Hello, Fritzendugan. In your Talk note about Loanword, you make a good point about the ambiguity of "café" between the categories of "loanword" and "foreign word". The system of categories seems to entail more precision than is warranted by the data. What would you think of inserting the following wording immediately below the diagram?
- The diagram’s distinction between a “loan word” and a “foreign word”--based as it is on the presence or absence of orthographic adaptation--can be problematic in a language whose spelling system is heterogeneous, such as English. By one standard, the frequent omission of the accent from “café”, for example, might constitute an adaptation and qualify the word as a loanword. By another standard, the fact that the spelling has not been altered to “caffay” might mark the word as an unadapted “foreign word”. Kotabatubara (talk) 14:10, 14 July 2014 (UTC)