Cover not available

Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 13:1 (2016) ► pp.80–102

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Cross-linguistic lexical influence between English and Spanish

Published online: 14 April 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.13.1.04mun
This article focuses on the cross-linguistic lexical influence between English and Spanish. We begin by redefining the concept of cross-linguistic lexical influence as the impact that two or more languages have on each other’s vocabulary. We then present a brief chronological survey of Hispanicisms in English and Anglicisms in Spanish, taking the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Diccionario de la lengua española (DRAE) as the main sources, and examine some of the factors that affect the patterns of word interchange between these two languages. We argue that the historical and social milieu, mass media, information technology, prevailing attitudes to foreignisms, and the stance taken by dictionaries and official linguistic policy condition which words are borrowed, affect the phonological, orthographic and semantic forms of these borrowings, and impact the degree of their integration in the receiving language. The present study is the first to offer a cross-linguistic (bilateral) perspective on lexical borrowing, a novel approach that is of particular interest given the contrasting philosophical differences governing language policy and lexicographic traditions in English and Spanish. It demonstrates the importance of adopting a comparative approach in the study of lexical influence between languages.
References (65)
Algeo, John. 1996. “Spanish Loanwords in English by 1900.” In Spanish Loanwords in the English Language: A Tendency towards Hegemony Reversal, ed. by Félix Rodríguez González, 19–40. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. 2010. Diccionario de americanismos [Dictionary of Americanisms]. 1st ed. Madrid: Santillana. Also available at [URL]. Accessed6 August 2014.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bazán-Figueras, Patricia, and Salvador J. Figueras. 2014. “The Future of Spanglish: Global or Tribal?” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 13 (1-2): 261–266. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boletín de Información Lingüística de la Real Academia Española (BILRAE). 2013. “Tecnicismos, neologismos y extranjerismos en el español [Technicisms, neologisms and foreignisms in Spanish]”. 1–91. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 7 November 2014.
Braunmüller, Kurt, and Juliane House. 2009. Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cannon, Garland. 1996. “Recent Borrowings from Spanish into English.” In Spanish Loanwords in the English Language: A Tendency towards Hegemony Reversal, ed. by Félix Rodríguez González, 41–60. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cenoz, Jasone. 2000. “Research on Multilingual Acquisition.” In English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language, ed. by Jasone Cenoz and Ulrike Jessner, 39–53. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “The Effect of Linguistic Distance, L2 Status and Age on Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition.” In Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives, edited by Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen, and Ulrike Jessner. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cenoz, Jasone, Britta Hufeisen, and Ulrike Jessner (eds). 2001. Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cuervo, Rufino José. 1907. Apuntaciones críticas sobre el lenguaje bogotano con frecuente referencia al de los países de Hispano-América [Critical notes on the language of Bogota with frequent reference to Spanish American countries]. 5th ed. Paris: R. Roger et Chernoviz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
David, Marianne, and Javier Muñoz-Basols. 2011. “Defining and Re-Defining Diaspora: An Unstable Concept.” In Defining and Re-Defining Diaspora: From Theory to Reality, ed. by Marianne David and Javier Muñoz-Basols, xii-xxiv1. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2012. Corpus of American Soap Operas (2001-2012). Also available at [URL]. Accessed 6 August 2014.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dumitrescu, Domnita. 2013. “El español en Estados Unidos a la luz del censo de 2010: los retos de las próximas décadas [Spanish in the United States in light of the 2010 census: The challenge of the coming decades].” Hispania 96 (3): 525–541. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Sobre el así-llamado Spanglish y el concepto de ‘estadounidismos’ [On the so-called Spanglish and the concept of ‘estadounidismos’].” Paper delivered at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Southern California Chapter (AATSPSoCal) , 25 October, University of Southern California.
