Linguistic purism and loanword adaptation techniques: the case of Polish

Abstract

This article reports on a study whose aim was to analyze the relation between the level of declarative purism and the preference for a particular loanword adaptation technique. Evidence from many languages shows that language purists accept foreign words more readily if they are in a native disguise; as a consequence, they choose adaptation techniques which mask the origin of foreign words. An online survey (N = 213) making use of invented loanwords showed that educated Poles who declare a high level of purism are, in comparison with those who do not care about the purity of their language, less tolerant of unadapted loanwords and more apt to accept their native synonyms, newly coined for that purpose. In addition, assuming that loanword adaptation techniques are ordered with respect to how well they mask the foreign origin of a word, respondents who prefer a certain adaptation technique opt for techniques which are close in the assumed order but dislike distant techniques. The survey also showed that the aversion to loanwords increases with the respondents’ age and decreases with their English language competence.