Early contacts

From having been one of the most hospitable languages of the world in its acceptance of foreign loans, English has developed into the most generous donor of words to other languages. Books and articles have been written to prove its hospitality in accepting words from various languages. This process of borrowing has gone on for centuries and evidence can be found not only in etymological dictionaries of English but also in every general dictionary of English that denotes the origin of source of words recorded in it. The generosity of English as a donor language began much later and some authors[1] state that prior to 1900 the influence of English on other languages was modest.

Sapir in his book Language is more explicit when he says that

...it is a little disappointing to learn that the general cultural influence of English has so far been all but negligible. The English language itself is spreading because the English have colonized immense territories. But there is nothing to show that it is anywhere entering into the lexical heart of other languages...[2]

By the end of the sixteenth century (in 1582), Richard Mulcaster wrote that 'the English tongue is of small reach, stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all'.[3]Logan Pearsall Smith[4] believes that 'to the great vocabulary of European civilization... our country [England] made no additions before a comparatively late date towards the end of the seventeenth century'. However, he admits that 'during the Middle Ages... a few English words connected with trade and with the sea found their way into the French language, and in the sixteenth and the greater part of the seventeenth century the terms that were borrowed are of some unimportant kind. The only English word borrowed in the sixteenth century which has become a general European term is dog'.[5]

Towards the end of the seventeenth and in the first half of the eighteenth century a remarkable change took place. Foreign nations began to borrow English words in ever increasing numbers, not merely terms from trades and shipping, but words of a much more important kind. This linguistic fact corresponds very accurately in date to that great historical event which has been called 'the discovery of England'[6]. After that there followed a great movement of English words in the course of the eighteenth century which led L.P. Smith to say that 'there is perhaps nothing in linguistic history more striking than the contrast between the great English words which reached the continent at that period, and the humble trade terms, the names of boats and fishes, which had been borrowed in the previous centuries'.[7] The interest in England, in English opinion, fashions and even English games which appeared about 1750 in some European countries, first in France, and then spread to the rest of Europe, particularly to Italy, was called 'Anglomania'.[8]

The infiltration of English words into French (at that time the universal language) led to their adoption by other European languages. The Italians followed the continental Anglomania, borrowing the same words and imitating the same sentiments. The Germans got their first knowledge of England from France. The main deposit of English words in French and German during the eighteenth century is much the same in the other languages of Europe regardless of whether they had direct or indirect contact with French and German which acted as important intermediaries.

In the nineteenth century, English contributions to the vocabulary of European languages became more numerous and more widely spread, covering all main European languages: (a) Romance: French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese; (b) Germanic: German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian; (c) Slavonic: Russian, Polish and Croatian.

Twentieth century contact

In the twentieth century the contact of English with other languages of Europe became closer due to new means of communication. The result was a very free and versatile linguistic borrowing of English words by European languages. In the course of the three previous centuries (from the seventeenth to the nineteenth) there was a continuous linguistic intertraffic which was almost entirely governed by cultural relations and by the direct or indirect influence of England on other European countries. To study the linguistic links in the twentieth century means, in fact, to investigate the degree of cultural and economic contact with England (and, more recently with America) because this influence is mostly reflected in English loan-words in European languages. Although the degree of English contact with other languages of Europe depends on various factors, the consequences of the contact can be best illustrated by the number and the kind of loan-words taken from English.

The most obvious result of the linguistic contact of English with other languages of Europe is the transfer of English words into other European languages. Their vocabulary is directly enriched through the transfer which can be direct or indirect. Direct transfer is performed when two languages, English as a giving language and a European language as a receiving language, have such close geographic, cultural, sociological, political etc. ties that the borrowed objects, ideas or notions require their names to be transferred into the borrowing language. On the other hand, when there is no direct contact between the two countries and their languages, there is no direct transfer of words needed to name borrowed objects, ideas, notions etc. This indirect transfer is performed through various media and the process is called indirect borrowing. The contact between the two languages in question can also be established through a third language called an intermediary language. English loan-words reflect all these elements and in the receiving language they may have a direct influence on the vocabulary and the form of the receiving language. This specific feature is analysed below as a part of the adaptation of Anglicisms in the receiving language.

