Phonological Adaptations of Anglicisms in Polish and Czech. A Critical View

Indubitably, the influx of English vocabulary items into Czech and Polish has increased considerably over the past two decades to an unparalleled extent, the main factors responsible for this growth being of both a linguistic and extra-linguistic nature. Seemingly, the issue of Anglicisms in Czech and Polish has been quite thoroughly investigated: some attempts have been made to collect, compile and catalogue all possible loanwords from English, and finally include all of them in the most current reference books. Although since the early 1990s, hundreds of new loanwords have entered the Polish and Czech lexicons in entirely new ways, i.e. via different types of new electronic media, through dramatic technological progress and last but not least by direct contact with the donor language, not many efforts have been made to confront the new linguistic data with old, well-grounded and axiomatic assumptions concerning the theory of adaptation of loanwords. Additionally, the theory itself attempts at formulating language universal rather than language specific rules, i.e. it aims at absolute rules which are operational in most, if not all languages. Manczak-Wohlfeld, when discussing English lexical elements in Polish, claims that every loanword appears in the recipient language as a quotation introduced in its original form and then it undergoes a slow process of gradual adaptation on the graphic, phonological, morphological and/or semantic levels, which is a process of transfer rather than substitution (cf. Manczak-Wohlfeld 1994, s. 9–10). Similar attitudes prevail in the analyses of adaptation processes of Anglicisms in the Czech language, where the main emphasis is placed on the fact that the process of loanword adaptation is gradual, which is reflected in the existence of different categories and subcategories of loanwords showing different stages of their developments: from original non-integrated items like science fiction, through those items which remain unchanged graphically but have been adapted morphologically and whose pronunciation has not yet been fully Bohemized, those items which have an optional Czech spelling, to fully adapted loanwords whose foreign origin is hardly recognized (cf. Svobodova 2007, s. 26–28). Another evident problem is that the phonological and phonetic aspects of new Anglicisims in Polish and Czech are usually examined together with the graphic, morphological and semantic ones, which is quite understandable, yet hardly ever receives as meticulous attention as the aforementioned ones (Svobodova 2007, s. 27). Phonological adaptation problems are hardly ever dealt with independently and are mostly discussed together with orthographic issues, the two being closely interrelated (cf. Svobodova 2007, s. 31). Thus, even though there exists a voluminous literature on Anglicisms in both Czech and Polish, the problem of their phonological adaptation tends to be a side issue. This situation may result from the firm conviction that the written form of a loanword is superior to its phonological shape by nature (cf. Bartminska 1978, Kavka 2004). True as this belief is, it may discourage some researchers from making the problem of the phonological aspect of loanword adaptation the key issue of their study. Consequently, a phonological analysis of Anglicisms in Czech and Polish is seldom conducted independently and is usually carried out in connection with other language levels, the preferable levels for an independent study being the graphic form, semantics or morphology. Instead the main emphasis is placed on practical lexicology, i.e. keeping track of the most recent changes in the sphere of lexis and consequently creating new corpora. Pronunciation clues provided by reference books, albeit generally helpful, in many cases, in Polish