Linguistic Borrowings from English in Spanish Language

Abstract

This study is devoted to the analysis of the concept of linguistic borrowing in Spanish. The main purpose of the work is to determine the semantic areas in which Anglicism is most used, that is, borrowings from the English language, respectively. Within the framework of this study, the following goals are set: to define the term “borrowing”; to identify the reasons for the need for borrowings; to classify lexical borrowings according to the degree of their adaptation to the host language; to give a comparative characteristic of the use of Anglicism in Spanish.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

There are several definitions of the term “borrowing”. The Dictionary of the Royal Academy interprets it as “elemento, generalmente léxico, que una lengua toma de otra”. In other words, it is a lexeme of foreign origin. F.L. Carreter in his dictionary of philological terms gives such a definition of the term “borrowing”: “elemento lingüístico que una lengua toma de otra, bien adaptándolo en su forma primitiva, bien imitándolo y transformándolo más o menos” (Carreter, 1953, 84).

Thus, the Spanish linguist indicates in his definition not only the fact that we are talking about a word that came from another language, but also gives two possible forms of borrowing: without any changes or with some degree of adaptation to the grammar of the receiving language. However, at the same time, the term “borrowing” is also understood by linguists as the process of transition of a lexical unit from one language to another. Based on all of the above, it can be concluded that it is quite difficult to give one definition to this term, reflecting in it the inherent duality of understanding.

Linguists define several reasons for borrowing foreign words by different languages:

1. The need to nominate a new thing, a new concept, phenomenon, etc.;
2. The need to distinguish between meaningfully similar, but still different concepts;
3. The need to specialize concepts in a particular field for certain purposes;
4. The desire to designate a whole, not divided into separate components of the object in one word;
5. If the borrowing language has established systems of terms that serve a different thematic area, professional environment, etc. and are more or less uniform in the source of borrowing, then it is easier to enter the language and strengthen the use of new borrowings related to the same area and taken from the same source;
6. Socio-psychological reasons and factors of borrowing, perception of a foreign language word as more prestigious (compared to the native one) more “learned” or “beautifully sounding”.

For example, Yu.S. Maslov argued (and one cannot disagree with him) that the common basis for all borrowing processes is the interaction between peoples, between the respective cultures, political, everyday, cultural contacts between people speaking different languages. Obviously, if the concept affects the vital interests of many people, then the word denoting it becomes common. In relation to foreign-language words, this pattern is especially pronounced, because here the factor of social prestige of a foreign-language name is added. Those foreign words that denote communicatively important concepts inevitably fall into the zone of social attention. At certain periods, their frequency in speech becomes unusually high, derivatives are easily formed from them, and most importantly, they become objects of conscious use (??????, 1987: 75).

In his work M.A. Breiter identifies the following reasons for borrowing foreign language elements:

a. The absence of a corresponding concept in the cognitive base of the receptor language;

b. The absence of an appropriate name in the receptor language. (M.A. Breiter notes that about 15% of the newest Anglicism are borrowed due to the lack of an appropriate name in the receptor language. This group also includes those borrowings that, for some reason, are easier to pronounce, shorter and more specific in semantics and, as a result, have displaced previously mastered language units.;

c. Providing a stylistic effect (???????, 1997: 23).

The reasons for borrowing can be divided into two groups: external (non-linguistic or extralinguistic) and internal (linguistic or linguistic).

According to the author of the work, extralinguistic factors include the presence of more or less close political, economic, industrial and cultural ties between the native-speaking peoples. After all, it is known that vocabulary is an area of language that is most "open" to all kinds of external influences, it is an area in which all the changes taking place in the social life of society are reflected. Concretizing the problem of the influence of external political, cultural and other ties of society on the process of borrowing, we can say that the most typical form of such influence is the borrowing of a name together with the borrowing of the thing, object or concept itself. In each language, the vocabulary borrowed in this way makes up a significant group of words. This influence, however, can also manifest itself in the process of penetration of parallel words to the names already available in the language. In this case, the elimination of doublet occurs by semantic and stylistic differentiation of synonymous pairs. When borrowing of this kind, the reasons, apparently, should be sought not only outside the language, i.e. not only in the influence of external social contacts on the borrowing process, but also in the perceiving language itself.

Linguistic factors include the presence of tendencies to eliminate the polysemy of the original word, to simplify the semantic structure of the latter, the need to clarify or detail the corresponding concept, to distinguish some semantic shades by attaching them to different words, etc. Thus, the borrowed and already existing word in the language divide the spheres of their semantic influence. These spheres may overlap to a greater or lesser extent, but they never completely coincide.

