UNIVERSITATEA DE STAT DIN MOLDOVA

Facultatea de Limbi si Literaturi Străine

Departamentul Lingvistică Romanică

și Comunicare Interculturală

Individual work
In English Lexicology

Borrowing in Romanian Mass-media

Written by Cucoș Florentina

Gr.GE171ȘE

Verified by Pascaru Daniela

Chișinău 2019

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 Contents

Introduction.................................................................................................3

1.The causes of English borrowings in Romanian language........................4

2.Theoretical explanations.............................................................................6

3.Types of English borrowings......................................................................8

4. The influence of English terminology in Romanian mass-media.............10

Conclusion....................................................................................................14

Bibliography.................................................................................................15

Annexes.........................................................................................................16

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 Introduction

English is one of the most used language in the world.It dominates all the other
languages becoming a language of globalization and international trade.

As the main giver language for the international pool of words,English has become a lingua
franca, serving as an indispensable means of communication with the outside world.

Just as with other languages and peoples, Romanian could not escape the influence of English
origin words which grew more and more accustomed in everyday usage, many of them being
registered in dictionaries. In the years after the fall of the communist regime in 1989, when
Romania opened to the West, the influence of English on the Romanian language rose to an
unprecedented level. Nowadays, English words can be found in all Romanian newspapers and
journals, can be heard on any Romanian TV channel, and are frequently used as shop or
business names (English has even become the language of Romanian graffiti.

Among the authors with the most relevant contributions in this area I would mention
Roswitha Fischer (2008), Monica Sim (2006), Arina Greavu (2010), Georgeta Ciobanu (1991,
1996), Mioara Avram (1997) and Adriana Stoichiţoiu-Ichim (2006).Their researches were
very important for understanding of the phenomenon and for the explanation of the factors
which caused it.

In nowadays in Romanian there are so many English words that are used in speaking and
writing, having massive contribution on almost all active fildes like: economic field, business
field, political field,technical field (especially in the IT language), medical field, mass-media
field, sports field,etc.

Its presence in the present-day Romanian language has become so influential that it deserves a
lot of our interest. So,I propose to investigate some important aspects of this phenomenon:

1.The causes that led to English-borrowing in Romanian area.

2. Theoretical explanations.

3.Types of English borrowings.

4.The influence of English terminology in Romanian mass-media

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 1. The historical causes of English borrowings in Romanian language
The origins of the contact between English and Romanian culture,and within it the
English influence on the Romanian language can betraced back to the sixteenth century
according to some authors(Mociornita 1980, 1983, 1992). However, the major influence of
English on Romanian started in the second half of the 19th century, with the intensification of
the cultural and economic relations between the two countries ,this influence being recorded
in the lexicographic works of the time. Thus,Diaconovici’s encyclopedic dictionary (1898-
1904) as well as otherlexicographic works published around the turn of the century contain
English borrowings like :baseball, cent, dolar, gallon, lady, sir, sport,tennis, tory, whig.

Hristea (1982 quoted in Constantinescu et. al. 2002)shows that the neologisms Romanian
started to borrow from English inthe 19th century, came almost exclusively through the
intermediacy of French, many of them belonging to the sports terminology:

auto, baschet,base-ball, bowling, bridge, corner, dribbling, fault, finiş , fotbal, henţ ,ofsaid,
meci, outsider, polo, pressing, ring, rugby, scor, set, skeet,sportsman, start,şut, tenis, volei,
etc.

Besides this intensification of relations, a minor source of influence is reported to have been
the emigration of many Romanians from Transylvania and Banat to America between 1880
and the first World War, some of whom returned to their native villages.

A very important wave of English borrowings in Romanian began at the turn of the 20 th
century, and coincided with the intensification of economic and cultural contacts, being
encouraged by Romania’s industrial and economic development on West European models,
many of them of British origin. Thus, English technological methods, and with them English
terminologies were brought to the attention of specialists in oil drilling, mining, finance, steel
production, ship building, weaving, etc. To these economic elements, others were added such
as military and political circumstances- Romania’s joining the Triple Entente countries in
1916 . In the second half of the twentieth century, the influence of English grew steadily in
spite of the purist attitude which was favoured for political reasons. After 1989 social
circumstances favoured increased contacts between Romania and many foreign countries, the

