Lecture: Rochie mulată and Vestido bodycon

Anglicisms in Romanian and Spanish fashion vocabulary

The enormous spread of English is well documented (e.g. Crystal 2003) and has left traces in all European languages. Based on the assumption that there are convergences in the lexis of European languages across different language families and areas, I have compared two European languages with regard to anglicisms: Spanish and Romanian. Both being Romance languages, they represent one Western European and one Eastern European language. One field in which anglicisms are particularly common is clothing, both due to England’s early dominance in this sector and due to modern American marketing strategies spanning the globe.
A small-scale quantitative study comparing anglicisms in Castilian Spanish and Romanian has been conducted using the H&M online catalogue, specifically the New Year’s collection of 2019. Product names have been analyzed using Görlach’s Dictionary of European Anglicisms (2001). I expected to find a larger number of anglicisms in the Spanish product names due to the classification of Spanish as a Western European language and the geographical proximity to Great Britain. Indeed, anglicisms were found more frequently in the Spanisch product names compared to the Romanian ones.
The analysis of anglicisms in two European languages can give clues not only about language development, convergence and divergence phenomena, but also raises questions about neighbouring phenomena, such as language purism, advertisement, marketing and translation.

Info

Day: 2020-05-23
Start time: 14:10
Duration: 00:30
Room: Chomsky
Track: Diverse
Language: en

Schedule StuTS 67