The study of Anglicisms

The vocabulary of any receiving language after it has been in the direct or indirect contact with the giving language, English, is enriched in the various fields of human knowledge to which Anglicisms belong. Our work on the project The English Element in the European Languages[9], which analyses about twenty European languages, has proved that nearly all fields of human knowledge have been represented in our dictionaries of Anglicisms.[10] The kinds of Anglicisms and their number are not the same in various European languages. They depend on the human activities of various nations and their contact with the English culture and civilisation. The more linked they are, the bigger number and more versatile the fields of contact are. An average contact between English and a European language results in 1500 to 2000 Anglicisms. It is quite difficult to enumerate all the fields of human activities of European nations on which English has exercised an influence. The result of English influence is that the receiving languages of Europe borrow English loans, adapt them as Anglicisms and subsequently integrate them into their vocabulary.

It is impossible in this limited space to quote all the languages of Europe and all the fields of human knowledge from which Anglicisms were borrowed. We can quote only a limited number of English source words in the selected fields which were adapted into Anglicisms: (a) food and drink, (b) animals, (c) sports, (d) clothing, (e) economy, banking and money, (f) trade and measures, (g) language and literature, (h) journalism, politics and law, (i) philosophy and religion, (j) medicine, (k) science and natural science; (l) sea terms and navigation, (m) technical terms etc.

In order to illustrate these, we will illustrate each thematic group by a few examples of the English source words from which Anglicisms in individual languages were developed and adapted according to the linguistic system of each receiving language. The existing dictionaries of Anglicisms in the main European languages document the way in which an English source word is adapted into an Anglicism. (The principles of adaptation are discussed below).

 

Thematic fields	English source words
food	bacon, beefsteak, jam, pudding, sandwich
drink	brandy, bourbon, grapefruit, juice, whisk(e)y
animals	alligator, antelope, bulldog, dog, kangaroo, mustang, skunk
sports	ace, back, bantam, boxer, football, tennis
clothing	bikini, blazer, cardigan, pullover, raglan, trench coat, Ulster
economy	boycott, broker, budget, dumping, export, import, inflation, strike
banking and money	bank note, cent, check, dollar, penny, safe
measures	acre, bushel, foot, gallon, ounce, pint, watt, yard
language and literature	slang, alliteration, blank verse, digest, essay, pidgin, reprint, Yiddish
journalism	art director, interview, column, leader, magazine
politics	apartheid, conformism, dominion, imperialism, isolationism, labourist, liberal, loyalist, parliament, Tory
law	affadavit, jury, kidnap, lend-lease, lynch, petition
philosophy	acculturation, behaviourism, Darwinism
religion	Adventist, Anglican, Mormon, pantheism
music and dance	band, beat, blues, bebop, break dance, twist
transport	antifreeze, airbus, bus, car ferry, channel, container, freight, tramway, trolley bus, waggon
sea terms	ballast, barge, steamer,
computer terms	ALGOL, assembler, bit, byte, chip, clone, COBOL, computer, disc, PASCAL, ROM
technical terms	amplifier, blister, bloom, cracking, cable, derrick, lazer, lift, ingot, radar
medicine	aids, anaesthesia, antibiotic, bypass, mumps, pacemaker, penicillin, vitamin
science	aberration, gravitation, isotope
social life	bar, bridge, club, hobby, poker
film,radio,TV	cable TV, cameraman, cinemascope, cinerama, film, live, Oscar, radio, transmitter, television, western
weather	blizzard, cyclone, hurricane, monsoon, typhoon
miscellaneous	accident, all right, camp, comfort, cowboy, dandy, flirt, folklore, park, nylon, picnic, plastic

Adaptation of Anglicisms

The integration of a great number of Anglicisms into the receiving languages of Europe, whose linguistic systems are different from that of English, requires a linguistic analysis to explain how the process is performed. English source words in passing from one system into several others must be adapted before they can be integrated. The analysis of every Anglicism in our dictionaries of Anglicisms in European languages[11] is organised so that it defines: (a) the origin of the Anglicism (i.e. from which English model-source it was developed), (b) its pronunciation in the receiving language, (c) its morphological categories (parts of speech and gender), and (d) its meaning. To achieve this, the analysis is performed on four levels: (a) the orthographic level, to show how the spelling of an English source word is adapted into the orthography of the receiving language, (b) the phonological level, to explain the pronunciation of the Anglicism especially when it differs from the English source word, (c) the morphological level, to show how the citation form of the Anglicism (and, if it is a noun, its gender, indicated by sb-m/f/n) are determined, (d) the semantic level, to determine which meaning of the English source word is transferred into the corresponding Anglicism.