The intensity of the borrowing process is influenced by the success of the people in one or another sphere of life. If the state has become a world leader in the technical field or in some other, then with a high degree of probability the rest of the world will begin to talk about this area in the language of the leader-manufacturer. As a third factor, we can single out such a modern phenomenon as fashion. In this case, this word should be understood in its broad meaning. The existence of a world political leader or leaders makes their languages more popular, creates a certain “fashion” for them, which means that more and more borrowings will come from these languages. For example, nowadays English is such a language. It is not only studied everywhere as the language of world communication, but also penetrates into many languages of the world by borrowing. This can be seen to a greater extent by the example of youth jargon as the language that is most rapidly changing and most strongly exposed to new trends.

The borrowing process can take place in two ways: internally or externally. In the first case, the exchange takes place within the same language between dialects. However, the second type is more common, when words are borrowed from another language.

When it comes to borrowings, we mean not only lexical, but also grammatical and morphosyntactic units. Therefore, it is possible to divide all borrowings into lexical and grammatical. In this study, only the first ones is considered.

Lexical borrowings include lexemes of foreign origin. E. Bernandes in his work “Methodology in the study and classification of lexical borrowings” offers a classification according to which these lexemes can be divided into three groups: those that retain their original form, those that have lost it partially and those that have lost it completely. The first group includes words that have undergone almost no adaptation, even phonetic. To the second — words with partial adaptation. That is, they retained their original form, most often the root, but still lost or changed some of their characteristics, for example, endings or suffixes, thereby approaching the rest of the words of the receiving language. To the third group, the Spanish linguist refers words that are completely assimilated by the host language, which makes them almost indistinguishable from the original words of the language (Bernárdez, 1978, 207–208).

The influence of English on Spanish is a relatively young phenomenon, compared to the influence of other languages. The growth of the influence of the English language reached its peak in the XX century, starting with the Second World War, when the United States became one of the leaders on the world stage. However, in this short time, this influence has become extremely noticeable, bringing a huge number of new words to Spanish.

The Dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spanish defines the term “Anglicism” as

• Giro o modo de hablar propio de la lengua inglesa.
• Vocablo o giro de la lengua inglesa empleado en otra.
• Empleo de vocablos o giros ingleses en distintos idiomas.

For this study, the second definition is of the greatest importance, according to which English words that have entered other languages are called Anglicism.

E. Lorenzo in his work “Spanish Anglicism” divides Anglicism into four groups, also based on the degree of their adaptation to the Spanish language. The main difference between Lorenzo's classification and the one given by Fernandez is the presence of a fourth group, to which Lorenzo attributed semantic tracing paper, such as “rascacielos”, which is a tracing paper of the English word “skyscraper” (Lorenzo, 1996).

There are extremely many areas of use of Anglicism in Spanish. This includes sports, cinema, economy, technology, science, gastronomy, automotive terminology, and much more. Examples of the most commonly used Anglicism in Spanish are: online, password, fake, marketing, business, ranking, sandwich, grill, burger, autoestop, box, footing, goalkeaper.

Conclusion

In modern linguistics, there is no generally accepted definition of the term “borrowing”, since it is extremely difficult to reflect the duality of understanding of the term in one definition. Borrowing is both the unit itself that has moved from one language to another, and at the same time the process of this transition. The main reason for the appearance of such a phenomenon is the collision of one language with a new object for which there is no word in the language. And then not only this object is borrowed, but also the word for its designation. There are many classifications of borrowings, but most of them are based on the degree of adaptation of borrowing to the host language.

References

[1] Carreter F.L. Diccionario de términos filológicos. – Madrid: Gredos, 1953. [2] Lapeza R. Historia de la lengua Española. – Madrid: Gredos, 9a ed, 1981. [3] Bernárdez E. Metodología para el estudio y la clasificación de los préstamos lingüísticos. – Madrid, 1978. [4] Lorenzo E. Anglicismos hispánicos. – Madrid: Gredos, 1996. [5] Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, 2014, 03.04.2020, https://dle.rae.es/ [6] ??????? ?.?. ?????????? ? ??????? ?????: ??????? ? ???????????: ??????? ??? ??????. ?????????-????????. – ?.: ???-?? ?? “??????-???”, 1997. – 156 ?. [7] ?????? ?.?. ???????? ? ???????????: ???????. 2-? ???. – ?.: ?????? ?????, 1987. – 272 ?.

Copyright

Copyright © 2022 Uktamova Malika Khasanovna. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.