Jutuber, Jutjuber or Yutjuber: Adapted Forms of English Loanwords in the Written Production of Croatian University-Level Learners

Abstract

New concepts are constantly being borrowed across languages. The influence of one language on another can occur on all linguistic levels, with lexis being the most sensitive. Croatian has become most receptive to borrowing from English, and the influence of English on Croatian has been documented in different functional styles. The prestigious status of English, which reduces the likelihood that a borrowed element will adapt to the rules of the recipient language, is one of the reasons why English has become an inexhaustible source of new words for Croatian learners. The aim of the present study is to investigate the use of adapted forms of English loanwords in Croatian, with particular attention to the type and degree of their adaptation. Due to the differences between the phonemic systems of the two languages, it was expected that the Croatian learners would show diversity in their responses regarding loanword adaptation. A translation task with the 392 most frequently used unadapted English loanwords in Croatian was given to 116 undergraduate students at the Faculty of Maritime Studies. The data showed that the participants preferred the unadapted forms to the adapted forms of English. They were also more inclined to orthographically adapt a loanword, than to adapt it both orthographically and morphologically. The differences observed in orthographic adaptation reflect the underlying differences in the phonemic systems of the two languages. Overall, the results suggest that the unadapted forms of English words have become established in Croatian and are a preferred lexical choice among younger L1 speakers of Croatian.

