On the Needed and Unneeded Borrowings from English Language

Abstract

The aim of the article is to assess the English borrowings from the viewpoint of linguistic correctness. Determining if a given borrowing is needed or redundant is based on two criteria: sufficiency and economy. The analysis showed that a majority of the lexical borrowings are needed, because it names new objects and phenomena. There are, however, forms, which are redundant, e.g. lewel instead of poziom, progres instead of postęp, look instead of wygląd. The borrowing is also justified when the borrowed word experiences a change in meaning in Polish, e.g. event // wydarzenie, zdarzenie, hejt // nienawiść, is differently stylistically marked than their Polish equivalent, e.g. tabloid // brukowiec or becomes a euphemism, e.g. aborcja // przerywanie ciąży. Some semantic calques are unnecessary, such as filozofia, dedykować. The structural-semantic calques, presenting the complexity of English structure by familiar elements, e.g. political correctness > poprawność polityczna generally do not raise any concerns about their correctness. However, connecting two nouns in the Nominative case, where the first noun serves as a modifier, is generally considered wrong, e.g. Miłosz Festiwal instead of Festiwal Milosza.