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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016
I propose to present here the findings of an analysis of a limited corpus of English loanwords as found in four Canadian weekly newspapers published in the Serbo-Croatian language. Though interference in written language is a secondary phenomenon in a situation of languages in contact, instances of such interference are interesting and important since they may contribute to the adoption and spread of the corresponding instances of interference in spoken language. In addition, kinds of interference, as well as the total amount of interference in an immigrant language contact situation, may be usefully compared with interference phenomena in the corresponding standard language (in which very often, as is the case with E and SC in contact, almost all borrowing is done from a written model language). The linguistic analysis of the interference in written language seems therefore to be worth while.
This is the first part of a two-part article. The second part will appear in the next issue of the CJL/RCL.
1 Henceforth the following abbreviations will be used: E—English; SC—Serbo-Croatian; ImSC—Immigrant Serbo-Croatian; StSC—Standard Serbo-Croatian.
2 In addition to the newspapers quoted, the 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1965 issues of Privredni Adresar Grada Toronta (“Toronto Commercial Directory”) were examined in order to compensate for the lack of proper advertising sections in the newspapers (identical advertisements usually appear in every issue), in which one expects to find considerably more loanwords (cf. Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact, Findings and Problems, New York, 1953, p. 66).
All translations are my own. When the meaning of an E loanword is obvious, no E gloss is given. All examples are quoted as found in the newspapers, except that the examples in the Cyrillic script are transcribed (note that the use of the Roman script occasions the use of dj throughout for the corresponding unusual graphemes in SC standard and Cyrillic scripts) and that phrases and sentences are always quoted with an initial capital letter.
3 In other words, no distinction is made between pure loanwords andloanblends in E. Haugen’s terminology (cf. Einar Haugen, The Norwegian Language in America, a Study in Bilingual Behaviour, 2 vols., 1953, and Bilingualism in the Americas: a Bibliography and Research Guide, Publication no. 26 of the American Dialect Society, 1956).
4 Cf., eg., Weinreich, Languages in Contact, pp. 33-5.
‘E.g., in Portuguese (cf. Leo Pap, Portuguese-American Speech, New York, 1949), in Russian (cf. Morton Benson, “American Influence on the Immigrant Russian Press,” American Speech, 32 (1957), pp. 257-63), in Norwegian (cf. Haugen, The Norwegian Language, 1953). For spoken SC, cf. my unpublished M.A. thesis, “Morphological Adaptation of English Loanwords in Serbo-Croatian,” submitted at the University of Toronto in 1962.
6 For the use of the ending -er in StSC see, e.g., Pravopis srpskohrvatskoga književnog jezika (“The Orthography of the Serbo-Croatian Literary Language”), Novi Sad-Zagreb, 1960, dictionary section; for an even more independent use of this ending, see my thesis (cf. note 5), pp. 13 and 257.
7 According to Pravopis (cf. note 6), p. 144, this adjective has two forms in StSC: fer and fair, but it never has an inflectional or derivational ending. There are also a number of such unchanging adjectives which are very often used in everyday speech and sometimes even in literary works; e.g. roza “pink,” drap “light brown,” taze “fresh,” teget “dark blue,” grao “grey,” braon “brown,” bež “beige,” šik “chic,” mat “mat.”