Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / November 13, 2021
By Javier Navarro, in Dec. 2017
In most languages, words that come from other languages are used. When this happens, we speak of a linguistic loan. In Spanish or Castilian the words that come from English are known as Anglicisms.
Necessary and unnecessary cases
The presence of English in communication Everyday life affects all kinds of contexts, such as fashion, technology, sport or business. It can be said that an Anglicism is necessary when it comes to a term that has arisen in Anglo-Saxon culture and that does not have an adequate translation in Spanish.
Thus, the words football, club, master, hippie, selfie or test do not have an equivalent word in Spanish and, therefore, are used with naturalness in ordinary communication (the word soccer and football are synonymous, but the word football is an artificial invention that does not has been acceptance between speakers).
An anglicism is unnecessary when there is no logical reason to justify its use because there is already a word in Spanish to express the same idea. It makes no sense to use the word show in Spanish because there is a show and the same happens with many others: winner instead of winner, running replacing
to run, hobby instead of hobby or hobby, etc. Many unnecessary Anglicisms end up being imposed because they become fashionable and used by speakers for a mimetic effect.False Anglicisms and the Spanglish Phenomenon
An anglicism is false when apparently a word comes from English but in reality it is not. In Spanish we say crack to refer to someone who has a special gift, but those who speak English use this word to refer to it is a drug or a very negative situation. The term hitchhiking is not English either, as the Anglo-Saxons say hitch-hiking.
The same happens with the word parking, since parking in English is the activity of parking and a parking lot is a car park. A last example would be zapping, a non-existent term in English, since the one that is really used is channel surfing.
Spanglish is not properly a language, but a hybrid between Spanish and English. Despite its "impurity", an estimated 40 million people speak Spanglish in the United States. East singular language is present in the media, in the entertainment world or in the poetry.
Castilianisms in English
Who speak english like mother tongue they also use words that come from Spanish. A brief list would be the following: rodeo, siesta, canoe, guerrilla, macho, balls, patio and solo.
Photo: Fotolia - sharpner
Topics in Anglicism