The Acceptability of Loan Translations as Substitutes for Anglicisms

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, a change in discourse could be noticed in Croatia – no longer were linguists
talking about the Croatian language borrowing words from English, but about English words penetrating into Croatian. The age of the Internet and electronic media has made it possible for Croatian speakers to come into contact with English words more directly and much faster than before and hence to include English words in their communication faster. A number of linguists and other experts raised the alarm that Croatian is under siege and thus started to defend it by offering Croatian substitutes for anglicisms. The aim of this paper is to investigate the attitudes of Croatian speakers towards anglicisms and Croatian loan translations. Based on an online survey completed by 1340 participants, the acceptability of a certain number of Croatian substitutes for anglicisms is
analysed. Furthermore, an analysis was carried out in view of the participants’ reasons for preferring either English or Croatian words. Quantitative and qualitative analysis has shown that there are differences in the acceptability
of certain loan translations and that speakers have a variety of reasons for using either the English or the Croatian word. The conclusion is that those who offer Croatian substitutes for anglicisms and design Croatian language policy need to take into account the speakers’ attitudes as an important factor.