Since the beginning of 2020, our world has been deeply shaken by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our way of communicating, in both our personal and professional lives, has changed on many levels and especially with regard to terms which we use in our every-day verbal and written exchanges. New words and new concepts have appeared, such as lockdown, teleworking, Covid certificate, compulsory masks, etc.
This shows that languages are also strongly impacted by this pandemic since some of the words mentioned above are now entirely integrated into all of our languages. The term lockdown, in English, is, of course, used very often in many languages, but equivalents were created in most languages and will even be included in the official dictionaries.
In this sense, we can say that the Covid-19 pandemic is a source for linguistic creation and vocabulary enrichment.
On our website YourTerm, dedicated to the Terminology without Borders initiative, you can find various glossaries on the global pandemic. We uploaded glossaries in many languages like English, French, Spanish, Italian or even Dutch, Polish and Arab! These resources are listed in a separate section since the material is very rich.
The most recent addition to this list comes from the Centre for the Luxemburgish Language which created, as part of the Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionnaire, a multilingual glossary on Covid-19, with Luxemburgish as source language.
To consult the Covid-19 glossary in Luxemburgish, click here
Written by Cécile Mayeres
She holds a Master’s degree in Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication with a specialization in European mobility. She now does a traineeship in Communication at the Terminology Coordination Unit.