Loanword Phonology of Spanish Anglicisms: New Insights from Corpus Data

Abstract

Previous research shows that several factors influence the adaptation of English phonemes in Spanish Anglicisms: speaker age, English proficiency, and geographic distance from the U.S.A, among others.Due to globalization, increased mobility, and the ubiquitous availability of English media, the question arises whether these factors are still relevant in today’s world. For the present study, 70 speakers from Mexico and Spain read a word list containing Anglicisms aloud. A generalized linear mixed effects model was applied to analyze which factors directly influence pronunciation. Results show that the realization of Spanish grapheme-phoneme correspondences plays a major role in the adaptation process. Moreover, the analysis shows that it is exposure to the English language that mainly influences the pronunciation: the more exposure speakers from both countries have to the English language, the more likely they are to imitate the English pronunciation instead of the realization of Spanish grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Finally, the analysis revealed differences not only between the phonemes and the speakers but also between the words included in the study and once more highlighted that every word has a history of its own.

Keywords

• loanword phonology
• adaptation
• Anglicisms
• Spanish
• globalization
• language contact