

Abstract

Mainly due to lack of support, most under-resourced languages have a reduced lexicon in most realms and domains of increasing importance, then their speakers need to significantly augment it. Although neologisms should arise from the languages themselves, external sources are widely accepted. However, we dispute the "common sense" of using the imposed official languages, which are highly probably a legacy of colonialism, as the only source, and we propose to introduce neologisms from any language as long as these neologisms "sound like" native words of the target languages.