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English speaking world included; consequently, a large number of Anglicisms and
Americanisms were borrowed via written and oral routes. Beside the natural need to use some
terms coming from English (the influence of English being an international phenomenon due
to the progress of some highly pervasive domains), the invasion of English borrowed words
becomes a sort of trend among some social categories that frequently and deliberately employ
English words, even though there are Romanian equivalents: job, party, look, hair-stylist,
popcorn, hit, announcing a sort of linguistic “fashion” in the present-day written media. One
may interpret the interest in Anglo-Americanculture and civilization as a spontaneous form of
opposition to communist indoctrination. Evidence of the increasing influence of the English
language on Romanian is the recording of ever more Anglicisms in Romanian dictionaries
starting with 1970. These dictionaries include works of a general nature such as “Dicţionarul
explicativ al limbii române” (DEX1and DEX2), dictionaries of neologisms (DN3), and
recordings of new words (Dimitrescu 1982, 1997: Dicţionar de cuvinte recente- DCR1
andDCR2), as well as specialized dictionaries restricted to individual domains, e.g. computer
science, finance and trade, marketing, sports, andmedicine. Finally, the contemporary period,
i.e the end of the 20 th century and the beginning of the 21st century is characterized by what
is usually referred to as “an unprecedented English influence” which manifests itself directly,
that is without the intermediacy of other languages, mainly through second language teaching
and the mass media.

It is natural to think that Romanian is facing a rapidly changing linguistic facetand turns to
English in the 3 rd Millennium, which is in the privileged position of a lingua franca, because
the British and the Americans shake hands to deliver an efficient communication system
about capitalism to a mass international audience, especially to the former communist
countries, by means of two major international and economic concepts:the concept of
globalization that has much to do with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and
the World Trade Organization, on the one hand, and the Internet on theother. Changes have
been felt on the Labour Market due to the development of economy, too.Romanians are
facing the reality of new jobs and new position in the European context. New jobs names have
crossed the Romanian borders and few of them found new equivalents inour language. We are
dealing now with salesman(agent de vanzari),sales manager ,assistant manager
(secretara),trainer ,senior recruiter ,agentmarketing ,PR coordinator ,HRmanager (director
resurse umane),brand manager ,key account (responsabil de conturiimportante), and so many
other.

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 2.Theoretical explanation
In order to get a better understanding of the elements analysed in the following chapters, I
consider useful to define some of the main terms related to the subject of this paper and
clarify some of the issues that are likely to generate confusion as far as these terms are
concerned.

ANGLICISM

The term Anglicism refers to a linguistic feature of English used in another language (cf.
OED). Or, according to other sourses an Anglicism, as most often defined, is a word
borrowed from English into another language. It is a word or phrase that is peculiar to British
English or English syntax, grammar, or meaning transposed in another language resulting in
incorrect language use or incorrect translation

BORROWING

According to American Heritage Dictionary, a borrowing is “especially a word or phrase

borrowed from one language for use in another”. Or „a word adopted from another language
and completely or partially naturalized.” Borrowing denotes the process as well as the object.

LOAN WORD

A loanword (or loan word) is a word adopted, normally with little change in form, from
another language .In Wikipedia, it is a word borrowed from a donor language and
incorporated into a recipient language.

FOREIGNISM

A non-established borrowing is also sometimes called a foreignism, but only if it is a lexical

and not a semantic borrowing. Foreignisms are said to be used for a particular purpose, for
instance to make a connection with a specific culture by means of its language.

TERMINOLOGY

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Terminology refers to: 1. the technical or special terms used in a business, art, science, or
special subject; or 2. the nomenclature as a field of study; or 3. the special words or phrases
that are used in a particular field (noncount).

The Plural Form of Anglicisms

In most cases, the plural of countable Anglicisms is made by adding Romanian endings.
Occasionally, hybrid forms ensue, with double plural endings, both English and Romanian,
such as in comicsuri, congresmeni, slums-uri, sticks-uri , etc. Finally, in some few isolated
cases only the English plural ending -s is maintained (such as in hip-hoopers, lifestyle centers
or skinheads), indicative of “an uncompleted morphological adjustment status,”.
Of the three, the most remarkable case is that of the redundant forms generated wherever
Romanian speakers fail to identify the existing English plural, and so one and the same
loanword accommodates two plural forms: that compliant with English morphology, and the
one adapted to the Romanian system - see plural jeans and double-plural jeanşi, or skills and
skillsuri .There is obvious competition between the two, in the sources analysed, yet the plural
forms adapted to the Romanian language system tend to prevail in more and more contexts.

