English in Europe (review)

Words travel easily, as we all know, and the vocabulary of English in particular is known to have encroached strongly upon many other languages globally. In contrast, structural effects of one language upon another are less common and typically associated with heavy contact (Thomason 2001). The book under review documents and analyzes the lexical influence that English has exerted on sixteen European languages, listing and discussing not only lexical loans as such but also processes of structural adaptation on the levels of phonology and morphology. While it can be read, used, and appreciated independently, it is not really a stand-alone publication but rather one out of three volumes closely related to each other because of their shared project design and histories, developed and monitored by Görlach, the mastermind behind the entire project and editor of the three books resulting from it. In a sense, it is a spin-off of and a companion to the editor’s Dictionary of European anglicisms (DEA; Görlach 2001). In turn, it is accompanied by a book-length annotated bibliography of publications on anglicisms in the languages of Europe (Görlach 2002).

The book investigates the importation of anglicisms into sixteen European languages—four Germanic, four Romance, four Slavic, and four others—thus ensuring a well-balanced and representative coverage of Europe’s languages and nations. The chapters are written by linguists, mostly from the respective countries, who had contributed to the DEA. The listing of languages and contributors includes the following: German (13–36) by Ulrich Busse and Manfred Görlach; Dutch (37–56) by Amand Berteloot and Nicoline van der Sijs; Norwegian (57–81) by Anne-Line Graedler; Icelandic (82–107) by Guđrún Kvaran and Ásta Svavarsdóttir; French (108–27) by John Humbley; Spanish (128–50) by Félix Rodríguez Gonzáles; Italian (151–67) by Virginia Pulcini; Romanian (168–94) by Ilinca Constantinescu, Victoria Popovici, and Ariadna Ştefanescu; Russian (195–212) by Tamara Maximova; Polish (213–28) by Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld; Croatian (229–40) by the late Rudolf Filipović; Bulgarian (241–60) by Nevena Alexieva; Finnish (261–76) by Keith Battarbee; Hungarian (277–90) by Judit Farkas and Veronika Kniezsa; Albanian (291–300) by Rolf Ködderitzsch and Manfred Görlach; and Modern Greek (301–30) by Ekaterini Stathi. The book has been flawlessly edited and typeset, except for the noticeable typo ‘Honophthongs’ (201). Addresses of contributors and three indices (of subjects, names, and words) are also provided.

The volume is characterized by a remarkable degree of uniformity of structural presentation across its individual contributions. All chapters have exactly the same subsections, thus exploring exactly the same issues and types of data in corresponding sections, covering processes of incorporation on the levels of pronunciation, spelling, form, and use in their respective languages. This consistency, conveniently allowing for comparisons of similar phenomena across different languages, has been achieved by editorial persistence and effectiveness; a blueprint chapter structure was prescribed to authors, and in addition, the chapter on German was written beforehand and circulated to the contributors as a model paper. The strategy has been successful: all contributions conform to the framework. Certainly some chapters are longer and more informative than others (the ones on Norwegian, Icelandic, Spanish, and Greek stand out for their comprehensiveness of discussion and richness of documentation), but all authors have complied with the rules and produced high-quality work. The result is commendable for its fundamental insights. Going considerably beyond the simple collections of word lists and idiosyncratic facts that are widely taken to characterize a lexicographic approach, the volume brings us closer to recognizing structural conditions and principles of adjustment which are generally effective in lexical contact, to the question of...