Globally Speaking: Motives for Adopting English Vocabulary in Other Languages

Some regard English as an invasive species. Others believe the only practical thing to do about the intrusion of English is to borrow more and use it more. However, the contributors of these 14 papers mostly agree that the invasion of English is a natural and inevitable process driven by a variety of factors, of which the primary determinants of variability are associated not with aggression but with the existence of ethnic and linguistic diversity. They describe the hegemony of English and the reasons why other languages borrow from its vocabulary, then describe specific phenomena in Icelandic, French, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Hebrew, colloquial Arabic as used in Israel, Amharic, Farsi, Indian languages, Chinese in Taiwan, and Japanese. The collection closes with a comparative survey of borrowing from English. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

For almost a decade, Prof. Judith Rosenhouse and Prof. Rotem Kowner have led a multi-member research project on the motives for borrowing foreign lexicon, culminating with the publication of this book. Rosenhouse is a noted Israeli linguist specialized in Arabic and Hebrew, who recently retired from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology and has joined Swantech Ltd. Kowner is an Israeli Japanologist who focuses on Japanese attitudes and response to foreign culture, the West in particular, in modern times. Currently he serves as the chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Haifa.