The widespread use of Anglicisms among young Romanian speakers represents a significant linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomenon with direct implications for language education. This article examines the mechanisms through which English loanwords are adopted into Romanian youth language, drawing on examples from teenage magazines, social media, and spoken discourse. By analysing patterns of borrowing across domains such as music, fashion, sport, and technology, the study highlights both the motivations behind Anglicisation and the risks of semantic distortion. For educators, understanding how students construct and negotiate linguistic identity through borrowed vocabulary is essential to developing informed approaches to mother-tongue instruction, language awareness, and communicative competence across the curriculum.
English as a Bridge Language
Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to be a ‘lingua franca’, ‘a learner language’ or ‘a technical language’ of the modern era as Fischer states in his work. Macmillan Dictionary defines ‘lingua franca’ as follows: ‘a language that people use to communicate when they have different first languages’ (www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/lingua-franca visited on 2013/06/11) and can be also called a ‘trade language’ because of its commercial reasons and for diplomatic and administrative convenience.
The English elements were introduced into Romanian mainly by cultural borrowing or intermediary borrowing and lots of English terms have entered popular usage in other tongues because of the global spread of British and American cultures in the 20th and 21st centuries. The growing influence of English on the languages of Europe is an example of linguistic change under Anglicization conditions. It can be traced back to political, economic and technological developments. Juliane House distinguishes in her work between ‘languages of communication’ and ‘languages of identification’ (House, 2005: 53-65). Through this difference English language cannot be perceived as a competitor language but as a complementary possibility of communication.
A more recent linguistic development is Anglicization of other languages in which words are borrowed from English; such a word is known as an Anglicism. The term anglicism was first used in the 17th century and refers to an expression from English used in another language (cf. Oxford English Dictionary). The term Anglicization sometimes refers to the process of altering the pronunciation or spelling of a foreign word. When a word has been borrowed, it becomes integrated into the receiver language with varying extent. Görlach distinguishes three main degrees of acceptance:
a) ‘The word is fully accepted – either the word is not (or no longer) recognized as English, or is found in many styles and registers, but is still marked as English in its spelling, pronunciation or morphology.’ (Görlach 2002b: xxi-xxiv)
b) ‘The word is in restricted use.’ (Ibid)
c) ‘The word is not part of the language – it is either a calque or a loan creation, or mainly known to bilinguals, or used only with reference to British or American contexts.’ (Ibid)
Anglicization is seen as relatively benign, and the use of English words may even take on a ‘chic’ aspect. Nowadays the Romanian vocabulary has witnessed of an invasion of ‘Anglicisms’, those English words that are used in spoken and written language. This great phenomenon of borrowing words from English affects the young speakers who want to impose themselves and to develop their vocabulary. This invasion can be found all over the Romanian territory, in newspapers and journals, or can be heard on any Romanian TV channel and nonetheless English has become the language of Romanian graffiti. We have to consider that some of the borrowed words are adopted for their informative function, while other words are adopted because they are felt to be imbued with cultural and social prestige.
Youth Language and Its Features
An important factor in this great change of our language is the media; teenagers and not only are influenced by it and they start to use Anglicisms as if it is their mother tongue. The young public represents the engine of the linguistics innovation, as Eckert characterized them:
Adolescents are the linguistics movers and shakers, at least in western industrialized societies, and, as such as, a prime source of information about linguistic change and the role of language in social practice. (Eckert, 1997: 52)
Magazines like Cool Girl or Bravo are full with maladjusted and borrowed English terms. These two publications have like target a young audience between 12 and 18 years old. The young public takes the English words from the written language like magazines, social networks, internet, and many others, but they first saw an Anglicism in the written form and after that they extract what it is suitable for and what they prefer to use the most in their spoken language. Of course, the items that they are using in the spoken language they are also using in the written language. This written language usually for them is most of the time mobile messaging. Here are used lots of Anglicisms and abbreviations that belong to the English vocabulary, such as: OMG- Oh my God! to exclaim surprise or disgust; BRB- Be Right Back! this item is taken from the social network Yahoo Messenger and the teenager use this abbreviation when something interfere while they were talking with someone or they were doing something and need immediately their attention; BFF-Best friend forever, and many others. The terms that are often use in magazines are called by Sextil Puşcariu ‘luxury anglicisms’ (1976: 376) he named those unnecessary terms that don’t bring any supplementary information to a specific word but only doubling the meaning of it. Examples of ‘luxury anglicisms’ would be: beauty- frumusețe, splendoare; fashion- modӑ; casual- ținutӑ neoficialӑ; make-up – machiaj al feței; look- aspect, infӑțişare, party- petrecere; etc. Even if these terms do not bring anything new to the Romanian vocabulary they are often used by young people who want to make an impression on the other interlocutor. ‘Teenage language (…) is where linguistics innovations and new trends tend to make their first appearance, some of them even entering and becoming part of the standard language.’ (Stenström 1996: 146) He perceives the invasion of Anglicisms like a new trend that young people want to achieve and not only to achieve, and to memorize these new words in their vocabulary as a part of a standard language.
