Globally Speaking

The volume examines the motives for lexical borrowing from English during the last century, the processes involved in the penetration of English vocabulary into new environments, and the extent of its integration into twelve languages representing several language families. Many of these absorbing languages are studied here for the first time.

This volume accounts for the motives for contemporary lexical borrowing from English, using a comparative approach and a broad cross-cultural perspective. It investigates the processes involved in the penetration of English vocabulary into new environments and the extent of their integration into twelve languages representing several language families, including Icelandic, Dutch, French, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, Persian, Japanese, Taiwan Chinese, and several languages spoken in southern India. Some of these languages are studied here in the context of borrowing for the first time ever. All in all, this volume suggests that the English lexical 'invasion', as it is often referred to, is a natural and inevitable process. It is driven by psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and socio-historical factors, of which the primary determinants of variability are associated with ethnic and linguistic diversity.

Introduction

1. The Hegemony of English and Determinants of Borrowing from its Vocabulary - Rotem Kowner  and Judith Rosenhouse

2. Icelandic: Phono-Semantic Matching - Yair Sapir and Ghil’ad Zuckermann

3. French: Tradition vs. Innovation as Reflected in English Borrowings - Miriam Ben-Rafael

4. Dutch: Is It Threatened by English? - Herman J. De Vries Jr.

5. Hungarian: Trends and Determinants of English Borrowing in a Market Economy Newcomer - Zsuzsa Sziklain Gombos, Zoltán Sturcz with Judith Rosenhouse and Rotem Kowner

6. Russian: From Social Realism to Reality Show - Maria Yelenevskaya

7. Hebrew: Borrowing Ideology and Pragmatic Aspects in a Modern(ized) Language - Judith Rosenhouse and Haya Fisherman

8. Colloquial Arabic (in Israel): The Case of English Loanwords in a Minority Language with Diglossia - Judith Rosenhouse

9. Amharic: Political and Social Effects on English Loanwords - Anbessa Teferra

10. Farsi: The Process of Modernization and the Advent of English - Soli Shahvar

11. Indian Languages: Hidden English in Texts and Society - Dennis Kurzon

12. Chinese in Taiwan: Cooking a Linguistic Chop Suey and Embracing English - Sufen Sophia Lai

13. Japanese: The Dialectic Relationships between 'Westerness' and 'Japaneseness' as Reflected in English Loanwords - Rotem Kowner and Michal Daliot-Bul

14. Conclusion: Features of Borrowing from English in Twelve Languages - Judith Rosenhouse and Rotem Kowner

Contributors

Bibliography