Anglicisation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anglicisation or Anglicization (see -ise vs -ize) is a process of making something English.
The term most often refers to the process of translating words or phrases into an English equivalent. People may also be Anglicised – an immigrant to England becomes Anglicised as he or she acclimates to the culture.
Contents |
[edit] Loanwords
Non-English words may be anglicised by changing their form and pronunciation to something more familiar to English speakers. For example, the Latin word obscenus /obskeːnus/ has been imported into English in the modified form obscene /əbˈsiːn/. Changing endings in this manner is especially common, and can be frequently seen when foreign words are imported into any language. For example, the English word damsel is an Anglicisation of the Old French damoisele (modern demoiselle), meaning "young lady". Another form of anglicising is the inclusion of a foreign article as part of a noun (such as alkali from the Arabic al-qili).
[edit] Proper names
Place names are commonly anglicised in English. Examples include the Italian city of Napoli, known in English as Naples, the German city of München (Munich), the Danish city of København (Copenhagen), and the Dutch city of Den Haag (The Hague). Such anglicisation was once universal: nearly all cities and people discussed in English literature through to the mid-20th century were called by Anglicised names. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, direct use of non-English names in English began to become more common. When dealing with languages that use the same Latin alphabet as English, names are now more usually written in English as they exist in the original language, often even with diacritical marks that do not normally exist in English. With languages that use non-Latin alphabets, such as the Arabic, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets, a direct transliteration is typically used, which is then often pronounced according to English rules.
De-anglicisation has become a matter of national pride in some places and especially in regions that were once under colonial rule [1], where vestiges of colonial domination are a sensitive subject. As a consequence, anglicised names have been officially discouraged: Ireland's Kingstown has reverted back to its original Gaelic name Dún Laoghaire, China's Peking is now Beijing, and India's Bombay is now Mumbai (although Bombay is still commonly used by locals when speaking English).
In other cases, established anglicised names have remained in common use where there is no national pride at stake: this is the case with Munich, Naples, Rome, Athens, and other western European cities whose names have been familiar in their anglicised forms for centuries.
Sometimes a place name can appear anglicised, but is not, such as when the form being used in English is an older name that has now been changed. For example, Turin in the Piedmont area of Italy was named Turin in the original Piedmontese language, but is now officially known as Torino in Italian. English-language media can sometimes overcompensate for this in the mistaken belief that the anglicised name was imposed by English speakers and is cultural domination.
During the time in which there were large influxes of immigrants from Europe to the United States and Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries, the names of many immigrants were changed. Urban legend holds that this was often done by the immigration officials mishearing, but was more frequently an effort by the immigrants themselves to make their names more accessible to their new American or British neighbours [1].
French-Canadian immigrants who came to adjacent US states (Vermont, New York) often accommodated those unfamiliar with French pronunciations and spellings by altering surnames in either of two ways: spellings were changed to fit the traditional pronunciation (Pariseau became Parizo, Boucher became Bushey, Mailloux became Mayhew), or pronunciations were changed to fit the spelling (Benoit, pronounced BEN-wah, became Ben-OYT). In some cases, it could go either way (Gagne, pronounced GON-yay, become GAG-nee or Gonyea), or something only slightly similar (Bourassa became Bersaw).
Surnames often changed within the United Kingdom. A good example of this can be seen in the surnames of many Irish families – for example, Ó Briain has often become O'Brien, Ó Rothlain became Rowland, and Ó Néill became O'Neill. Similarly, native Scottish names were altered such as Somhairle to Sorley, Mac Gill-Eain to MacLean, and Mac Aoidh to MacKay. This can also occur to historical figures - Christopher Columbus is the anglicised version of Cristoforo Colombo, an Italian name. Another important example is Confucius, which is a Latinization of Chinese K'ung-fu-tzu.
The anglicisation of a personal name now usually depends on the preferences of the bearer. Name changes are less common today for Europeans emigrating to the United States than they are for people originating in East Asian countries except Japan. For instance, Xiangyun might be anglicised to Sean as the pronunciation is similar (though Sean - or Seán - is Irish and is a gaelicisation of the Norman French Jean).
[edit] Anglicisation of other languages
A more recent linguistic development is Anglicisation of other languages, in which words are borrowed from English, making the other language more similar to English; such a word is known as an Anglicism. With the rise in anglophone media and global spread of British and American culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have entered popular usage in other tongues. Technology-related English words like internet and computer are particularly common across the globe, as there are no pre-existing words for them. English words are sometimes imported verbatim, and sometimes adapted to the importing language in a process similar to anglicisation. In languages with non-Latin alphabets, these borrowed words can be written in the Latin alphabet anyway, resulting in a text made up of a mixture of scripts; other times they are transliterated. Transliteration of English and other foreign words into Japanese requires the special katakana script, and so many words are derived from modern English that any katakana in a passage of Japanese has a high probability of being based on an English word or phrase.
In some countries such anglicisation is seen as relatively benign, and the use of English words may even take on a chic aspect, being seen as modern and advanced. This is especially true in countries such as Japan, where many local companies have even taken to marketing products for the domestic market using English or pseudo-English brand names and slogans. In other countries, anglicisation is seen much more negatively, often as a threat to the perceived purity of the national language, and there are efforts by public-interest groups and governments to reverse the trend; for example, the Académie française in France creates French neologisms to describe technological inventions and encourages the use of those words in place of imported English terms.
[edit] Anglicisation of Minority Language Groups
The adoption of English as a personal, preferred language is another form of anglicisation. Calvin Veltman, following the methods of analysis developed in Québec for establishing rates of language shift, uses the term to refer to the practice of individuals in minority language groups who cease using their mother tongue as their usual, preferred language and adopt English instead. When such individuals continue to speak their mother tongue, they are referred to as "English-dominant bilinguals" and when they cease to do so, they are referred to as "English monolinguals". Rates of anglicisation may be calculated by comparing the number of people who usually speak English to the total number of people in any given minority language group.
[edit] External Links
http://www.gaeilge.org/deanglicising.html The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland by Douglas Hyde