Even more remarkably, rival plural forms of Anglicisms and their Romanian synonyms are
used interchangeably within a text, allowing authors to avoid repetition: see catwalkuri
/catwalk-uri and podiumuri (de modă), outfituri and ţinute, printuri and imprimeuri, trenduri
and tendinţe.

The Gender of Anglicisms

English borrowings ending in plural -i such as designeri, freelanceri, hairstilişti, speakeri

pertain to the masculine gender. Feminine forms of Anglicisms are made by adding other
Romanian suffixes and go unrecorded by dictionaries (bloggerițe, goalkeepere, stewardese ),
which only reinforces the thesis that English loanwords are still unstable, their adaptation to
the Romanian inflection system being under way.

Most of the Anglicisms partially adapted to the system of Romanian, however, take -uri as a
plural ending for inanimate nouns and belong to the neuter gender: bloguri, branduri,
businessuri, e-mailuri, joburi, malluri, traininguri, workshopuri, showroomuri, weekenduri ,
and hyphenated forms like site-uri. Very infrequently, in the neuter-gender noun group there
are Anglicisms ending in plural -e, for example chokere.

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 3. Types of English borrowings
Sextil Puscariu divides the borrowings in two categories : necessary borrowings and luxury.

The necessary borrowings are those words or idiomatic units that don’t have a correspondent
in Romanian. In this sense these anglicisms have the advantage of the precision and of the
international use.

The necessary borrowings can be of two types: denotative and connotative.The denotative
borrowings don’t have equivalents in Romanian because they denoterecent realities that
appeared in different fields. To exemplify some denotative borrowings, there can be
mentioned:

From sports field :fotbal (fotbalist), baschet(baschetbalist), rugby(rugbist ), schi, meci,volei,

karate, cros, skateboard etc.

From technical field :lap-top, site, walkman, pager, hard, soft, hardware, software)etc.

From the mass-media field:computer, web, clip(video-clip),e-mail etc.

From the educational field:curriculum(even though it’s a Latin term, we have borrowed it
from English), grant, master etc.

From gastronomical field: fast-food, ketchup, hamburger, hot-dog, chips etc.

The other type of necessary borrowings, the connotative ones, double a pre-existing
Romanian word, and this serves at the amplification of some stylistic meanings. Some
examples in this case can be:

Party- petrecere

happy-end -sfârşit fericit

weekend - sfârşit de săptămână

penalty -lovitură de la 11 metri

live - în direct

summit -întâlnire la vârf etc.

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The luxury borrowings are unnecessary borrowings that involve the tendency of some social
categories to individualise themselves linguistically in this way. This fact is considered to be
an act of snobbism. Here are some examples in this sense:

Terms from the economic field:

Advertisig – publicitate,

agreement – acord financiar,economic,

showroom– magazin de expozitie

Terms from mass-media:briefing – conferinta de presa, key – speaker – vorbitor principal.

Terms from the educational field:training –pregatire, instruire,item– intrebare, punct dintr-un
test, visitig professor – profesor oaspete.

Terms from the artistic field:band – orchestra, formatie muzicala,evergreen– slagar,

performance– spectacol,teleplay– piesa de teatru la TV.

Terms from the high-life: fashion– moda,make-up– farduri,modeling – meseria de manechin.

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4.The influence of English terminology in Romanian mass-media
The Romanian terminology of mass media (TMM) follows the Anglo-American conceptual
pattern. As a consequence, the lexical and phrasal borrowings from English are prevalent in
the lexicon used in this field.Breaking news,news alert,meeting,leadership or lobby are only a
few of the numerous English syntagms taken over by journalists and imposed in the daily
language of the Romanians by means of media. The English used in Romanian media can be
understood to serve two main functions: a decorative function and a communicative function.
The decorative function of the English incorporates characteristics such as font size, font
colour, and placement on the page. In this sense the English functions visually, and does not
need to be read or understood. The second function that the English has is its communicative
function. English words which can be read and understood by Romanian people are able to
express their meaning, whereas words that cannot be read or which are not expected to be
read do not have much of a communicative function and are mostly decorative. According to
Sim and Pop (2009), 65% of the neologic terms that appear regularly in the glossy magazines
are not included in the recently published lexicographic works. Here are some such terms:

make-over, make-up artist, anti-age, look, pl. lookuri, articulated lookul; lifting, make-up, pl.
make-upuri, articulated make-upul; fashion, design, designer, gloss, eye-liner (ro. tuş), trend,
casual, modelling, hair-stylist, home-made, etc.

