An anglicism is a word or construction borrowed from English by another language. Due to the global dominance of English in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have become widespread in other languages. Technology-related English words like internet and computer are prevalent across the globe, as there are no pre-existing words for them. English words are sometimes imported verbatim and sometimes adapted to the importing language in a process similar to anglicisation (modification of borrowed non-English words to suit English language better). In languages with non-Latin alphabets, these borrowed words can be written in the Latin alphabet anyway, resulting in a text made up of a mixture of scripts; other times they are transliterated. Transliteration of English and other foreign words into Japanese generally uses the katakana script.
Some consider anglicisms to be relatively benign, and the use of English words may even take on a chic aspect; in Japan, marketing products for the domestic market often involves using English or pseudo-English brand names and slogans. In other countries, excessive use of anglicisms is seen much more negatively, and there are efforts by public-interest groups and governments to reverse the trend. The word anglicism can refer to any borrowing from the English language; the term americanism can be used for borrowings from specifically American usage.
Definitions
Definitions of anglicism differ significantly across various fields. The word is employed in various situations of language contact.
The criteria for being considered an anglicism by the Usage Dictionary of Anglicisms in Selected European Languages are as follows: a loanword that is recognisably English in form with regards to spelling, pronunciation and morphology. In this specific sense, loan translations and calques are excluded (as well as words that are etymologically derived from languages related to modern French).
Some see anglicisms as harmless and useful, others perceive them as bad influences to be countered.
Other definitions of anglicism include: a word or construction peculiar to English; a word or phrase that is peculiar to British English; or English syntax, grammar, or meaning transposed in another language resulting in incorrect language use or incorrect translation.
Adaptation A number of scholars agree that for anglicism to take place, adaptation must first occur such as in the case of the integration of a great number of anglicisms in Europe. Fischer said that it is similar to neologism in the sense that it completes several phases of integration, which include: 1) the beginning, when it is still new and not known to many speakers; 2) the phase where it begins to spread and take part in the process of institutionalisation; and, 3) the word becomes part of the common core of the language. There are experts who propose a more detailed framework such as the model of anglicism adaptation that transpires on four levels: orthographic, phonological, morphological, and semantic.
By language
Chinese These are English terms, expressions, or concepts that have been absorbed into the Chinese language, including any of its varieties, and should not be confused with Chinglish, a variety of the English language used by some native Chinese speakers.
The origins of Chinese anglicisms vary, one of the most common being those obtained by phonetic borrowing. For example, a "bus" (, in Mainland China or Taiwan) is usually called in Hong Kong and Macao because its Cantonese pronunciation is similar to its English counterpart. Another type of anglicism is syntactic anglicism, when a sentence is rendered following the English word order instead of the standard Chinese word order; for example, the word for "network" is or , where can be translated as "net".
Finnish
The anglicisms can be divided to four types: direct phonetic imitation, lexical and grammatical calques, and contamination of orthography. Official language (as given by the Language Planning Office) deprecates Anglicisms, and for the most part, native constructions are sufficient even in spoken language. Nevertheless, some anglicisms creep in.
Computer jargon is generally full of direct imitation, e.g. "swap". Other topics of discussion where one finds abundant anglicisms are pop music, science fiction, gaming, fashion, automobiles and to some extent scientific topics. This is regarded a sign of overspecialisation, if used outside the context of the jargon. Generally, direct imitation is not as common, but there are examples. For example, the word sexy , might be used as an adjective. This is teenager-specific.
Lexical calques take an English expression and translate it word-for-word to create a Finnish equivalent, as for example the English software term killer application, which becomes in Finnish .
Some speakers, especially those in frequent contact with the English language, have created a grammatical calque of the English you-impersonal. The English impersonal utilises the second person pronoun you, e.g. You can't live if you don't eat. Here, the word you does not refer explicitly to the listener, but signifies a general statement. The same example is rendered in Finnish as , where a separate grammatical impersonal (also known as ) is used. When translated word-by-word, , it will refer directly to the listener. Here the contraction of spoken language is used instead of the of spoken language. Then, you will need to understand that it is an anglicism, or you can be offended by the commanding "You there!" tone produced. (There are also native examples of the same construction, so the origin of this piece of grammar may not always be English.)
An English orthographical convention is that compound words are written separately, whereas in Finnish, compound words are written together, using a hyphen with acronyms and numbers. In Finnish, and would be correct, but process engineering or Intel 80286 processor would not. Failure to join the words or omitting the hyphen can be either an honest mistake, or contamination from English.
