Anglicisms in ukrainians’ Internet communication

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Anglicisms in ukrainians' Internet communication

Англіцизми в інтернет спілкуванні українських користувачів

Opyr M.B.,

Senior Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages Lviv National Agrarian University

Dobrovolska S.R.,

Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages Lviv National Agrarian University

Panchyshyn S.B.,

Senior Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Language Lviv National Agrarian University

Modern world can hardly exist without the Internet, which has become a mandatory element of each field of life, from everyday communication to large business operation. The global effect of the net provides a lot of new opportunities for communication. In the past it took days or even weeks, whereas now the information is delivered immediately. A particular attention is paid to social networks, which are popular platforms for information exchange and communication between the users worldwide. Users of social networks are of different social status, age and sex, but they are joint by common interests. While social networking, users try to maximum approach their communication to real time conditions and therefore they tend to simplify their language to be clear for everybody. In that context, one observes a great impact of the English language, which was the original language of such social networks as Facebook, Insta- gram, Twitter. Therefore, most contents in those planforms are much better expressed in English. It is one of the reasons for penetration of anglicisms into the language of Ukrainian users of social networks and the Internet generally. The research is devoted to the analysis of the reasons of a wide use of English borrowings, as well as reasons the Ukrainian Internet users do not use Ukrainian equivalents in their social networking. The authors of the research provide analysis of the English parts of speech, which are the most often borrowed and used in the Ukrainian Internet communication, as well as study the ways of English vocabulary adaptation to the rules of pronunciation and grammar of Ukrainian. It is worth noting the Internet communication is getting more and more popular and nowadays not only young and also elder generation of Ukrainian society actively communicate on those platforms as it is a great opportunity of fast exchange of information regardless of the distance between communicants. Thus, the language of social networks is getting global, involving more and more anglicisms, because English is a dominating language in the world.

Key words: social networks, English borrowings, online communication, assimilation, adaptation, parts of speech.

Сучасний світ важко уявити без інтернету, який став невід'ємною частиною усіх сфер життя, від повсякденного спілкування до великого бізнесу. Всеохоплюючий ефект всесвітньої павутини надав безліч нових можливостей для спілкування. Те, що раніше займало дні, або й тижні, тепер можна здійснити моментально. Особливої уваги заслуговує така можливість інтернет спілкування, як соціальні мережі, які стали популярними платформами обміну інформація та комунікації між користувачами по всьому світі. Учасники соціальних мереж різного статусу, різного віку та статі, але їх об'єднують спільні інтереси, що зумовлює потребу використання лексики, максимально зрозумілої для кожного.

Вони намагаються наблизити своє спілкування в мережі до умов реального часу і тому значно спрощують мову їх комунікації. В цьому контексті, відчутний великий вплив англійської мови, тому що саме англійською мовою були первинно створенні найпопулярніші соціальні мережі Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Таким чином, багато контенту цих платформ найкраще виражати саме англійською. Це одна із причин значного проникнення англіцизмів в мову українських користувачів соціальних мереж та інтернету загалом. Дана стаття присвячена основним причинам широкого використання англіцизмів, а також невикористання українських еквівалентів в інтернет спілкуванні українців. Проведений аналіз частин мови, які найчастіше запозичуються українськими користувачами, а також представлені шляхи адаптації англійської лексики до правил граматики та вимови української мови. Варто зазначити, що інтернет спілкування набуває все більшої популярності і, якщо раніше в основному молоді була учасниками соціальних мереж, то сьогодні середнє і навіть старше покоління українського суспільства активно спілкується на цих платформах, адже це можливість швидкого обміну інформацією не залежно від відстані між комунікантами. Тому, мова соціальних мереж стає все більш глобалізованою, залучаючи все більше англіцизмів, оскільки англійська мова є домінуючою у всьому світі.

Ключові слова: соціальні мережі, англійські запозичення, онлайн спілкування, асиміляція, адаптація, частини мови.

