How much is too much? – The treatment of anglicisms in the context of Croatian and German

Dublin Core

Title

How much is too much? – The treatment of anglicisms in the context of Croatian and German

Author

Babić, Snežana
Gradečak-Erdeljić, Tanja

Abstract

The aim of this research is to establish the relevance of the results from a survey conducted among university students of English and German at the University of Osijek. The survey was construed in order to establish the degree of awareness among non-native users of English on how anglicisms are treated in the context of Croatian and German language systems and what strategies are used to cope with the pervasive influence of English vocabulary. Preliminary results show that English lexical borrowings from the field of IT technology are used very frequently in their communication via computers and mobile phones and the students are rather slow to acquire the suggested Croatian and German equivalents and neologisms in the IT terminology. Three basic strategies of direct borrowing, phonological and morphological adaptation, and neologisms will be researched by applying a questionnaire with both lexical and visual prompts for the students. The goal is to elicit responses that will be analysed and put in the context of whether Croatian and German function as a "language of identification" or a "language of communication" (House, 2003). Keywords: Anglicism, borrowings, neologisms, Croatian, German

Keywords

Article
PeerReviewed

Date

2015-04-15

Extent

2825

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