Semantic English Influence on Danish since 1700

Meaningful Changes?

Abstract

Ever since the French anglomanie in the 18^th century, a major part of the impact of English on recipient languages has been invisible – in the sense that the borrowed words, phrases and structures do not display any visible English clues. This goes for loan translations, in which English compounds and constructions are reshaped into equivalents using recipient-language lexical building blocks only. Even less conspicuous than loan translations are semantic borrowings, representing internal developments in existing words rather than new combinations of these. Based on data from the Global Anglicism Database, this article will provide statistics on the inventory of invisible vis-à-vis visible Anglicisms in Danish and analyze developments in English-based semantic borrowings in Danish, an invisible type of Anglicism attested in Danish since 1700. The various scenarios and communicative outcomes of the usage of semantic Anglicisms will be compared and evaluated, focusing on ambiguity vs. language enrichment in contemporary Danish