Problem setting

In the modem global world, the Internet is an integral element of social communication. Among the main Internet constituents, social networks have become the important platforms to develop specific forms of interpersonal and social relations. Social networks are “...the instruments, which provide additional opportunities for a great number of users of the global net to communicate and share information” [4, p. 62]. Social networks force changes not only in personal communication, but also in the language generally as it is the most important means of interaction. The extreme popularity of social networks is primarily aroused by the opportunity to conduct a polylogue, to pass remarks immediately, to express opinions concerning some events and situations, to create virtual images, to share articles for discussion, etc. Such functions of social networks have initiated many transformations and appearance of specific words and phrases, specific for Internet-mediated communication, so-called Internet-slang. Ukrainian Internet users, particularly those engaged in social networking, are also influenced by the global trends and among others, one of the distinctive features is a great number of anglicisms, i.e. words and phrases of English origin, penetrating into their Internet-mediated communication.

Analysis of recent scientific papers. The first discussions about the Internet-language started in 80-90s of the 20^th century in the USA and European countries. Scientists paid attention to abbreviations, acronyms, emoticons, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, characterizing the Internet users' language while e-mailing. First, the scientists discussed whether online communication should be identified as oral or written. The problem is that lexical content of the Internet-mediated communication is more like oral, because speakers do not care about the correctness of constructions, neglect stylistics, etc. However, the communication is fixed in a written form. Most linguists agree to the idea that communication through modern technologies and Internet should be considered as written-oral. According to the Ukrainian researcher Vira Kaptiurova, computer- based communication contributes to appearance of a new form of communication, i.e. oral-written [2, pp. 228-229]. Another Ukrainian linguist Larysa Kompantseva classifies Internet-language as oral- written form of communication. She also says that users of social networks are creators of a specific Internet slang [5, p. 25].

The known American linguist Naomi S. Baron says that the form of online communication is changeable. An interesting idea is proposed by the famous British language researcher David Crystal, who has introduced a concept of netspeak to describe the Internet language. Netspeak should be considered as a written language with a bent to speaking or oral speech that is fixed written [7, pp. 13-15]. Online communication is fixed in a written form, and therefore, the mistakes made by communicators, are visible, although they have more time to think about. Naomi S. Baron names the phenomenon as “linguistic whateverism”. According to the researcher's opinion, it is because the young generation of social network users has specific attitude of language. They take language only as means of communication and do not care about numerous rules and grammar [6, pp. 168-171].

B. Danet says that social media are the best instruments of globalization forcing hybridization of culture, including language, and self-identity. In the Internet, all users are equal in their right and opportunity to share information, to promote some culture, traditions, values. [8, pp. 25-27]. In that context, David Crystal says that Internet is the greatest opportunity for development of the English language. Brenda Danet even declares about the language imperialism of English over other world languages [8, pp. 20-21].

Confirming the idea, Ukrainian users of social networks also follow the tendency to simplification of the Internet-mediated communication that has resulted in penetration of numerous words of English origin into their Internet slang.

The aim of the paper. The research is devoted to the analysis of new practices in the Internet-mediated communication, particularly in social networks, and reasons of the wide use of anglicisms by Ukrainian users while communicating online. The new grounds for communication requires from their creators to generate new lexemes to describe and name peculiarities of communicating in the specific environment, the lexemes which can be well-recognized and understood by users not only within a country but worldwide.

The research aims to study English borrowings, used for social networking, ways of their assimilation to the Ukrainian grammar and pronunciation rules, as well as reasons of English popularity among Ukrainian Internet users.

Presenting the main material

Nowadays, English is the most used language in the Internet. According to Statista statistics, English is the most represented language online. The English language has 25.3% of Internet users worldwide. According to the data from InternetWorldStats, as of March 31, 2021, the total number of Internet users in the world was 5 168 780 607. Each fourth uses English for social networking [9]. It is not a surprise because English has been dominating the Internet languages for many years. It is the founding language of the Internet, and therefore most contents are in English, then translated into the language of preference. Such popularity of English is caused by its studying in all European countries and most countries of the world, as well as due to the economic and political situation, popularity of the western culture, etc.

