English Loans in Latvian and Norwegian Sports Columns in the Post-War Period

Abstract

The author of the article examines forms of English borrowings in sports articles in Latvian and Norwegian during the period 1946-2005. The present contrastive analysis reveals similarities and differences of anglicisms as part of the Latvian and Norwegian language vocabulary and tendencies of equivalent formation. The collected data illustrates assimilated loans, hybrids and non-assimilated words. The English pattern shows a tendency to be more favoured in Norwegian than Latvian. Among non-assimilated forms we find instances of original forms with Norwegian inflections and hybrids where one of the components is English, but the other-Norwegian. The attitude towards borrowing from English seems to be rather similar in both languages though with a stronger tendency towards openness in the Norwegian language environment throughout the whole period under research. It can be explained with several factors, such as the language typology and language contact time scale within the Norwegian speaking society and its English language competence. Though now preference for English borrowings has evened out, there is still greater openness to anglicisms in Norwegian than Latvian.