Latent borrowing in Croatian and other European languages – results and resistance

Abstract

Although calques are formed from elements of the recipient language, they are also subject to purist reactions. The paper aims to analyze the latent influence of the English language at all language levels as a problem present in Croatian and in other European languages. Examples in the paper show that latent linguistic influence is a widespread problem which originates from verbatim and careless translation, insufficient knowledge of the recipient language norm, and copying of the English language norm, which is seen as fashionable.

Keywords

• calque
• latent linguistic influence
• English
• Croatian
• purism