The Use Of English-Loan Words In The Information Technology Domain

This paper examines the phenomenon of linguistic borrowings in general and the use of anglicisms in particular, in the contexts of globalization and the progress made in different domains, especially in the Information Technology domain. Borrowing is the phenomenon which undertakes the word transmission process from one language into another among the connected communities. The language that lends is the donor or the borrower language, and the language that borrows is known as the receptor or the borrowing language. Anglicisms are the English-loan words that are present in many European languages. The phenomenon of globalisation is the main topic of several contradictory and polarization discussions and undoubtedly globalisation is necessary and it is a fact in today’s world but the question is: what will be the long-term language consequences? There might be two situations: the consequences may be positive, such as ease of communication and perception, language economics and also negative: not understanding anglicisms resulting in disturbed communication, rejection of anglicisms, loss of semantic diversity of your own language, less and less possibilities of expressing yourself in your own language. We can mention that responsible for the impact of English is the prestige associated with this language. This language is generally held in highest regard by the younger generation of Romanians, who are easily influenced by the television, radio, movies, and other media that are supplied by British and American entertainment, which are considered to be trendy and cool. Each of those resources has influenced the Romanian population on numerous levels, creating new words and phrases in the Romanian language. In order to illustrate and discuss the pertinent or, on the contrary, the unjustified use of English-loan words in the field of Information Technology, the study will focus on a selection of articles published in the electronic Romanian issues of two computer and communications magazines – namely Chip Magazine and PC World. Different stances, adopted in relation to the phenomenon mentioned above, and the understanding of two groups of Romanian readers (students at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Oradea) will be presented.