The influence of anglicisms on teenagers’ vocabulary.
Our society is developing all the time and so the language changes too. Each language has borrowed words, and Russian is not an exception. Russian people have been engaged in political, commercial, scientific and cultural relations with other nations since ancient times. People used new words to name new things. It is quite clear that different age groups have different attitude for using anglicisms. In fact they are more popular among young people who tend to be more interested in new trends connected to European culture. So, we believe that the subject of our research is really important and
actual
, because we are teenagers too and our friends often use the words of English origin.
The object of the research:
English borrowings in modern Russian language in the last decades.
The aim of the work
is to specify the reasons of appearing anglicisms in the speech of adolescents.
The main tasks are:
• to analyze the theoretical material; • to determine the reasons of borrowings; • to examine the classification of anglicisms; • to observe the impact of borrowed words on Russian language; • to identify the attitude of students and adults to the phenomenon; For solving the tasks were used the following
methods
: 1) Descriptive method with the elements of observation of linguistic phenomenon. 2) Method of systematization, classification and comparison. 3) Sociological survey.
The hypothesis of the study:
the emergence of new words expands vocabulary, but the using of a huge amount of unnecessary borrowings debases any language that loses its originality and unique beauty. In order to achieve the aims we have studied the articles in the magazines, read the necessary material from the Internet and literature.
Theoretical Part
.
2.1. The inflow of foreign words increased during the reign of Peter I. Furthermore, plenty of words came to our language in the early XIX century (especially many words in political sphere). Nowadays our language is replenished by English words. Today English is called “the 20 th century Latin”. It isn’t surprising, because there are so many words of English origin in all spheres of modern life. We use anglicisms in business, physics, medicine, sport, computing, art. 2.2. The inflow of new words from foreign languages is explained by changes in social and academic life. So there are several reasons of borrowing words from other languages : a. historical contacts between people of different nationalities; b. the necessity to name new objects and items (like taxi, robot, scanner, touchpad, laptop); c. the language fashion( for example French in the XVIII century); d. using of borrowing words to name new words in science and technique. Here you can see the main reasons of borrowing words from other languages, but as for English (or American English) language in XX-XXI centuries, we can add a few more reasons:
a.
advent of the Internet;
b.
expansion of international relations;
c.
flourishing of international tourism;
d.
participation in competitions, international festivals, fashion shows.
e.
t h e aspiration to demonstrate your are fashionable and “cool” using anglicisms. It becomes more prestigious and attractive to use English words in the speech. 2.3. The majority of linguists put forward the following classifications of loanwords. Here you cans see the methods of forming anglicisms:
1.
Direct borrowings. уикэнд - the weekend; black - негр; money – деньги, talk-show- токшоу, CD-player- сидиплейер, sprint-спринт.
2.
Loan-translation (phonetic borrowing)
.
basketball, disk, manager, standard, comfort, action, hypermarket, supermarket, website, menu, disk, virus, club, browser, teenager, telephone, jeans.
3.
Loanshift
.
Adapting native words to the new meanings. For example, do you think that the word лайкать is connected to a dog? Of course, not. This is an adaptation of the English word “like”. It means to explain your positive attitude towards photos and other things in social nets. Do we say банить when we want to wash somebody? No way. It means to forbid something, from English “to ban”. Or one more example: кликать. It has no connection to calling somebody. It m e a n s t o u s e a c o m p u t e r m o u s e . аскать ( t o a s k -просить), бузить (busy- беспокойный,суетливый)
4.
Loan-blend o r hybrids. (English roots and Russian suffixes, prefixes and endings): positive – позитив, позитивный; primitive - примитивный, objective – объективный.
5.
Jargon (barbarismos) - Active use of anglicisms, barbarisms was sign of our time: фейс- контроль, дресс – код, ноу-хау, ху из ху, мессидж, респект, батл, хэппи энд, юзер, пэронты, бейби, баксы, гамблер и др.
6.
Emotional expressions. OK, вау(Wow!), epic fail, I`ll be back, happy end, goodbye, hello, hi, oops.
7.
Composites or compounds. second-hand - магазин, торгующий одеждой, бывшей в употреблении; hits –parade - список наиболее популярных медиа-продуктов, video- salon – комната для просмотра фильмов
8.