Durkin, Philip. 2014. Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dworkin, Steven N. 2012. A History of the Spanish Lexicon: A Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eggington William, and Helen Wren (eds). 1997. Language Policy: Dominant English, Pluralist Challenges. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García, Ofelia, and Li Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gooch, Anthony. 1996. “Aspects of the Incidence of Hispanicisms in British English: A Study in Language, History, Politics and Psychology.” In Spanish Loanwords in the English Language: A Tendency towards Hegemony Reversal, ed. by Félix Rodríguez González, 231–251. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guijarro Ojeda, Juan Ramón, and Raúl Ruiz Cecilia. 2004. “Attitudes of English People towards Lexical Borrowing.” Glosas Didácticas 111: 215–220.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall, Christopher, and Peter Ecke. 2002. “Parasitism as a Default Mechanism in L3 Vocabulary Acquisition.” In The Multilingual Lexicon, ed. by Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen, and Ulrike Jessner, 71–86. New York: Kluwer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hildebrandt, Martha. 1961. La lengua de Bolívar [The language of Bolivar]. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hulk, Aafke, and Natascha Müller. 2001. “Bilingual First Language Acquisition at the Interface between Syntax and Pragmatics.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3 (3): 227–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Instituto de Investigación Rafael Lapesa de la Real Academia Española. 2013. Nuevo diccionario histórico del español (NDHE) [New historical dictionary of Spanish]. Also available at [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jansen, Silke. 2005. Sprachliches Lehngut im world wide web: Neologismen in der französischen und spanischen Internetterminologie [Linguistic borrowing in the World Wide Web: Neologisms in French and Spanish Internet terminology]. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lázaro Carreter, Fernando. 2002. “El neologismo en el DRAE [Neologisms in the DRAE].” Inauguración del I Curso de la Escuela de Lexicografía Hispánica, 15 February. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 1 August 2014.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lira Urquieta, Pedro. 1973. Estudios sobre vocabulario [Studies on vocabulary]. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Andrés Bello.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lodares, Juan Ramón. 1996. “Hispanic Tracks in English: Cowboys and Gold-rushers in the Old West.” In Spanish Loanwords in the English Language: A Tendency towards Hegemony Reversal, ed. by Félix Rodríguez González, 157–176. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lorenzo, Emilio. 1996. Anglicismos hispánicos [Hispanic Anglicisms]. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lukin, Tomás. 2014. “No hubo stay y no hay default [There was no stay and there is no default].” Página 121, 31 July. Also available at [URL].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lynch, Andrew, and Kim Potowski. 2014. “La valoración del habla bilingüe en los Estados Unidos: fundamentos sociolingüísticos y pedagógicos en Hablando bien se entiende la gente ” [The evaluation of bilingual speech in the United States: Sociolinguistic and pedagogic foundations in Hablando bien se entiende la gente ]. Hispania 97 (1): 32–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mallo, Jerónimo. 1954. “La plaga de los anglicismos [The plague of Anglicisms].” Hispania 371: 135–140. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Medina López, Javier. 2004. El anglicismo en el español actual [Anglicisms in current Spanish]. 2nd ed. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montilla, Patricia M. 2013. Latinos and American Popular Culture. Santa Barbara: Praeger.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moreno Fernández, Francisco. 2014. “El idioma en la escuela estadounidense [Language in US schools].” ABC, 3 August. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 6 August 2014.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muñoz-Basols, Javier, Pawel Adrjan, and Marianne David. 2013. “Phonological Humor as Perception and Representation of Foreignness.” In Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse, ed. by Leonor Ruiz Gurillo and Belén Alvarado Ortega, 159–188. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muñoz-Basols, Javier, Micaela Muñoz-Calvo, and Jesús Suárez García. 2014. “Hacia una internacionalización del discurso sobre la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera [Towards an internationalization of the discourse on the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language].” Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 1 (1): 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Odlin, Terence. 1989. Language Transfer: Cross-Linguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary. 2000. 3rd ed. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 15 June 2015.
Paffey, Darren. 2012. Language Ideologies and the Globalization of ‘Standard’ Spanish. London and New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Páramo García, Félix. 2003. Anglicismos léxicos en traducciones inglés-español 1750-1800 [Lexical Anglicisms in English-Spanish translations 1750-1800]. León: Junta de Castilla y León.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Payne, Thomas E. 2010. Understanding English Grammar: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Penny, Ralph John. 2006. Gramática histórica del español [Historical grammar of Spanish]. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez de Pablos, Susana. 1999. “García de la Concha alerta sobre el uso de anglicismos y el empobrecimiento del lenguaje [García de la Concha warns against the use of Anglicisms and the impoverishment of language].” El País, July 6. Also available at [URL] Accessed 6 August 2014.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pichardo, Esteban. 1836. Diccionario provincial de voces cubanas [Provincial dictionary of Cuban words]. Havana: Imprenta de la Real Marina.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Potowski, Kim, and Jason Rothman (eds). 2011. Bilingual Youth: Spanish in English-Speaking Societies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pratt, Chris. 1980. El anglicismo en el español peninsular contemporáneo [Anglicisms in contemporary Peninsular Spanish]. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Real Academia Española. 2001. Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish language]. 22nd ed. Madrid: Espasa. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 6 August 2014.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish language]. CD-ROM. 22nd ed. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Diccionario panhispánico de dudas [Panhispanic dictionary of doubts]. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 6 August 2014.
