English Loanwords in Colloquial Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

AbstractThe paper explores English loanwords and the reasons behind their increase in the daily speech of sample students chosen randomly at Mu'tah University in Jordan. The sample students are 25 males and 25 females of the faculties of sciences and humanities. To collect the data required, a questionnaire consisting of five questions was developed and given to the respondents. The study shows that students at Mu'tah University use English loanwords in their speech for reasons such prestige, habits, study need and modernity. The study also reports that English loanwords are used more by subjects of the scientific faculties than by those of the humanities. In addition, females tend to employ English in their daily speech more often than males do. The main reason behind the respondents' employment of English words instead of Arabic ones is that they assume that such English words have no equivalents in Arabic and these words have become part of their habits.Keyword: English, Loanwords, Colloquial, Arabic1. IntroductionColloquial Jordanian Arabic, many other languages and dialects around the world, incorporates a lot of English loanwords which are used in Jordanian's daily speech among which is the academic sector whereby university student's exhibit lots of these loanwords. Loanwords are always around us even though we sometimes do not realize their presence. Usually, English loanwords proceed through stages till they acquire frequent usage among members of the community. At this early stage, a foreign word is used by a small group of people. In the second stage, this word acquires wider acceptability and usage where it can be called a borrowed word. In the final stage, when the word becomes popular and used even by laymen, it can be referred to a loanword which is almost similar to the frequency of any native word used by students.Duane (2008) defines a loanword as a word taken from one language and used by another contemporary language, without translation, while maintaining with minimal modification the meaning it had in the source language. Many people use loanwords without any idea that they are not originally Arabic words, but it seems that the academic sphere is attracted more by having loanwords than any other sector of the community. This is attributed to the fact that, these words have to do with technological advancement and employment of up-to-date English loanwords by university students.Students at Mu'tah University have reasons for using English words during their daily speech. These reasons are related to personal needs that include prestige, showing off, modernity, and education requirements and so on. It seems that prestige and showing off in particular are affected by factors such the students' age, gender and education level. The usage of these loanwords has been increasing rapidly particularly among this group of the community. Some loanwords undergo morphological modifications to the extent that they appear if they were Arabic words. The current research addresses sample of university students whose areas of specialization are other than English, in an attempt to measure the most frequent English loanwords in the course of their daily speech. To my knowledge, this is the first study that deals with this issue and tackles the reasons behind the increase of these English loanwords in the speech of sample subjects.In examining the students' outcome of English loanwords at Mu'tah University, the paper seeks answers to the following questions:(1) Why are English loanwords used in Colloquial Jordanian Arabic, in particular among University students?(2) Does gender affect the usage of loaning words?2. Literature ReviewUnder this heading, with relying on some scholars' point of view, loanwords are those words which come from a foreign language into another to be used by its native speakers. Loanwords are defined words adopted from another language and completely or partially naturalized. …