In Ukraine, the situation is not different. English is studied by Ukrainian students and is used in many fields, starting from social networking and up to professional purposes. Of course, the English language used in social networks is different from the academic knowledge of English, but it is a kind of slang with many anglicisms involved.

An English word, incorporated into and used in a language other than English, is called an anglicism. These are examples of loanwords, words from one language that are borrowed by another. The term “anglicism” is also sometimes used more generally to refer to the incorporation of other aspects of the English language, such as using English grammatical structure while speaking another language or literal translations, known as calques, of English phrases and expressions into another language's words. Due to the global prominence of the English language, anglicisms are common in many languages around the world, particularly in social networks as it is currently the most popular way of communication. Internet provides freedom for those whose English is far from being perfect to use it and be understood, says Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics from American University in Washington.

It is worth mentioning that the Ukrainian language, similar to all Slavic languages, is greatly influenced by English as the majority of slang words, used in the language of social networks, are borrowed (with adaptation or not) from English. Nowadays, English is the language of technologies and innovations.

Ukrainians like many other non-English speaking nations consider it is prestigious to know English. Therefore, many speakers, particularly young, use every opportunity to enrich their vocabulary with the borrowed English lexemes, as well as acronyms, taken from English-speaking users of social networks. It is forced by the wish to highlight their profile, to stand out from the crowd, to look witty or creative, i.e. to express oneself at the expense of speech that is one of the key representational factors of Internet users. Such situation is typical in the Slavic Internet environment, i.e. young people substitute words and phrases of native language with English equivalents.

To understand the current trend of large scale substitution of Ukrainian words with English, even by those Ukrainian Internet users, who have never learned English before, it is necessary to analyze the reasons of such behavior (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Reasons of anglicisms use in social networking

Having analyzed the main indices, one can conclude that simplicity of English words is the main reason they substitute the Ukrainian ones. It can be explained by the origin of the majority of Internet phenomena. They appeared in the USA, the Englishspeaking country and therefore, they got their names in English. Of course, those concepts can be or have already been translated into many languages, but sometimes the original name is shorter, whereas translation can be too long and not always quite correct.

Another side of the wide use of anglicisms, which should be considered, is why Ukrainians do not use equivalents in their native language. The analysis is demonstrated at the Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Reasons not to use Ukrainian equivalents

As it is shown, Ukrainian words are often much longer than English and are not very comfortable to be used in the Internet, particularly in social networking, which tends to simplify communication and to save time. They not always have the same emotional and semantic meaning as the original English concepts. Another reason is that anglicisms have become a feature of the social network language, and it is a kind of fashion to use them. Although some of the Internet-used anglicisms have Ukrainian equivalents, but the English variant is used because of its specific emotional characteristics. And, of course, some concepts have no analogues in Ukrainian and only English word is available for definition.

Analysis of the anglicisms, used in social networks, confirms that in the majority of cases they are assimilated to the rules of the Ukrainian language, although some of them stay unchanged. According to the level of adaptation, the studied anglicisms should be divided into three groups. The most appropriate classification is proposed by the Ukrainian linguist I. Kyrylova in her article “Peculiarities of aglicisms in the modern German and Ukrainian languages” [3, p. 176]. She distinguishes such groups:

• new formations - are new words, created in the system of Ukrainian following the rules of word formation, specific for the Ukrainian language. The category of aglicisms is dominating among the borrowings, widely used in the vocabulary of Ukrainian users of social networks, e.g. fake - фейковий, upgrade -апгрейтити, ban - банити, web - вебка, gmail - джімейлівський.

