Importance of English loanwords in Romanian business vocabulary
The unprecedented global technical and economic progress where the United States of America holds supremacy, imposed, in the process of globalization, the necessity of accepting a single language ? English ? as means of communication.
As a result of the contact with the English language, Romanian current vocabulary has been undergoing, for more than two decades, significant transformations due to the massive borrowing of English words, some meant to fill lexical gaps particularly in the field of economics. These loanwords of English origin did not bring any change upon the grammar structure of the Romanian language but, nevertheless, they cannot be disregarded or overlooked. The present paper brings into discussion the issue of the importance English loanwords had upon the Romanian business vocabulary.
Keywords: English, Romanian, loanwords, economics, language, contact
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11. ibidem
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15. Lexical gaps can manifest both at the vocabulary level as a whole by the absence of certain words, and at word level by the absence of some meanings. The last of these two circumstances explains why, very often, only one and not all the meanings of a word are borrowed. Marius Sala, Limbi în contact, Bucureşti, Editura Enciclopedică, p. 233.
16. According to Professor Angela Bidu-Vrânceanu , the very fact that terminologies such as that of politics, economics and the one used in marketing enjoy general public’s interest increases their chances to enter common language. Angela, Bidu-Vrânceanu, Mişcarea Lexicului specializat spre lexicul comun, in Omagiu profesorului
Valentin Ţurlan cu ocazia împlinirii vârstei de 70 de ani, Conferinţa internaţională Lexic comun / lexic specializat, Universitatea Dunărea de Jos – Galaţi, 2008, available at http://www.lit.ugal.ro/docint/CERCETARE/Publicatii/ Romana/LEXIC_COMUN-LEXIC_SPECIALIZAT/
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17.“Trivialization of scientific terms, is understood not as a simple extension to common language, but the figurative (metaphorical) use of a term, with a semantic « deviation » which leads not only to maximum determinologization, but also to the development of new, connotative meanings. Such meanings represent a real extension and assimilation of the term in common lexicon. The connotative meaning ensued is conditioned by the emergence in other specific and repeatable
contexts, that impose it, by frequency, in regular
communication. The connotative value may be more or less obvious, it can fade over time, just as the relationship with the initial specialized meaning is no longer explicitly stated in many cases.” idem, p. 17. This is the situation with phrases like lider de opinie, lider de piaţă.
18. Maria-Magdalena, Jianu, op. cit, p. 150.
