This chapter aims to compare the entries recorded for Italian, French and Spanish in the Global Anglicism database (GLAD) – a cornerstone of the GLAD Network.1 With a total of 3,507 Anglicism entries for Italian, 3,251 entries for Spanish and 1,912 entries for French, a cross‑linguistic compar‑ ison between datasets that large was unrealistic. To obtain a manageable sample, the number of Anglicism entries was limited to (1) borrowings imported since the 1990s and to (2) words and terms related to youth speech. Although ‘youth speech’ is not easily defined, these two criteria allowed us to focus on relatively recent borrowings and on key domains that are typical of the world of youth and attract a high number of Angli‑ cisms, such as entertainment (especially music), social life (identities, rela‑ tionships, sexuality) and social media (Radtke 1993; Nesi 2022). The main research question was to compare the linguistic and semantic features of a small number of recent borrowings in languages that are historically close and see how they have been integrated within each recipient language, according to individual structural features, preferences and attitudes to English‑induced lexical borrowing.
English-induced borrowings in Italian, French and Spanish youth language
Stefania Cicillini
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2026-01-01
Abstract
This chapter aims to compare the entries recorded for Italian, French and Spanish in the Global Anglicism database (GLAD) – a cornerstone of the GLAD Network.1 With a total of 3,507 Anglicism entries for Italian, 3,251 entries for Spanish and 1,912 entries for French, a cross‑linguistic compar‑ ison between datasets that large was unrealistic. To obtain a manageable sample, the number of Anglicism entries was limited to (1) borrowings imported since the 1990s and to (2) words and terms related to youth speech. Although ‘youth speech’ is not easily defined, these two criteria allowed us to focus on relatively recent borrowings and on key domains that are typical of the world of youth and attract a high number of Angli‑ cisms, such as entertainment (especially music), social life (identities, rela‑ tionships, sexuality) and social media (Radtke 1993; Nesi 2022). The main research question was to compare the linguistic and semantic features of a small number of recent borrowings in languages that are historically close and see how they have been integrated within each recipient language, according to individual structural features, preferences and attitudes to English‑induced lexical borrowing.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