Another orthographical convention is that English words tend to be written as the originals. For example, the computer jargon term from to chat is written as (chat + frequentative), even if it is pronounced . The forms or are used, too. Sometimes, it is even standard language, e.g. , instead of according to English pronunciation .
French
A distinction is made between well-established English borrowings into French, and other words and structures regarded as incorrect. The term is often pejorative, carries a large amount of political weight, and frequently denotes an excessive use of English in the French language.
French has many words of English origin for which the English roots are unknown or unrecognised due to a lack of salience or the length of time since the borrowing took place; this also includes other words which are seen as English but that are well accepted as part of French (e.g., parking, week-end). Other examples include (pronounced ), (meaning "public square"), and (meaning "melancholy" rather than the organ). These are not considered anglicisms but are fully accepted as French words by the . English words can take on a more specific meaning in French than they have in English; for example, dogue, the French phonetic spelling of the English word dog, refers specifically to one breed of dog, the English bulldog.e.g., Le nouveau petit Robert : dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française, nouvelle édition du petit Robert de Paul Robert (Paris : Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2002), "dogue"
Occasionally governments and linguistic institutions of both Quebec and France have undertaken strenuous efforts to eradicate anglicisms, often by suggesting French replacements with French phonology and morphology. Although efforts in Quebec have been met with some success (e.g., for ), attempts by the Académie have largely been unsuccessful. Sociolinguists have attributed these failures to the general inability of linguistic institutions to enforce a linguistic norm. The Académie regularly updates a list of prescribed linguistic norms, many of which include using suggested French replacements instead of anglicisms (e.g., for ).
Replacements have taken many different forms. For example, in Quebec French, the portmanteau word is increasingly gaining acceptance as a substitute for chat, or text messaging. This neologism is a word coined from the words ("keyboard") and ("chat"). Other replacements have various forms created by the Académie and .
Quebec French and Metropolitan French tend to have entirely different anglicisms for historical reasons. Quebec French acquired many of its anglicisms in a gradual process of linguistic borrowing resulting from linguistic contact with English speakers for the roughly 250 years since Quebec was ceded by France to the British Empire after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of 1759. Metropolitan French, on the other hand, mostly adopted its anglicisms in recent decades due to the post-Second World War international dominance of English, or the rise of English as a lingua franca. Due to the differences in English borrowings between Canada and France, the people of Quebec and France often consider each other's anglicisms to be incorrect or humorous, while considering their own to be perfectly normal.
An example of a Metropolitan French anglicism not used in Quebec French: : short for , but pronounced like the English word "sweet"
An example of a Quebec French anglicism not used in France; : to French kiss
The social meaning and acceptance of anglicisms also differs from country to country due to the differences in the historical relationship to French. In Quebec, anglicisms are never used in formal documentation (government papers, instruction sheets) and very rarely used in informal writing (magazines, journals). In 1993, the French passed the legislation Loi Toubon which forbids the use of anglicisms (or those from other languages) in commercial and government publications. In both countries, wherever the use of an anglicism is unavoidable, it is often written in italics or in quotations.
Various anglicisms are largely differentiated on the way in which they entered the language. One type of anglicism is a calque, or a direct translation from English. For example, the valediction is regarded as an anglicism, since it is a direct translation of the English "sincerely yours". Other anglicisms include the wholesale adoption of English terms such as "business" or "start-up". Additionally, some English words in French might not have the same meaning as those words in English. One example is the word "golf", which has an increased semantic field, referring not just to the game of golf, but also to a golf course, as in (trans: "we're going to the golf course").
Anglicism is a political term and does not necessarily indicate the etymology or history of the word itself. Rather, it indicates the common attitudes and perceptions about the (theoretically English) history of the word. For example, because English itself borrowed a great amount of French vocabulary after the Norman Conquest, some anglicisms are actually Old French words that dropped from usage in French over the centuries but were preserved in English and have now come full circle back into French. For instance, one attested origin of the verb "to flirt" cites influence from the Old French expression , which means "to (try to) seduce". Other possible origins for the word include , E. Frisian (a flick or light stroke), and E. Frisian (a giddy girl). This expression is no longer used in French, but the English Gallicism "to flirt" has now returned to French and is considered an anglicism, despite its likely French origins.
German