A sociolinguistic analysis of English loan words in use in the 1990s in the discourse of young Japanese people is presented. The study drew data from a 1993 survey of undergraduate students at two Osaka (Japan) higher education institutions, one for men and one for women, which asked what loanwords students used and heard often. The report first…

A study of 15 fathers and their 16 sons in an italophone community in Montreal (Canada) focused on the usage of Italian, French, and English in communication between generations and in a variety of activities. Data were drawn from 45 hours of taped conversation in home and work settings, which included 4,848 instances of language contact. Of the…

Research on Spanish/English code switching is reviewed and the definitions and categories set up by the investigators are examined. Their methods of locating, limiting, and classifying true code switches, and the terms used and results obtained, are compared. It is found that in these studies, conversational (intra-discourse) code switching is…

The stages of interlanguage, the speech of beginning second language learners as they progress toward second language fluency, are described. Examples are drawn from the speech of Spanish speaking students of English as a second language. The continuum of interlanguage development from native language forms to target language forms includes three…

The Mhong Language Council's 1982 conference had as its objectives: (1) a compromise spelling system to accommodate both White and Blue Mhong pronunciation; (2) simplification of the current Mhong spelling system; (3) review of approaches to the expression of foreign concepts in Mhong; and (4) adoption of capitalization and punctuation conventions…

Linguists should not only observe but actively try to control the internationalization of languages. Borrowings may be harmful to the smooth functioning of a language and contribute to the loss of its distinctive character. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Investigators studied two German settlements in Israel to examine the interaction of the German and Hebrew languages. A heterogeneous community used loanwords to a greater extent than the homogeneous, and German was perpetuated less successfully. (CK)

Twentieth century studies in the field of Sino-Vietnamese linguistics, with particular emphasis on work since 1955, are examined and evaluated. The discussions focus on how the studies were developed, what the current state is, and where problems are. A bibliography of works mentioned in the main text is included. (Author/SW)

Learned academies deplore the deterioration of Castillian Spanish due to foreign contamination. They ignore the real source of the problem within Spain itself where everyone speaks the language badly except those in the remote towns and a few intellectuals. A ray of hope comes from the Americans. (Text is in Spanish.) (AMH)

Explores the status of the Zamboangueno dialect, discusses the various stages of decreolization in the direction of Spanish, and suggests possible avenues for the continued introduction of elements from an acrolect which, for all intents and purposes, is no longer generally available to residents of Zamboanga, Philippines. (Author/CB)

Considers the linguistic creativity of West German users of English and their particular variety of English, its forms and functions, processes of nativization, the borrowing process, and West Germans' attitudes toward English, and highlights the unique social, cultural and linguistic role English plays in the German context. (Author/CB)

This study examines the universality of three linguistic constraints on code-switching with two syntactically very different languages, Spanish and Hebrew. Results suggest that the equivalence of structure constraint cannot be postulated as a universal in its present form and that the size-of-constituent constraint is useful only in languages with…

Considers the historical background and the demographical characteristics of those residents of St. Augustine, Florida, who are descended from the city's original Spanish and Minorcan population. Included are a list and analysis of words found in the English dialect which represent the lexical vestiges of colonial Florida Spanish. (SED)

Romani is a language of Indo-Aryan origin that is spoken in Europe by people known as gypsies (who usually refer to themselves as Rom). There are upwards of 3.5 million speakers of Romani. This book discusses the historical and linguistic origins of the Romani-speaking population. It examines in-depth the changes in the sound system, grammatical…

The dictionary of contemporary Maori, a revised edition, includes over 2,000 previously unpublished terms and provides Maori derivation of each entry, based on recent research into the language. An introductory section is in both Maori and English. Entries are in two sections: English-Maori and Maori-English. In addition, an appendix lists the…