Plague of Locusts or Manna from Heaven? Recent Anglicisms in Lithuanian

Abstract

Although much material has recently been published on the issue of Anglicisms in Western and other languages, the Lithuanian language has been comparatively neglected. Neither Viereck and Bald (1986) nor Görlach (2002) have devoted essays to the infiltration of English loanwords into Lithuanian. In the present article 1 propose to describe the phenomenon in relation to the past fifteen years, and attempt to establish a typology on the basis of a more or less successful integration of loanwords into the morphosyntactic system of Lithuanian. Unlike with other languages, there has been considerable resistance from various quarters to the acceptance of loanwords. In spite of official disapproval, however, many loanwords have entered the language and seem set to stay. After a short historical introduction, the article examines the various ways in which English loanwords have been accepted and adapted. In particular, it deals with regional differences, stylistic differences, mediating languages, English in education, morphological integration, semantic aspects, usage and pseudo-Anglicisms. The paper concludes with a discussion of selected literature on loanwords and an overview of current debates.