As ‘empty adjectives’ and ‘strong swear words’ are used by women and men respectively, there are also some English words or structures that are used more frequently by female speakers than male speakers or the other way round. English words such as: baby (dragǎ), honey- boney, cool, fresh, party, T-shirt, gloss, eye-liner, make-up, hair-style, fashion etc are more uttered by women than men and we can see that they usually express kindness, super-polite forms or beauty. As Lakoff already states in her list of linguistic features about women using ‘super-polite’ form, here women use these forms to make compliments or regards to each other and sometimes these idioms are uttered in a familiar environment. Words like boss, derby, bass, man and other swear strong words are usually uttered by men as already Tannen states in her book, that men use a specific language to show their dominance and to achieve a hierarchical rank. The social environment is an important factor in this distinction. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003:50) both state that ‘The force of gender categories in society makes it impossible for us to move through our lives in a non- gendered way and impossible not to behave in a way that brings out gendered behavior in others.’ In other words the social environment and the social background have a great influence upon us, upon our way of speaking and thinking.
Some of the Anglicisms that Romanian adolescents are using daily in their spoken language are: OK/ Okay, What do you know? / Well, Cool, Whatever, Fresh, Full, Party, Happy end, Boss, Be right back, Honey boney, Online/ Offline, Nick-name, No comment, etc. Okay has frequently turned up as a loanword in many other languages; furthermore young people often use this colloquial word to denote approval, acceptance, agreement or acknowledgement. OK can function as an adjective when its meaning is adequate, acceptable or can be an interjection as well. This Anglicism used by teenagers can mean ‘all right’ or ‘satisfactory’ and is uttered especially in informal language. Another expression often utilized by Romanian adolescents is What do you know? in informal context this expression signifies a surprise at something that is unexpected, an expression of mild surprise. In Romanian it can be translated by ‘Ia te uitӑ!’ Whatever is an informal expression used to show indifference or dismissal. Adolescents that are using this word want to dismiss a previous statement and express indifference and sometimes can be considered impolite and offensive, in Romanian such word can be translated by ‘Ȋn fine’, but of course for teenager seems to be more easy to use the English word. The word cool is highly used in spoken language by Romanian adolescents and this Anglicism it is used in an informal context when you want agree with someone or its meaning can be excellent, marvelous, and satisfactory.
Every teenager has an account on Tweeter, Facebook, Skype, YahooMessenger or all these together. These social networks have a great influence on our kids, especially on their spoken language. They assume terms like: Online/ Offline, No comment, Be right back, Nick-name, Like/ Dislike and many others, as being a part of their usually language and they often use the terms above in their daily life. Sooner or later the foreign words that happen to stay in a receiver language will be integrated into the existing language structures to such an extent that they will not be recognized as foreign any more.
Many of the borrowed English words are used unmodified, without any change in their formal structure e.g.: o poziție de outsider (a position of outsider); angajeazǎ brand manager, creative director, account manager, art director (wanted…); locuri de muncǎ pentru baby- sitter (jobs as baby-sitter), or sometimes the English word is placed between inverted comas, such as: existența a acelor ‘homeless’; gazetar de talent, sǎ-i zicem ‘free- lancer’ and in other cases there are no translations or inverted comas, like: acest newcomer feminin; dog-walker. There are idioms that are simply copied from English, such as: ‘tenisman’- tennis player (feminine is tenismanǎ); web; flirt (generally used as dating).
If it was a classification of the most utilized English words by Romanians it would look as below. For exemplification it was used instances from Bravo and Cool Girl magazines (2001- 2003), these two magazines appear monthly and having as target group teenagers aged between 12 and 18. Areas where anglicisms are used with increased frequency are the music, fashionable life , sport , and in the technical and economic domain.
Anglicisms about sports such as: boarder, fitness, snowboard and even some ‘luxury Anglicisms’ like fair and outsider are highly used. Snowboard is a winter sport that involves descending a slope that is covered with snow while standing on a board. Outsider and fair these two terms belonging to the sport domain have been used also in magazines like Bravo who has nothing in common with sport. For example ‘L-a făcut să se simtă un outsider printre colegi’ and ‘Tu eşti şefa pentru că eşti fair’ . (Bravo, 14/2002: 11). In the first sentence outsider means someone excluded and in the second sentence fair means honest.
