Loan words: Loan words are part of a completely normal linguistic process called borrowing, in which a language adopts a word from another language. This can happen for many reasons such as geographical proximity, colonisation, and invasion, or the word describes a concept that does not exist in the native language. Anglicisms are a part of the borrowing process. The process is just occurring faster nowadays than in the past because of globalisation – the constant access to other languages and fast technological development means it may only take a couple of years for native speakers to adopt a loan word instead of decades.

Language Protection: One of the main arguments for the banning of these words is to protect the native language. It can appear nationalistic to try and ban other words and portray your language as ‘pure’ and with no loan words when that is rarely the case. However, this refers specifically to the banning of loan words. The rate at which anglicisms are appearing in other languages is rapidly increasing and is causing alarm among some linguistic institutes. This excessive use of anglicisms is seen as threatening the preservation of a country’s native language. Is it right for a country to protect its language, especially if it doesn’t protect its native minority languages?

Law and Enforcement: One of the main issues with the ban on anglicisms is that it is difficult to enforce. Italy is trying to introduce a law which would see people fined up to €100,000 for using foreign words. The Académie française has a list of ‘banned’ loanwords which can be found on their website and in 1998, the French passed the Toubon Law which states French is the only language which can be used in government publications. The issue is enforcing these bans. How is it possible to regulate an entire country’s use of a language? How can you stop someone from saying a particular word? How can you prevent a natural linguistic process?

The Franglais Controversy

Pseudo-Anglicisms

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Tuesday 24th March

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Thursday 26th March