When the Dutch settled in North America during the seventeenth century, for colonising and trade purposes, came language contact between the two groups of speakers. One result from this contact is...Show moreWhen the Dutch settled in North America during the seventeenth century, for colonising and trade purposes, came language contact between the two groups of speakers. One result from this contact is loanwords. This research investigates Dutch loanwords in American English and their frequency. Through a combination of Schultz’s (2012, 2017, 2018, 2019) framework, the Oxford English Dictionary and Van der Sijs’ (2010) glossary of Dutch loanwords in North American languages, this research was performed. The frequencies were analysed through the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. These corpora provided an overview of the development of frequencies both over time and across text types. This research concludes that the frequency of Dutch loanwords in American English increases over time.Show less
The results of this research show that female participants have more positive attitudes towards English loanwords than male participants. Female participants were consistently more positive...Show moreThe results of this research show that female participants have more positive attitudes towards English loanwords than male participants. Female participants were consistently more positive regarding statements 1, 2 and 3 or, respectively, this is an ordinary Dutch sentence, the use of [loanword] is appropriate in this sentence and I would also make use of this sentence as can be found in Figure 1. Furthermore, there is significant correlation at the 0.05 level between both statement 2 and statement 3 and gender, which means that female participants have scored significantly higher than male participants for these statements. The results of this research also suggest that the mean scores of the participants become consistently lower when age increases for each of the statements. Figure 2 shows that the mean scores for the statements mentioned above consistently decrease when ages of the participants increase. These data suggest that older participants have more negative attitudes towards loanwords than younger participants. In furthermore, there is significant negative correlation at the 0.05 level between the statement I would also make use of this sentence and age. This implies that the attitudes towards using these loanwords are significantly more negative when the ages of the participants increase. This research indicated that most participants do not prefer alternative words to the used loanwords. Table 11 (in section 4.3) indicates that crash is the loanword with the most preferred alternatives as it is preferably replaced by ongeluk and neerstorten, according to nine and ten participants, respectively. Table 11 also indicates that seven participants prefer vraaggesprek to interview, six participants prefer behaald or gepresteerd to gescoord and five participants prefer peiling(en) and voorlopige uitslagen to exit polls. Preferred alternatives to the other loanwords were only provided by four participants or less, and are therefore not widely supported among the participants. In addition, the majority of the loanwords (all except crash) are catachrestic. Furthermore, the results of this research suggest that the participants generally consider that the used loanwords are more precise than other Dutch words. The second favoured reason is that participants consider that the used loanwords sound better regarding pronunciation, which can be found in Table 12.Show less