In the economic field words like: Boss, business-man, dealer, job, marketing, shopping, are the most uttered. An example for boss would be: ‘Eşti boss-ul grupului’ (Bravo, 4/2001: 4). This term defines a person who makes decisions or exercises authority on the others. ’Las acest job lui Jennifer şi Madonnei.’ (Bravo,14/2002: 8 )
In music domain 65% of the terms are borrowed from English, terms like: boyband, chart, cover, girl- power, homestudio, new wave, songwriter, play-back, underground, show-man, come-back, etc. A suggestive example for the loanword cover would be ‘Artistul a lansat deja într-o nouă versiune cover-ul celor de la Soft Cell’ (Bravo, 16/2002: 2). The definition for cover is: a recording of a song that was first recorded or made popular by somebody else. ‘Ea a colaborat ca songwriter-iţă şi solistă’ (Bravo, 4/2001: 4). Feminine formed by derivation suffix –iţă demonstrates an adaptation to the grammatical structure of the Romanian language, while the term replaces the old ‘composer’. After the borrowing process has taken place, the word may lose or change its meaning(s) or develop new meanings in the receiver language.
In fashionable life there are lots of Anglicisms, and most of them fall into the category of ‘luxury Anglicisms’. Here are some of the examples: cool, college-shirt, fresh, hair-styling, outfit, t-shirt, tank-shirt, cover-girl, casting, make-up, look, etc. Great it is replaced by cool; ‘Cool-Girl vă prezintă aici cele mai cool trend-uri în hair-styling’ (Cool-Girl, 12/2001: 17) Anglicisms like cocktail, make-up, party, pub, trend and super- trendy, entered in the current language of adolescents – and beyond – through the broad dissemination of the magazines with topics like fashionable life: ‘Vi s-a pregătit un cocktail tare’ (Cool-Girl, 10/2002: 12); ‘nu e nevoie să fi urmat un curs de modeling’ (Cool-Girl,10/2002: 13). The motivation for using anglicisms , as can be seen from the material above varies from case to case. Some terms are introduced for convenience or to avoid phrases. The international character , the accuracy of the anglicisms, and the need to replace ” the wooden language ” from before the 90s led to the invasion of English terms.
There are cases in which English words are often used in an incorrect manner in Romanian language such as: ‘a te simți confortabil’ this phrase was taken form English ‘to feel comfortable (with something)’, but ‘a te simți confortabil’ does not necessary means ‘a te simți bine’ or ‘a fi de acord, a agrea un anumit lucru’ which is the right translation for ‘to feel comfortable (with something)’. In DEXonline the Romanian word ‘confortabil’ means ‘Care oferă confort; comod. [Cf. fr. confortable].’ (dexonline.ro/definitie/confortabil visited on 2013/03/06) These calques are usually made because often mass media continue to use such words and made them to look as they were ours. Another example would be ‘to make sense’; in Romanian this phrase sometimes is translated word by word ‘a face sens’, but the correct and the old form is ‘a avea sens’. The invasion of so many English idioms in our language replaces the old Romanian words with other new and fancy, that are accepted and promoted by mass media.
We all know that the vocabulary of every language, in time is enriched with other new terms. Eugeniu Coșeriu states in his work about the ‘life’ of a language: ‘Limba se face prin schimbare și ‘moare’ atunci cand inceteazǎ sǎ se schimbe’. (1997) English has never been as powerful and wide-spread around the world as nowadays and it never really had so much dominance over other languages as now. The numerical growth of the English element in Romanian is remarkable, reaching in 2004 an outstanding 3.5% from the total vocabulary, as compared to only 0.42% in 1961. Romanian well-known tolerance towards foreign influences could not but help this acceptance. After all, that the borrowing from foreign languages facilitates and enriches communication cannot be denied. And, as all linguists admit, sooner or later the foreign words that happen to stay in a receiver language for a longer time will be integrated into the existing language structures to such an extent that they will not be recognized as foreign any more. The international character, the need to replace the ’wood language’ of the ‘90s, represents the reason why so many English words have entered in our language.
Conclusions
The analysis presented in this article confirms that Anglicisation is not a marginal or transient phenomenon in Romanian youth language, but a structurally embedded process that affects vocabulary, morphology, and meaning-making. For language teachers, this reality poses a genuine pedagogical challenge: rather than dismissing borrowed English terms as errors or corruptions, educators are called upon to develop students’ critical language awareness — the capacity to reflect consciously on how and why certain words enter everyday use, who uses them, in what contexts, and with what social and communicative effects. Integrating such reflection into Romanian language lessons, as well as into foreign language classes, can transform a perceived linguistic „invasion” into a productive object of inquiry.
From a broader institutional and curricular perspective, the findings suggest the need to revisit language education frameworks so that they account for the multilingual and media-saturated realities in which today’s students develop their linguistic repertoires. Schools that engage seriously with youth language — rather than treating it as an obstacle to standard language acquisition — are better positioned to foster genuine communicative competence, metalinguistic thinking, and cultural literacy. In this sense, the study of Anglicisms is not merely a linguistic curiosity, but a window into the social dynamics of learning, identity, and belonging that lie at the heart of contemporary education.