Women glossy magazines abound in English titles or a combination of English and

Romanian titles: Cosmo book club, Cosmo informer, Cosmo style insider, Metale în trend,
Cosmon’n Vogue, Beauty stil de vedetă, Măşti home-made, Job & bani, Quiz culinar, Real life
etc.; most of these are already phrases often used in everyday speech, still they are luxury
borrowings as we could easily find Romanian equivalents.

The first issue in analyzing the influence of English is given by the full or partial use of terms
taken from English in the name of a few Romanian TV stations.The first Romanian
televisions with full English names are: The Money Channel,Euforia Lifestyle TV. Currently,
this phenomenon is isolated in the classical television market, but it is rising in the online
environment. For Romanian viewers, the presence of English words in Romanian television
station names is not new, as one third of televisions have English names, most of them being
international channels. Examples: HBO, Hallmark Channel, Discovery Channel, National
Geographic, Eurosport, Viasat Explorer, Viasat History, Animal Planet, Discovery Science,
Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Civilization, Sport Klub, Minimax, Jetix, Zone

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Reality, Cartoon Network, MTV, VH1, BBC Prime, MGM, CNN, etc.The second aspect to
analyze the influence of English in audiovisualderives from the fact that, today, we already
have several televisions whose titles contain words borrowed from English. First, there is
Teleshopping which is specific to each Romanian television station. Besides, there are in the
current TV programs the following shows with full or partial title in English: TVR1
broadcasts "Zon@IT" and "Ultra News"; TVR 2, television whose target consists mainly of
young people, has five shows falling within the same registry: “Replay”, “Coolmea
distracţiei”, “Omul între soft şi moft”, “E-forum” and “Zoom”. PROTV broadcasts two
programs with the title in English: "Happy Hour" and "Business Magazine". At Antena 1
there is “Un show păcătos” a combination of words in Romanian and English. B1TV
broadcasts five programs with titles in English: "Briefing", "High Life", "Club zone"ample.
Star style - Shopping de cinci stele”. Besides the programs mentioned, Romanian viewers can
choose of many television programs, with the full title in English offered by TV stations.
Examples: “How it’s made?”; Discovery Channel, “Making the Band” and “Pure morning” at
MTV; “Greatest Hits” and “Weekly Album” at VH1.

A special category recorded by linguists is innovations, Romanian declined words on the

structure of the English ones. Examples:

- „O să se topească, o să se meltească zăpada” (Antena 1, 2007). The verb a se melti is formed

from the English word to melt =a se topi, being useless in this context. Other lexical
innovations found in monitoring reports are:

- „Pentru că sunt toţi conexaţi” (OTV, 2008)

- „Nu putem să îi capacităm pe toţi” (OTV, 2008)

- „Reacționează cât se poate de animăleşte” (TVR 2, 2008)

- „Inflexiune puțin englezoasă” (TVR 2, 2008)

One of the terms most frequently used in Romanian televisions language is locaţie derived
from the English location. The term most often replaces even where no appropriate the
Romanian word loc (place) and its derivatives centru, sediu, imobil (center, office, building). -
„locaţie secretă” (TVR1, 2007)

- „Autorităţile au pregătit deja locaţii pentru a adăposti oamenii.” (TVR 2,2007)

- „A treia locaţie controlată a fost pădurea”. (Prima TV, 2007)

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- „Italia, de exemplu, sau alte locaţii minunate”. (TVR Cultural, 2008)

The mistakes caused by ignorance of the words’ meaning, especially of neologisms,

associated with negligence in speech and different trends of language often lead to forced
expressions and even hilarious ones. In this situation there is the word hit which means şlagăr
(DEX) but it is found in another context:

- „Un mare hit sunt pantofii de inspiraţie masculină”. (Antena 3, 2007)

In the same category, there is the association of the verb a termina=to finish with the English
word happy end, which means “sfârşit fericit”:

- „Se termină cu happy-end.” (B1, 2007)

I noticed that the use of English words is explained, on the one hand, by the speaker desire to
impress, to show that he/she knows a foreign language, on the other hand, to draw attention.
Such uses should not be encouraged, because of the risk that the receiver does not understand
the message conveyed.