The orthography of Anglicisms

The adaptation of an English source word into an Anglicism begins on the orthographic level in order to determine the spelling of the Anglicism (the citation form) and its relation to the orthography of the model (the English source). There are four possibilities:

(1) the orthography of the Anglicism is formed on the basis of the pronunciation of the model:

(2) the orthography of the Anglicism follows the orthography of the model without any change:

(3) the orthography of the Anglicism follows partly the pronunciation and partly the spelling of the model in either order:

(4) the orthography of the Anglicism is formed under the influence of an intermediary language through which the English source word has passed on its way to the receiving language:

The phonology of Anglicisms

The pronunciation is determined on the phonological level according to the similarity and dissimilarity of the phonological systems of English and the receiving languages.

(1) if both systems of pronunciation have the elements equally described, then the substitution is complete and the Anglicism is pronounced in the way of the receiving language. Since there is no change, we call this process 'zero transphonemisation'[12]:

(2) if some elements of the receiving language are different by their description, the pronunciation of the Anglicism is only partially equal to the English source word: the process is called 'partial' or 'compromise transphonemisation':

(3) if the pronunciation of the English source word consists of elements which do not have equivalents in the sound system of the receiving language, then the substitution is free: this process is called 'free transphonemisation'[13]:

The morphology of Anglicisms

(1) the citation form of an Anglicism can have the same form as the English source word. This means that no suffix (bound morpheme) of the receiving language is added. This process is called 'zero transmorphemisation'[14]:

(2) if the Anglicism preserves the English suffix of the source word, the process is called 'compromise transmorphemisation':

(3) the English suffix of the source word can be replaced by a suffix of the receiving language with the same function and meaning as the original English suffix. This process is called 'complete transmorphemisation':

(4) adaptation of verbs and adjectives usually follows the rules of word-formation of the receiving language[15]:

The gender of Anglicisms is generally determined by the so-called masculine tendency which means that the majority of Anglicisms are of masculine gender.[16]

English differs from the majority of European languages in having natural gender; this is replaced in Anglicisms by grammatical gender. In the adaptation of gender three criteria are applied:

(1) in substantives denoting human creatures gender is determined by their sex:

(2) the masculine tendency:

(3) contamination:

The semantics of Anglicisms

Anglicisms form two groups, the first consists of words adapted from English which have only one meaning:

This meaning can be restricted or expanded. The second group consists of those Anglicisms whose meaning is adapted from English source words which have more than one meaning. Most common are those cases when an Anglicism takes over one of several meanings (indicated in dictionaries by sense numbers) of the English source word. This process is called 'restriction of meaning in number':

There are also cases when an Anglicism expands the number of its meanings after it has been integrated into the receiving language. This process is called 'expansion of meaning in number':

If the expansion of meaning takes place within a semantic field, then the word acquires a new meaning which is different from either the source word or the original Anglicism. This process is called 'expansion of meaning in a semantic field'[17]:

Conclusion

Although our analysis of Anglicisms is limited to about twenty languages of Europe, the rich literature on linguistic borrowing points in the same direction, proving the motto of this chapter: from having been one of the most hospitable languages of the world in accepting foreign loans, English has become a most generous donor of words to other languages not only of Europe but also of other continents. The historical survey given above shows that the function of English as a donor depended on various factors and conditions; the result was a limited number of Anglicisms linked with specific human activities both in England and on the Continent. It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that the process of borrowing from English expanded vigorously. The number of fields of human knowledge and activities was so much increased that it would be difficult to find any which has not contributed to the variety of Anglicisms in the vocabulary of receiving languages. Dictionaries of Anglicisms in various European and non-European languages are the best proof of the function of English as a donor language. English source words required adaptation on a minimum of four levels to explain the linguistic change through which an English word passes to become an Anglicism. The adaptation depends primarily on the similarities and differences between the linguistic systems of the donor and receiver language.

