Putting languages into perspective: A comprehensive database of English words and their Croatian equivalents

Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac

University of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime Studies, Croatia

Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac received her MA degree in English language and History in 2011 at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Rijeka. She obtained her PhD degree in Applied Linguistics in 2017 at the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include English loanwords in Croatian and the processing of metaphoric expressions in bilingual speakers. She has been part of the research team in the newly established Laboratory for Language, Cognition & Neuroscience (LaconLab) since 2020.


https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1241-1283

Irena Bogunović

University of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime Studies, Croatia

Irena Bogunović received her MA degree in English and Croatian languages in 2008 at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Rijeka. She obtained her PhD degree in Cognitive Sciences in 2017 at the University of Zagreb. Her research interests include English loanwords in Croatian and their neurocognitive processing by bilingual speakers. She has been acting as the head of the newly established Laboratory for Language, Cognition & Neuroscience (LaconLab) since 2020.


https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2956-7014


Abstract

Numerous studies have addressed the issue of English words in the context of their adaptation, but there still exists the need for a systematic perspective on English words in terms of their number and frequency of appearance. This article will outline the procedure behind the compilation process of unadapted English words in the Croatian language with a comprehensive description of the final product – an open-access database of single- (SWE) and multi-word (MWE) English expressions extracted from Croatian web corpora (ENGRI and hrWaC) by means of computational-linguistic tools and manual extraction. The final version of the database contains 2,982 English words in their unadapted form (e.g. blockbuster), and 18 words which appear with English orthographic properties in combination with Croatian inflectional affixes (e.g. downloadati). Each SWE and MWE entry in the database is accompanied with frequencies of appearance in both corpora as well as its Croatian equivalent where available (29.58% of all entries are listed without an equivalent). The database serves as the first systematic representation of English words in Croatian and provides an indispensable tool for further research into the phenomenon while at the same time opening the door to a new line of research – cognitive processing of English words in Croatian.

Keywords:

English words in Croation, language borrowing, corpus search, database compilation, anglicisms

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Published
2024-11-07


Jelčić Čolakovac, J. and Bogunović, I. (2024) “Putting languages into perspective: A comprehensive database of English words and their Croatian equivalents”, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, (45), pp. 62–81. doi: 10.15290/CR.2024.45.2.04.

Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac 
University of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime Studies, Croatia

Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac received her MA degree in English language and History in 2011 at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Rijeka. She obtained her PhD degree in Applied Linguistics in 2017 at the University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include English loanwords in Croatian and the processing of metaphoric expressions in bilingual speakers. She has been part of the research team in the newly established Laboratory for Language, Cognition & Neuroscience (LaconLab) since 2020.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1241-1283
Irena Bogunović 
University of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime Studies, Croatia

Irena Bogunović received her MA degree in English and Croatian languages in 2008 at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Rijeka. She obtained her PhD degree in Cognitive Sciences in 2017 at the University of Zagreb. Her research interests include English loanwords in Croatian and their neurocognitive processing by bilingual speakers. She has been acting as the head of the newly established Laboratory for Language, Cognition & Neuroscience (LaconLab) since 2020.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2956-7014