Using Anglicisms and calques

Instead of Romanian words, inappropriate words and English constructions were used as well
as unsuitable forms. Abuse of Anglicisms is clearly presented in the monitoring reports,
where we find the following phrases:

- “vreau să-mi faci un scurt background al vârfurilor pe care ai urcat”. (Radio Guerrilla, 2008)

- “promite boss-ul Stelei”. (Prima TV, 2008) – correct: promite şeful Stelei.

- “au săpat în exteriorul parkingului; au intrat în parking; în cealaltă parte a parkingului;

blocurile din jur şi parkingul (Antena 3, 2008)

- “o trupă în trend acum”. (TVR 2, 2008)

- “îţi dă Reject”. (InfoPro, 2008)

- “safety carul ”. (TVR 1, 2008) − recommended: masina de asistenţă.

- “Mi-a plăcut foarte mult speech-ul dumneavoastră de aseară”. (TVR Cultural, 2008)

- “Ne propunem să limpezim un pic un trend în România”. (B1 TV, 2008)

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- “E safe acum să te duci în Mamaia?”. (B1 TV, 2008)

- “Când îţi vei reveni din jet lag-ul din America?”. (B1 TV, 2008)

- „sub capota supercarului... creatorul supercarului” (N24 PLUS, 2010) – correct:

supermaşinii;

As noted above, we recognize frequently in today's audiovisual language, Anglicisms that

became Romanian words, giving them another meaning besides the old one.

Examples of press articles that highlight English borrowings

· „Visa le propune comerciantilor online o noua solutie de plata – 3V prepaid voucher –

menita sa-i atraga in magazinele virtuale chiar si pe utilizatorii cei mai sceptici in ceea ce
priveste siguranta tranzactiilor pe site-urile web.” (Romania Libera”- 8 October 2012)

· „Subsidiara (engl. subsidiary) din Romania a producatorului de echipament sportiv Puma va

deschide, luna viitoare, primul showroom permanent de pe piata locala, in Bucuresti.”
(Evenimentul zilei-17 November 2013)

· “Piaţa de leasing operaţional a înregistrat, în 2013, o creştere uşoară de aproximativ 3,5%

faţă de anul anterior, ajungând la aproape 43.000 de unităţi şi depăşind estimările făcute după
rezultatele la 9 luni. Anul trecut, 11.500 de autovehicule noi au fost înmatriculate prin leasing
operaţional, reprezentând peste 17% din totalul înmatriculărilor de autoturisme şi
autovehicule comerciale uşoare noi”. (Adevarul, 20 February 2014)

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 Conclusion
To sum up borrowings are a normal and necessary phenomenon in the development of a
language. The purpose of language is to renew permanently. Borrowings from other
languages represent a matter of linguistic creativity through which language changes,
enriching relentlessly to correspond to new realities. Some of the borrowed terms are
necessary, in the sense that they are introduced because there is no equivalent for newly
introduced concepts, and some become synonyms for words already existing in the
vocabulary, prestige, snobbery or international relationships being some of the factors that
help maintain such unnecessary loans in our language. After all, a language is like a living
organism, which accepts or rejects, grows bigger each day and has preferences, fluctuations,
dilemas or difficulties in making choices. Therefore, I can conclude that it is impossible to
predict the evolution of Anglicisms in the Romanian dictionaries. In contact with English, the
Romanian language proves to be a generous receiver, ready to enrich itself continuously.

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 Bibliography

1. Avram, Mioara. Anglicismele în limba română actuală. Bucureşti: Editura

Academiei Române, 1997.
2. Manea, Constantin. Remarks on the Recent English Loanwords in the
Romanian Vocabulary of Economics. Piteşti: Editura Universităţii din
Piteşti, 2010.
3. Ciobanu, Georgeta. The English Element in the Romanian Language.
1996.
4. Stoichiţoiu-Ichim, Adriana. Aspecte ale influenţei engleze în româna
actuală, Bucureşti:Editura Universităţii, 2006.
5. Zarojanu, T.C. (2014) Mass media insider, Iaşi: Polirom.

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 Annexes
Ex.1
Classify the following anglicisms in 3 domains:
Clip, copywrite, hot line,banking, fitness, staff ,surfing, broker, online,
playoff, help-line, screening, skateboard, shipping,business, e-
mail,live,briefing, rugby.
Sport Mass-media Economy

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 Ex.2
Write a short newspaper article in your native language using the
following anglecisms:
a.Selfie, Star news, street food, fan-club, talk-show,live,look.

b.modelling,cash,fitness,self-sevice,fashion,hit,make –up.

c.briefing,off-line,baby-sitter,site,cash,feedback.

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