The impact of Spanish on English vocabulary since 1901

Abstract

While there are numerous investigations of the impact of English on Spanish vocabulary, the opposite direction of lexical borrowing has as yet received fairly little attention. Spanish-derived words and meanings which have been taken over into English in the last few decades have been relatively neglected. The present article gives essential insight into the influence of Spanish on the English lexicon since 1901. I assign the different twentieth and twenty-first century Spanish borrowings to various lexical domains in order to offer an overview of the subject areas and fields of life to which Spanish has added new words and senses in recent times.

Revising the History of Nitchevo with Text Archives

“…Being manifestations of language contact, borrowings in the history of English have attracted a good deal of scholarly attention. 2 Suffice it to say that they came to be discussed in individual studies (e.g., Ackerman 1958;Benson 1962;Cannon 1988Cannon , 1998Algeo 1996;Wade 1997;Durkin 2020); monographs (e.g., Serjeantson 1935;Chan & Kwok 1985;Hughes 2000;Pinnavaia 2001;Bator 2010;Schultz 2013Schultz , 2016Schultz , 2018Durkin 2014);edited volumes (e.g., Rodríguez Gonzáles 1996;Schreier & Hundt 2013;Wright 2020); and etymological and historical dictionaries, of which the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth, the OED) deserves pride of place. Apart from etymologizing, which consists in tracing borrowings to etyma in the donor languages, lexicographers and researchers alike go to great lengths to collect textual attestations.…”

“…English as a contact language may be investigated from various perspectives, but the fact remains that a sizeable proportion of English vocabulary comes from a handful of languages. The impact of Latin, Greek, and Scandinavian languages on Old English has been well acknowledged (e.g., Bator 2010;Miller 2012;Durkin 2014); Latin and French on Middle English (e.g., Miller 2012;Durkin 2014;Sylvester, Tiddeman & Ingham 2020); and Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and Spanish on Modern English (e.g., Algeo 1996;Cannon 1998;Pinnavaia 2001;von Schneidemesser 2002;Schultz 2013Schultz , 2016Schultz , 2018Durkin 2014). More recently, these tongues have influenced world Englishes to different degrees (e.g., Bieswanger 2004), affecting not only the lexicon, but also syntax, morphology, and phonology (e.g., Purnell, Salmons & Tepeli 2005).…”