Exoticism or exotic words. a hot dog, a cab, hacker, realtor, chips, cheeseburger, hamburger, мисс, миссис, мистер, сэр, джентльмен, фунт стерлинг, лорд, скаут, сквайр, скваттер, квакер, пэр, паб, Скотланд ярд, др.
3. Practical Research. 3.1. According to the classification all the anglicisms can be subdivided into: reasonable unreasonable The words that replace the lack o f corresponding concepts in the Russian language, when we need to name a new thing or item. Printer, journalist, business Difficult to imagine how we could call a phone, a scanner, a chocolate if we didn’t borrow these words from the British. Replace the previously used Russian words Reception – приемная Baby-sitter – няня Such words infest and clog our native language 3.2. Borrowing a huge amount of anglicisms is a gradual clogging for the Russian language. Exploring the speech of our classmates and friends we can find lots of English words they pronounce in the Russian manner, and very often teenagers cannot express the same idea using only native language. In order to get clear an idea of the bulk of English loanwords in teenagers’ vocabulary we interviewed … classmates. The questions we asked are the following ones:
1.
Do you use the words of English origin in your daily communication? Yes No _________________
2.
Does everyone understand you when you use English words? Yes No __________________
3.
What for do you use words of English origin? ___________________________________________________________ We also asked them to read the text, using only native words. Я обычный тинэйджер, и как у всех моих френдов у меня есть проблемы. В классе я конечно не суперстар, но у меня свой имидж. В лидеры я не рвусь и контактирую со всеми ровно. Отец мой не олигарх, он в секъюрити служит, мать бейбиситером работает. Перентсы у меня клевые, вот только меня учиться заставляют, чтобы я свой ай-кью повышал. Вот завтра на инглиш идти, а я текст не перевел, у меня комп завис. А тут задание такое трудное, просто пазл какой-то! На уроке главное фейсом в грязь не упасть. А то будешь потом лузером выглядеть! Никогда респект не заработаешь! Ну ничего, скоро все будет окей, потому что наступят холидей! All their answers are shown on the diagrams. So, as you can see the majority of interviewees find these words simple and natural. Only 2 of 40 (5%) respondents said that they do not use words of English origin at all. 3 of all interviewed (8%) said that they try not to use words of English origin in daily communication and prefer to use Russian words instead of anglicisms.
One more thing that we wanted to know was whether everyone understands teenagers when they use English words. - 8 of 40 teenagers (20%) said that everybody understands them, including their parents, friends, teachers. - 17 pupils (43%) said that almost all understand them (parents, friends). As a rule grandparents, younger brothers and sisters do not understand teenagers’ speech. - 15 students (38%) complained that basically not all people understand what they say. However, the majority of this group is proud of the fact. It gives them the feeling of being unique, makes them vain and self- conscious. One more interesting thing is where teenagers use anglicisms. and got results: - 4 students (5%) said that they use words of English origin to keep the conversation going. - 6 teenagers (15%) use English words to be cooler and more advanced. - 23 (more than a half – 58%) make the conversation easier by using anglicisms. These 23 pupils said that some English words are shorter than Russian equal words and it is easier to use anglicisms than Russian words in some cases. - 5 students (13%) said that using English words, they practise their English. The second part of our research was reading the text with the anglicisms. The aim was to read it using only native Russian words. The results were surprising! No one could do the task! Only 4 students read the 80 % of the text – and it is the best result we had. No one noticed the words лидер, проблема are borrowings. Some teenagers changed the word IQ for intellect (which is Anglicism too). In conclusion we’d like to say that there are both positive and negative sides of borrowing anglisisms. The positive aspects are:  The opportunity to communicate with people from other counties or people of different nationalities;  The possibility to learn more about foreign cultures;  The chance to develop your language skills. The borrowings must be reasonable in the using. The negative aspects are:  The possibility of losing the values of our native language;  Being misunderstood as a result of wrong using of foreign words. Finally, we consider to say that nowadays teenagers use too many anglicisms in their speech and thus spoil our language, transform it, often replace old Russian words with unnecessary foreign ones. In this way they speak neither English, nor Russian.