Foreignism

A foreign term is an expression that one language borrows from another, either to fill a semantic gap or as an alternative to other existing expressions. It can keep its original spelling and pronunciation, in which case in traditional grammar it is called barbarism, or it can be adapted to the language that takes it.

In Spanish, the style manuals usually recommend that, if the foreign term is written without adaptation or if the foreign term is to be written crudely, then it should be written in italics or "in quotation marks".

Classification by origin

Loanings from Greek and Latin with hardly any changes are called cultism. The loan taken from the French language is called Gallicism or Frenchism; to English, Anglicism; to that of Nahuatl, Nahuatlismo; to that of German or Old German, Germanism; to that of the Greek, Hellenism; to that of Latin, Latinism; to Italian, Italianism; to that of Arabic, Arabism; to that of Portuguese, portuguesismo, lusitanismo or lusismo; to the Catalan, Catalanism, to the Galician, Galicianism, to the Valencian, Valencianism; to that of Euskera, Basqueism; and in the case of the loan of Spanish to other languages, it is called hispanism.

Classification by shape

1. Lexicon loan: morphology and meaning of a word belonging to another foreign language are incorporated into the receiving language. This adoption implies an adaptation of the original pronunciation and almost always of the orthographic representation. For example, English scanner the Spanish ‘scaner’. From football a ‘fútbol’ or ‘futbol’. From Whiskey a 'guisqui'. From jazz a /yas/, keeping the original spelling. If it reproduces entirely respecting both its sound and its writing, it is called xenismo.
2. Semantic Loan: when the same word exists in two languages, and in the imitation it possesses a meaning or meaning that in the other one does not exist, and that meaning is copied in the language that does not possess it, a semantic loan is being carried out, for example, the words ‘order’, ‘computer’ and ‘computer’ already existed in Spanish, but not with the meaning of ‘copy machine’. These semantic changes come from French ordinateur and English computer.
3. Semantic calc: the meaning of a foreign word is incorporated by translating it; for example, kindergarten German is translated by the expression “Children’s garden”, or the French lick the Spanish “bad pot” by its expression pot pourriwhich in turn returns to Spanish as the lexicon loan 'popurrí'. According to linguistic purism, some calcos are authentic barbarisms, that is, vicious calcos of constructions or meanings unnaturalized in the language that should be avoided.

Exoticisms and xenisms

The exoticisms are words that denote people, animals, plants or institutions that do not exist in the receiving language, such as coyote, coihue or guillatún. A xenism is practically the same: words that reflect a reality typical of a foreign culture, such as sushi or tsunami.

Historical evolution of the introduction of foreign words in Spanish

In the Spanish language, the introduction of foreign words usually and has been able to correspond to different fashions and times; during the centuries of the Muslim invasion in the Spanish Middle Ages, for example, numerous Arabisms were incorporated, as well as Gallicisms through the Camino de Santiago ^{[citation required]}; during the Renaissance, on the contrary, not a few Italianisms related to the arts were added ^{[citation required]}; during the Golden Age, on the contrary, it was the Spanish words that passed into different languages under the name of Hispanisms, and even some words that had been transferred into Spanish from the American indigenous languages ^{[citation required ]}. Then, with the rise of France and everything French in the XVIII century, numerous relative Gallicisms about everything to fashion and gastronomy ^{[citation required]}. In the 19th century, the century of opera, numerous musical terms from Italian were introduced, and the technological boom of the Industrial Revolution in England and Germany the Germanic and English technical terms corresponded ^{[citation needed]}. During the XX century, on the contrary, the avalanche of Anglicisms increased due to the strength of the United States, the relative to technology (informatics, above all), the economy and entertainment (cinema and sports, above all) ^{[citation required]}.

In the Hispanic sphere, however, it must be said that the reception of foreign words by the Spanish-American republics and by Spain has been very different due to the conditions of geographical and cultural proximity; Thus, for example, Latin America is especially susceptible to Anglicisms, while Spain is particularly prone to Gallicisms and borrowings from other peninsular languages, such as Catalan, Galician and Basque ^{[citation required]}.

Style recommendations for writing foreign words in Spanish

To indicate that a word comes from another language, in texts printed in roman letters it is very frequent —and the Royal Spanish Academy recommends it— to reproduce crude foreign words in italics—or in roman letters if the text is already in italics —, although writing them in quotation marks is also correct according to the RAE.