• neo-borrowings - are the words of foreign origin, adapted to the system of Ukrainian by transcribing or transliterating. It is the second largest group of words, e.g. OK - окей, best - бест, gp - гоу, next - некст, notification - нотіфікейниш, people - піпл.

• neo-semantics - are the words, which get a new meaning after being borrowed, e.g. like - лайк, notebook - ноутбук, stream - стрім.

The principal leading position is taken interpretations of the borrowed word that is used for appraisal of the Facebook content, i.e. “like”. The Ukrainian translation of the work sounds as “подобається” and it is quite correct but the word is much longer. Ukrainian Internet users have not transformed that word much. It is just transcribed as “лайк”. In Ukraine Internet slang, the word has developed many derivatives. In social networking, it is mostly used as a noun of masculine gender, e.g. збирати лайки; ставити лайки; 100 лайків. The word also has verb forms, typical for Ukrainian, e.g. залайкати, лайкати, лайкнути.

The process of borrowing and adaptation of words from English is rather complicated and interesting because of the genealogical and morphological difference of the two languages. English is an analytical language in which word relations are expressed by means of auxiliary words and by word position in a sentence. In contrasts, Ukrainian is a synthetic language, in which relation of words is expressed by the word forms, having both lexical ad grammatical meaning.

As English and Ukrainian are morphologically different languages, and their parts of speech are characterized by different categories. English nouns have no endings to express their gander (masculine, feminine, neuter). The category of grammatical gender refers to the biological characteristic of a person or a creature. In English, such category is specific for only some words with the feminine suffix -ess (princess, waitress, actress). In English sentences, the gender is expressed by personal pronouns. In Ukrainian, each noun has the category of gender. Therefore, borrowed English nouns also get some gender. Most words, adapted by Ukrainian users, get features of masculine gender, because their base has consonant ending: e.g. android - андроїд, app - ап (еп), bag - баг, banner - банер, benefit - бенефіт, gadget - гаджет, Gmail - джімейл, development - девелопмент, developer - девело-пер, account - екаунт (акаунт), event - івент, couchsurfing - каучсерфігн, content - контент, couching - коучинг, lifehuck - лайфхак, level - левел, laptop - лептоп, link - лінк, mail - мейл, messenger - месенджер, meeting - мітінг, participant - партісіпант, play-list - плей-лист, support - сапорт, skill - скіл, spam - спам, spoiler - спойлер, twit - твіт, tag - тег, teambuilding - тім-білдінг, trend - тренд, trash - треш, fandrising - фандрейзинг, friend - френд, freelancer - фрілансер, follower - фоловер, chat - чат, challenge - челендж, user - юзер.

There are also many anglicisms, ending in a vowel [e], but according to the English rules, at the end of a word [e] it is not pronounced. They also get masculine gender with a zero ending and word base ending in a hard consonant, e.g. google - гугл, deadline - дедлайн, profile - профайл, site - сайт, skype - скайп, smile - смайл, smartphone - смартфон, trouble - трабл, fake - фейк, face - фейс.

The group of borrowed English nouns, which get feminine gender in Ukrainian is not large. They get typical feminine ending -а/-я. Most of such anglicisms are adapted from English words, ending in -tion, e.g. facilitation - фасилітація, transaction - трансакція, option - опція.

Verbs are the second largest group of anglicisms. The complex system of Ukrainian verbs has significantly changed the form of English borrowings in the process of their adaptation to the grammatical system of the Ukrainian language. The most productive way of word formation in English is conversion, whereas in Ukrainian - by adding Ukrainian derivative affixes, because Ukrainian is an inflected language. The phenomenon can be brightly demonstrated by the following examples of verbs, formed from the adapted English words, e.g. google - to google in English гугл - гуглити in Ukrainian; tag - to tag and тег - тегнути; ban - to ban and бан - забанити; upgrade - to upgrade and апгрейт - апгрейтити. Other examples of adapted verbs are upgrade - апдейтити, approve - епру- вити, complete - комплітити, proofread - пруфрі- дити, surf - серфити, search - серчити, spam - спамити, friend - френдитися.

