English loanwords in Spanish computer language

Abstract

Contact with the English language, especially from the 20th century onwards, has had as a consequence an increase in the number of words that are borrowed from English into Spanish. This process is particularly noticeable in Spanish for Specific Purposes, and, more specifically, in the case of Spanish computer language. Although sociocultural and linguistic studies can be found in the literature, there are few systematic works on this type of borrowing; thus, the purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the use of English loanwords in Spanish computer language. With that aim, we have carried out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of actual corpus-based data from four different publications addressed at experienced computer users. The main objective is to study the adaptation of loanwords to the Spanish system in terms of gender assignment and plural formation in order to determine whether borrowings in Spanish are governed by the usual criteria regarding gender assignment and check if, in the case of plural formation, the English pattern prevails over the Spanish one or if there is a mixture of both procedures.