The fact that so many Anglicisms have been integrated into the vocabulary of European languages leads us to examine not only the vocabulary of a receiving language from the point of view of its constituent parts, but also the problem of whether these imported elements have had any effect on the linguistic system of the borrowing languages. Our research so far has proved several innovations in the phonological systems of receiving languages as a result of borrowing.

The number of final consonant clusters in the Croatian phonological system has been greatly increased as the result of the integration of Anglicisms. To the original Croatian four clusters (-st, -zd, -st, -zd) several more have been added:

e.g.

• -bl (Cr debl < E double)
• -ft (Cr lift < E lift)
• -jl (Cr koktejl < E cocktail)
• -lf (Cr golf < E golf)
• -mp (Cr kamp < E camp)
• -nd (Cr trend < E trend)
• -rd (Cr lord < E lord)

Fouché[18] describing consonantism in the French phonological system, says that one new phoneme , a velar nasal, has been added to the list of consonants from the English suffix -ing, and that it penetrated the French phonological system by way of borrowing.[19]

There are two innovations in the Russian phonological system as a result of borrowing from English:

a) before the phoneme /e/ some non-palatalised consonants can be used in Anglicisms. In Russian words they are palatalised:

b) in an unstressed syllable there is no reduction of vowels in Anglicisms (which is obligatory in Russian words):

A more detailed analysis of the process of borrowing and adaptation of Anglicisms would require much more space. However, the basic approach to the problem explained in this paper can serve, we believe, as an initial stage for further, more sophisticated and scientifically more elaborate studies of language contact in general. 

 Notes:

Rudolf Filipovic studied English, French, Croatian and Phonetics. He is Director of the Linguistic Research Institute of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, specialising in the theory of languages in contact, and revised editions of his English-Croatian Dictionary. He has acted as President of FIPLV and SLE and is editor of two Croatian Academy series.

1. For example Haugen, E. ' The influence of English: A transatlantic perspective.' Folia Linguistica XXII, 1-2: 3-9. 1988.

2. Sapir, E. Language. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. 1921, p. 207.

3. Jespersen, O. Growth and Structure of the English Language. 9th edn. Oxford: Blackwell. 1945, p. 232.

4. Smith, L.P. Words and Idioms. 5th edn. London: Constable. 1948.

5. Ibid. pp. 43-44.

6. op. cit. p. 44.

7. op. cit. p. 46.

8. Graf, A.L' Anglomania e l'influsso inglese in Italia nel secolo XVIII. Torino. 1911.

9. Filipovic, R. ed. The English Element in European Languages (vol.3, Reports and Studies). Institute of Linguistics, University of Zagreb. 1991.

10. Filipovic, R. Anglicizmi u hrvatskom ili srpskom jeziku: porijeklo-razvoj-zna»enje (Anglicisms in Croatian or Serbian: origin-development-meaning). Djela JAZU, knjiga 70, Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti - Skolska knjiga, Zagreb. 1990. and Filipovic, R. 'Some problems in compiling an etymological dictionary of anglicisms' in Winter, W. ed On Languages and Language. SLE Presidential Addresses. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1994, pp. 127-143. 

11. Filipovic. 1994, ibid.

12. Filipovic, R. 'Transphonemization: substitution on the phonological level reinterpreted' in Pöckl, W. ed. Europäische Mehrsprachigkeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1981, pp. 125-133.

13. Filipovic, R. Teorija jezika u kontaktu. Uvod u lingvistiku jeziCnih dodira (Theory of Languages in Contact. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics). Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti - Skolska knjiga, Zagreb. 1986. and Filipovic, R. 1990. op. cit.

14. Filipovic, R. 'Transmorphemization: substitution on the morphological level reinterpreted.' Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia 25:1-8. 1980.

15. Filipovic, R. 1994. op. cit.

16. Filipovic, R. 1986. op. cit. and 1990. op. cit.

17. Filipovic, R. 1986. op. cit. and 1990. op. cit. pp. 37-41. 

18. Fouche, P. Traite de la prononciation française. Paris. 1958.

19. See also Filipovic, R. 'Phonologization and activation of latent phonemes in linguistic borrowing.' Journal of International Phonetic Association 12, 1:36-47. 1982.