Anglicisation

Anglicisation or Anglicization (see -ise vs -ize) is a process of making something English. For example, people may be Anglicised: an immigrant to England may be said to become Anglicised as he or she acclimates to the culture. However, Anglicisation is most commonly discussed in the more abstract context of language: language is said to become Anglicised as it becomes more like the English language.

Anglicisation in language

There are two primary types of Anglicisation in language: anglicising non-English words for use in English, and anglicising non-English languages through the introduction of English words.

Loanwords

Non-English words may be anglicised by changing their form and pronunciation to something more familiar to English speakers. For example, the Greek word aeroplano has been imported into English in the modified form aeroplane (or American English airplane). 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 French demoiselle, meaning "little lady". Another form of anglicising is the inclusion of a foreign article as part of a noun (such as alcohol from lavolta).

Proper names

Place names are commonly anglicised in English. For example, the Italian city of Napoli, known in English as Naples, or the German city of München (Munich) 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 , such as fiancée, or cliché. With languages that use non-Latin alphabets, such as the Arabic, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets, a direct transliteration is typically used, in order to secure faithfulness to the original pronunciation rather than to the norms of English .

This shift from anglicisation has become a matter of national pride in some places, especially in regions that were once under colonial rule, where vestiges of European cultural domination are a sensitive subject. As a consequence, anglicised names have been officially discouraged: China's Peking is now Beijing , and India's Bombay is now Mumbai. 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, is named Turin in the original Piedmontese language, but 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.

Personal names were also heavily anglicised, such as the German Johann (John), Russian Piotr (Peter), Greek Giorgos (George), and Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua). During the 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 accomodated 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 the other way around (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 â€" for example, Ã" Briain has often become O'Brien, Ã" Rothlain became Rowland, and Ã" 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 Cristobal Colon.

One such example of an anglicised name is the case of an 18th-century Luxembourger named Joachim Grün, whose family name is the German word for Green. When his descendants moved to the United States in the mid 19th century, the family name was anglicised to Green.

An cinematic example of anglicising one's given name occurs in the 1987 movie The Untouchables, in which one of the characters anglicises his name from Giuseppe to George (though the English equivalent is actually Joseph) in order to assimilate into American society.

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. 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).

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; this is known as Anglicism. With the rise in anglophone media and global spread of American culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have entered popular useage 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.

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 Japan, where many local Japanese companies have even taken to marketing products for the domestic market using English or pseudo-English brand names and slogans, although other European languages such as French are also used occasionally. In other countries, anglicisation is seen much more negatively â€" often as evidence of American cultural domination, â€" 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.

See also

*Americanization
*Anglicism
*Francization
*Gaelicization
*Germanisation
*List of English words with diacritics
*Loanword
*Polonization
*Romanization
*Russification
*Ukrainization

References