English Loanwords in Serbo-Croatian

Abstract

S ERBO-CROATIAN, the dominant language of Yugoslavia, has been subjected to strong foreign influences for centuries. The Turks occupied large areas of what is now Yugoslavia for approximately five hundred years. Other areas of Yugoslavia were under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during much of their history. Smaller sections have known Italian domination. Cultural influence from countries such as France and Russia has been strong at times. The linguistic result of this past is a large number of borrowings in Serbo-Croatian. The major contributions are from Turkish and German.1 Other source languages are French, English, Hungarian, and Italian. Before the Second World War, the number of loanwords from English was relatively small. They consisted mainly of words which had entered numerous other languages besides Serbo-Croatian. Examples of such widely diffused Anglicisms in Serbo-Croatian spelling are: bar 'bar,' blef'bluff,' 6ek 'check,' dzentlmen 'gentleman,' farma 'farm,' film 'film,' folklor 'folklore,'fudbal 'soccer,' klaun 'clown,' klub 'club,' kombajn 'combine,' kros 'cross-country race,' miting 'meeting' (political), piknik 'picnic,' sendvi6 'sandwich,' skaut 'boy scout,' snob 'snob,' splin 'spleen' (figurative), start 'start,' stop 'stop,' frapnela 'shrapnel,' tenk 'tank' (military), tenis 'tennis,' traktor 'tractor,' tramvaj 'tramway,' tunel'tunnel,' vagon 'wagon' (railroad), vaterklozet 'water closet,' vikend 'weekend,' and viski 'whiskey.' Such words are international. They are just as much a part of international terminology as many widely used Greco-Latin terms.2 Such Anglicisms, which often filtered into Serbo-Croatian from French or German rather than directly from English, are included in the list below. A note is added when an intermediary language has significantly altered the form of the Anglicism, as in biftek 'beefsteak,' from French bifteck. Since the Second World War, English influence has become more