. 2014. Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish language]. 23rd ed. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Nuevo tesoro lexicográfico de la lengua española [New lexicographical treasure of the Spanish language]. Also available at [URL]. Accessed 6 August 2014.
Rodríguez González, Félix. 1995. “Spanish Influence on English Word-Formation. The Suffix –Ista .” American Speech 70 (4): 421–429. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed.). 1996a. Spanish Loanwords in the English Language: A Tendency towards Hegemony Reversal. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996b. “Functions of Anglicisms in Contemporary Spanish.” Cahiers de lexicologie 68 (1): 107–128.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. “Anglicisms in Contemporary Spanish: An Overview.” Atlantis 211: 103–109.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Spanish Contribution to American English Wordstock: An Overview.” Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 23 (2): 83–90.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “Anglicismos y calcos en el español actual [Anglicisms and calques in current Spanish].” In L’inglese e le altre lingue europee: studi sull’interferenza linguistica [English and other European languages: Studies on linguistic interference], ed. by Félix San Vicente, 149–169. Bologna: Clueb.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rodríguez Medina, María Jesús. 2000. “El anglicismo en español: Revisión crítica del estado de la cuestión [Anglicisms in Spanish: Critical review of the state of the art].” Philologia Hispalensis 141: 99–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rojas, Viviana, and Juan Piñón. 2014. “Spanish, English or Spanglish? Media Strategies and Corporate Struggles to Reach the Second and Later Generations of Latinos.” International Journal of Hispanic Media 71: 1–15.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salazar, Danica. 2014. “Towards Improved Coverage of Southeast Asian Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary .” Lexicography: Journal of Asialex 1 (1): 95–108. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanz Hernández, Alexia. 2007. El consumo de la cultura rural. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael J. 1989. “A Political Approach to Language Purism.” In The Politics of Language Purism, ed. by Bjorn H. Jernudd and Michael J. Shapiro, 21–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sharwood-Smith, Michael, and Eric Kellerman. 1986. “Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language: An Introduction.” In Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language Acquisition, ed. by Michael Sharwood-Smith and Eric Kellerman, 1–9. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by nine other publications

Demianova, Polina Ivanovna
2024. Sociolinguistic analysis of examples of the use of anglicisms in Ecuadorian journalistic texts. Филология: научные исследования :10 ► pp. 49 ff. DOI logo
Flores Moreno, Cristina, Yuliia Lysanets, Olena Bieliaieva & Maksym Nebesnyi
2024.  Spanish and French loanwords in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises : representation strategies of cultural and linguistic exchange in a travel narrative . Studies in Travel Writing 27:3 ► pp. 434 ff. DOI logo
von der Fecht-Fernández, Sara & Alicia Rodríguez-Álvarez
2024. The Role of Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall Nauigations (1589) in the Introduction and Dissemination of Spanish Loanwords in the English Language. Neophilologus 108:1 ► pp. 123 ff. DOI logo
Rodríguez Arrizabalaga, Beatriz
2021. Social Networks: A Source of Lexical Innovation and Creativity in Contemporary Peninsular Spanish. Languages 6:3 ► pp. 138 ff. DOI logo
You, Zixi, Jieun Kiaer & Hyejeong Ahn
2020. Growing East Asian words in English. English Today 36:2 ► pp. 17 ff. DOI logo
Company Company, Concepción
2019. Jerarquías dialectales y conflictos entre teoría y práctica. Perspectivas desde la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE). Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 6:2 ► pp. 96 ff. DOI logo
Muñoz-Basols, Javier & Natividad Hernández Muñoz
2019. El español en la era global: agentes y voces de la polifonía panhispánica. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 6:2 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
Trebucq, María Dolores
2019. Julia Schultz.The Influence of Spanish on the English Language since 1801: A Lexical Investigation. Spanish in Context 16:2 ► pp. 307 ff. DOI logo
Muñoz-Basols, Javier, Alberto Rodríguez-Lifante & Olga Cruz-Moya
2017. Perfil laboral, formativo e investigador del profesional de español como lengua extranjera o segunda (ELE/EL2): datos cuantitativos y cualitativos. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 4:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue