Spanish Loanwords in American English

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: Die Hausarbeit behandelt auf Englisch die Geschichte spanischer Lehnwörter im Amerikanischen Englisch. Die Entlehnungen sind chronologisch nach Jahrhunderten und Themengebieten wie Bergbau, Viehwirtschaft und Kultur der Cowboys sortiert und anhand zahlreicher Beispiele veranschaulicht. Dabei wird auch auf die etymologische und morphologische Entwicklungen eingegangen.

The borrowings will be dealt with in a fairly chronological order and, as far as possible, summed up in semantic fields. In Chapter 2 I will present the borrowings before the nineteenth century. Chapter 3 deals with loanwords in the nineteenth century, the most productive century of Spanish loanwords in American English. Many terms are adopted in the field of the ranching and cowboy culture in the entire Southwest and the mining industry in Northern California which is why subchapter 3.1 is dedicated to borrowings in the mining culture and 3.2 to those in the cattle-raising culture. In 3.3 I will treat nineteenth- century loanwords from other semantic fields. Chapter 4 is about the borrowings from the twentieth century which are a result of the Mexican-American War and particularly of the big immigration wave from Latin America into the US. In the conclusion I will first sum up some typical phonological and morphological features in the treatment of Spanish loanwords in American English. Then I will give a short concluding overview of the periods and semantic fields of the influx of Spanish loanwords into American English.