Anglicisms in the Spanish language

A lot of people currently show an interest in Anglicisms, even if they have no linguistic training (Álvarez 2001: 49). Not only linguists, but also political and social institutions have tended to express apprehensions about the borrowing of English terms into Spanish. These worries and purist attitudes should also be seen in the light of social considerations, as the existence of Anglicisms may bring Anglo-Saxon supremacy to mind (Rodríguez González 2002: 131). From a purist point of view, the borrowing of foreign terms constitutes a danger to the Spanish language. Gómez Capuz (2005: 7) describes these attitudes: 

 “[e]n el lenguaje normativista y purista español, las palabras procedentes de otros idiomas [...] dejan de ser simples elementos léxicos para convertirse en personificaciones de la “amenaza extranjera”: a veces son descritas en términos militares como “invasores” [...] otras veces son descritas en términos biológicos y médicos como [...] “virus””

Instead of these metaphors, Gómez Capuz (2005: 7) proposes we update our view of Anglicisms and see them as “lexical immigrants” instead. Explaining that Anglicisms, just like immigrants, may face difficult circumstances after their arrival and that they may have to give up some of their native characteristics in order to achieve integration into their new country of residence, Gómez Capuz draws compelling parallels between immigrants and linguistic borrowings. As a matter of fact, his metaphor somewhat mirrors a change in attitudes in linguistic investigations into Anglicisms in Spanish. While research between the 1940s and 1970s tended to express rather purist attitudes, later research has adopted a more moderate and descriptive position. Anglicisms are now treated as a phenomenon related to language contact (Medina López 2004: 15ff.).

Borrowing is not an unusual process in languages. Throughout its history, Spanish has borrowed many words from other languages, such as Arabic, Italian or French (Rodríguez González 2002: 128, Gómez Capuz 2005: 7f. and Medina López 2004: 9f.). English loanwords started to appear in the Spanish language in the 18^th century. This linguistic phenomenon is thus related to Britain’s growth as a world power. In the 18^th and 19^th century, Spaniards started taking an interest in British culture, life and sports. English started to be taught at some schools, and the Industrial Revolution and its technological innovations required new vocabulary (Rodríguez González 2002: 128f.). After 1950, the influence of the English language became even more considerable. Tourism, the media, sports, fashion, a general fascination with the American way of life, computers and the internet help to explain the increased effects of English upon the Spanish language. A further factor was the strong increase of English and English philology as school and university subjects (Rodríguez González 2002: 129f. and 134; Medina López 2004: 7-12). As can be seen, the study of Anglicisms entails the study of the external and social factors that condition the incorporation of English loanwords into the Spanish language (cf. Medina López 2004: 11). 

Anglicisms occur at various levels of the linguistic system; they can be lexical, orthographic, morphological, semantic, syntactic or pragmatic (Álvarez 2001: 50 and Rodríguez González 2002: 130f.). When it comes to usage, differences can be found according to the region, stylistic level, the means of communication and the social status or education level of the user (Rodríguez González 2002: 132f. and 145ff.). Different varieties of Spanish use different English loan words and they also use them to different degrees. Latin American varieties showed an earlier and stronger influence of English, to be more precise, of American English. European Spanish Anglicisms are often due to mediation via French (Rodríguez González 2002: 132 and Medina López 2004: 8). One therefore needs to take into account that there are cases in which the loanword with an English ultimate etymon has come into Spanish via another language. For example, biftec/bistec (< beefsteak) arrived in Spanish via French (Rodríguez González 2002: 134). Consequently, it is difficult to establish one concrete definition that will capture the etymological origin, the way it entered the Spanish language and the situational and social variation in the use of an Anglicism (Medina López 2004: 13).

After its introduction into a language, a loanword can undergo various stages of adaptation and integration. Usually, three stages are distinguished. In the first stage, that of transfer, the loan’s usage is limited to specific fields. Only one of the loan’s native meanings is borrowed and this meaning might need to be explained alongside the term in the receiving language (Gómez Capuz 2005: 15f.). This stage is followed by a stage of assimilation. Loans which have proved their usefulness and are employed and understood to a certain extent will undergo a lengthy process of orthographic, phonetic, morphological and semantic adaptation (ibid.: 17f.). The third stage corresponds to a native behaviour of the borrowed element, i.e. it is not easily recognised as a foreign term anymore and is used creatively (ibid.: 25f.)

As implied above, when studying the integration of Anglicisms into Spanish, one can investigate their pronunciation, spelling and morphology[1]. When it comes to pronunciation, for example, there are marked differences between different Anglicisms. The pronunciation of an Anglicism by Spanish speakers depends on various factors: the duration for which it has been present in Spanish, its level of integration, whether it arrived via spoken or written media and the age and education level of the speaker. The pronunciation is mostly influenced by the differences in the phonological systems of the two languages. When the English includes phonemes or clusters that do not exist in Spanish, they need to be rendered somehow. The initial /h/, for example, is always rendered as [x] (cf. hobby/jobi), while initial /ʤ/ can be rendered as either [j] or [ʤ] (cf. jazz as [ʤas] or [jas]). Consonant clusters with an initial [s-] are pronounced by adding a prothetic /e/ at the front, as in estándar (Rodríguez González 2002: 135). The age of a loan will influence its pronunciation as well, with older loans, which often arrived via a written medium, tending to be pronounced in a Spanish way, while more recent loans retain the English pronunciation more. This is due to both an increased familiarity with the foreign language as well as to the loans being taken from spoken English (ibid.: 136f.).

Orthographically, we also find different degrees of assimilation into the Spanish system. English spelling tends to be retained at the start of a loanword’s integration into Spanish. More recent loans also display a tendency to keep the English spelling. Consequently, English-like and more Spanish-like variants may co-exist, such as in <smoking/esmoquin>. The choice of one or the other then depends on sociolinguistic and stylistic factors. There may even be a difference in meaning depending on the respective orthography (Rodríguez González 2002: 137f.).

Loanwords also need to be assimilated morphologically. For nouns, which constitute the largest group of Spanish Anglicisms, for example, gender needs to be assigned and ways of forming the plural need to be decided on. For the latter, there are three options: -s (pins), -es (pines) or Ø (los pin) (Rodríguez González 2002: 138f.).

As can be seen, Anglicisms offer a large and complex area of research, where a lot of different aspects need to be taken into account. Furthermore, specific Anglicisms may fall out of use or the domains in which Anglicisms are mostly used may change. Due to these rather quick changes, studies from only a few decades ago may therefore not be up to date anymore. This is why new studies should be carried out (Álvarez 2001: 49f.).

Bibliography

Álvarez, I. 2001. Anglicismos Semánticos en el Español Peninsular Actual. Español Actual 76: 49-60.

Gómez Capuz, J. 2005. La inmigración léxica. Madrid: Arco Libros.

Medina López, J. 2004. El anglicismo en el español actual. Madrid: Arcos Libros.

Rodríguez González, F. 2002. Spanish. In: Görlach, M. (Hg.). English in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 128-150.

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[1]The following account is based on Rodríguez González (2002: 135-144). See Gómez Capuz (2005: 18-25) for an overview of the different processes of assimilation for “lexical immigrants” in general.