Universal #1763

Legacy number: 1763

 Number  1758
 Original  I know of no cases where a complete indefinite pronoun has been borrowed.
 Standardized  Complete indefinite pronouns cannot be borrowed.
 Keywords  borrowing, indefinite pronoun
 Domain  lexicon
 Type  unconditional
 Status  diachronic
 Quality  statistical (according to author absolute)
 Basis  100-language sample in Haspelmath 1997
 Source  Haspelmath 1997: 184

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Discussion
Counterexamples
Romani borrows indefinites from various contact languages: Greek, Macedonian/Bulgarian, Serbian/ Croatian, Slovene, Rumanian, Turkish, Albanian, Hungarian, Slovak/Czech, Polish, Russian, German, Italian, and French. Borrowings of negative temporals are also attested in Aromunian spoken in Macedonia (Romance, IE) and Chamorro spoken in Guam (Western Malayo-Polynesian). Saami (Finno-Ugric) has two loans of determiners (used as person indefinites as well). Arabic specific determiner “fulan” ‘some, a certain’ has spread almost all over the Muslim world, and beyond. Persian indefinite loans are frequently recognized in a number of Iranian languages (Elsik 2001).