Adverbs are also borrowed from English, but they are not very popular. They are the words, which help speakers to express their attitude to some situation, give an appraisal of something, etc. Ukrainian researcher of anglicisms Yaryna Bytkivska considers that English borrowed adverbs transform the specific lexemes for stylistic featuring of the speech, achievement of the effect of play, ridicule, irony, or are used as signs of language fashion [1, p. 18]

Most adverbs borrowed from English into Ukrainian have been transcribed, but there are some exceptions, particularly the most often used lexemes OK - окей and cool - кул. However, contrary to the main forms of adverbs, defining some quality, those forms do not have degrees of comparison.

There are also some adjectives, borrowed from English, but they are few, e.g. crazy - крейзі, nice - найс, next - некст.

The emotionality and generally specific Internet- mediated communication requires from the users to express their feelings and attitudes. For that purpose, exclamations are often used. Of course, most of them are borrowed from English that can be explained by the impact of the western culture on Ukrainian users through different media, English films, TV shows, music, books, as well as direct communicating with English native speakers. Normally, exclamations are adapted by transliterating or transcribing. The adapted exclamations are mainly used for greeting - hi - хай, хей; farewell - bye - бай, see you - сі ю; response - cool - кул, what - вот?, yes - єс; attracting attention - hey - хей, yo - йоу; encouragement - come on - к'мон, камон; politeness - thanks - сенькс, сенкс, welcome - велкам; rude words - fuck - фак, bitch - бітч, shit - шіт; sound symbolism - oops - упс, wow - воу.

Analyzing the shares of borrowed words in terms of parts of speech, the following diagram should be considered. Among the variety of loanwords, the largest groups are nouns and verbs (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Borrowed English words in terms of parts of speech

Ukrainian researcher of Internet slang Vira Kaptiurova says that nowadays abbreviations are getting more and more popular, because they save time and, in case there is limited number of symbols, they save space. Another argument for popularity of acronyms is that communicators try to maximum approach their online dialogue to the real time conditions. Some of such abbreviations have become a part of active vocabulary and are often used by speakers even communicating offline [2, pp. 208-209].

Abbreviations are mostly used to mark English phrases, but they are not subjected to any adaptation and stay in their original form, e.g. LOL - “Laughing Out Loud” - голосно сміюсь, функція сміху; BRB - “Be Right Back” - одразу повернусь; ASAP - “As soon as possible” - якомога швидше; AFK - “Away From Keyboard” - користувач не користується комп'ютером, хоча й он-лайн; FYI - “For Your Information” - «до твого відома»; WTF - “What The Fuck” - «що за дурня», здивування; ІМНО - “In My Humble Opinion” - вираження власної думки; FAQ - “Frequently Ask Questions” - відповідь на часто вживане запитання; u2 - “You too” - тобі

також; 4U - “For you” - для тебе; L8 - “Late” ізно; B4 - “Before” - перед; cre8 - “Create” - створити;plz- “Please” - будь ласка.

Conclusions

Results of the research confirm a great popularity of English borrowings among Ukrainian users of social networks. Along with the Internet-mediated communication, anglicisms also influence everyday communication. The majority of words, borrowed from English, are adapted to the morphological and grammar structure of the Ukrainian language, although some stay unchanged. The first level of adaptation is transcribing or transliterating of the neologism. Grammatical adaptation is rather complicated and interesting process because ofthe morphological and genealogical difference of the Ukrainian and English languages. Nevertheless, there are many reasons the Ukrainian users of social networks use anglicisms while communicating online.

Outlining the prospects of Internet linguistics development, David Crystal notes that the society should recognize the great impact the Internet makes on languages. The Internet has changed the idea of communication, having created new platforms for communication in totally different ways. New media and communication technologies have transformed the ways of using language by communicants making it more informal and occasional and the features will become more intensive in the future.

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