Full text

79Eva Pavlinušić Vilus et al.: JUTUBER, JUTJUBER OR YUTJUBER: ADAPTED FORMS OF ENGLISH ...
Eva Pavlinušić Vilus UDK 811.163.42'373.45:811.111
Faculty of Maritime Studies, University of Rijeka DOI: 10.4312/vestnik.15.79-97
Croatia Izvirni znanstveni članek
eva.pavlinusic@pfri.uniri.hr
Jasmina Jelčić Čolakovac
Faculty of Maritime Studies, University of Rijeka
Croatia
jasmina.jelcic@pfri.uniri.hr
Irena Bogunović
Faculty of Maritime Studies, University of Rijeka
Croatia
irena.bogunovic@pfri.uniri.hr
Bojana Ćoso
ISPP Cambodia
Cambodia
coso.bojana@gmail.com
JUTUBER, JUTJUBER OR YUTJUBER: ADAPTED FORMS OF
ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN THE WRITTEN PRODUCTION OF
CROATIAN UNIVERSITY-LEVEL LEARNERS
1 INTRODUCTION
English lexis has become the most widely borrowed one in recent decades, as the UK and
the US established themselves as leading economic powers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The English language thus established itself as a world language and international lin-
gua franca, i.e. a means of communication between speakers of di󰰵erent languages. It
is estimated that there are now between 1–1.5 billion English speakers in the world (e.g.
Crystal, 2012; Horobin, 2016; Seidlhofer, 2010), and according to some estimates there
will be more than 2 billion speakers by 2050 (Crystal, 2012). English is seen as a key fac-
tor in globalization mechanisms (e.g. Graddol, 2006). Its global status has primarily been
achieved by the number of countries that have recognized English as a means of ful󰰶lling
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80 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
their desire for political, cultural, and commercial contact. Consequently, it has become
the dominant language in the three most important aspects of human activity: education
(e.g. Brannen et al., 2014), work (e.g. Gluszek & Hansen, 2013) and leisure (e.g. De Wil-
de et al., 2019). As a result, about a quarter of the world’s population is considered 󰰷uent
or competent in English, and this 󰰶gure is constantly growing (Crystal, 2012).
New concepts are constantly being borrowed across cultures and languages. The in󰰷u-
ence of one language on another can occur on all linguistic levels, with lexis being the most
sensitive (e.g. Hudeček & Mihaljević, 2005). When a language lacks an adequate word for
a borrowed concept, either a new word is created from the existing linguistic elements, the
meaning of an existing word is changed to accommodate a new concept, or a word is adopted
from another language through the process of linguistic borrowing (Filipović, 1990, p. 15).
Croatian has become extremely receptive to borrowing from English (Mihaljević Dji-
gunović & Geld, 2003), and the in󰰷uence of English on Croatian has been documented in
di󰰵erent functional styles (e.g. Bogunović & Ćoso, 2013; Jurič et al., 2013; Mihaljević,
2003; Mihaljević Djigunović et al., 2006). The prestigious status of English (e.g. Crystal,
2012), which reduces the likelihood that a borrowed element will adapt to the rules of the
recipient language (e.g. McKenzie, 2010; Nikolić-Hoyt, 2005), is one of the reasons why
English has become an inexhaustible source of new words for Croatian learners of English.
The present study is part of a larger investigation into the use of the most common
English loanwords and their Croatian equivalents in Croatian (Pavlinušić Vilus, Boguno-
vić & Ćoso, 2022). The study combined corpus-based data on the frequency of unadapted
English loanwords in two Croatian web corpora with the translation task. The frequency
data came from the recently created database of English words and their Croatian equiv-
alents (Bogunović, Jelčić Čolakovac & Borucinsky, 2022). Analysis of the overall results
of the translation task showed that the participants generally preferred the Croatian sin-
gle-word equivalents when such equivalents were available in Croatian. When such an
equivalent was not available the participants used the adapted forms of the words in their
translations, along with unadapted forms and multi-word translations (Pavlinušić Vilus,
Bogunović & Ćoso, 2022). For English loanwords without single-word equivalents, the
participants chose the unadapted English forms signi󰰶cantly more frequently than the
adapted forms (Pavlinušić Vilus, Bogunović & Ćoso, 2022). The aim of the present study
was thus to analyse the adapted English forms used by the participants in the translation
task, focusing on the nature and degree of their adaptation to Croatian.
2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
In Croatian, borrowed words are categorized according to their degree of adaptation and/
or inclusion in the recipient language. Anglicisms are words that originated in English
but have adapted to the rules of the Croatian language, at least to a certain degree. For
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example, anglicisms are words such as ček (n. nom. sg., ‘check’), tim (n. nom. sg., ‘team’)
and 󰞿lm (n. nom. sg., ‘󰰶lm’). Filipović (1990) notes that words that do not originate in
English, but have fully adapted to the rules of English and become an integral part of its
vocabulary, can also be called anglicisms. For example, words like televizija (n. nom. sg.,
‘television’) and radio (n. nom. sg., ‘radio’), whose formative units come from Latin and
Greek, are also anglicisms (Fink, 1992). Unadapted English words, on the other hand,
unlike anglicisms, have not adapted to the Croatian orthographic, phonological or mor-
phological rules (e.g. e-mail, snowboard and freelancer) unless when appearing in cases
other than the nominative singular form (e.g. freelanceri (n. nom. pl.), e-mailom (n. instr.
sg.) and snowboarda (n. gen. sg.)). Another category of English words are pseudoan-
glicisms. These consist of an English word stem and a Croatian a󰰸x (Filipović, 1990).
One example is the English word celeb (n. nom. sg., ‘popular person’) and its plural form
celebovi (n. nom. pl., ‘popular people’). The pronunciation of such words also varies, so
celeb can sound like /sɪleb/, /seleb/ or /celeb/. Görlach (2002) distinguishes between fully
adapted words, where the word is no longer recognized as foreign even though it retains
some properties of the donor language, words with limited use and words that are not part
of the recipient language (calques or loanwords).
Kavgić (2013), on the other hand, distinguishes three groups of words borrowed
from English. The 󰰶rst consists of obvious anglicisms, i.e., words that have been more or
less adapted to Croatian, such as gol (n. nom. sg., ‘goal’). The second group, the hidden
anglicisms, are words that are similar in form to the words of the recipient language, but
whose meaning has been borrowed from the donor language, e.g. star (n. nom. sg., ‘pop-
ular person’). The last group are raw English words or words without orthographic adap-
tation, with partial morphosyntactic and phonological adaptation and complete semantic
adaptation (e.g. hat trick). According to Sučević-Međeral (2016), borrowed words can
be categorized according to the degree of inclusion into the recipient language. The 󰰶rst
group are foreign words in the strict sense, i.e. words with orthographic properties of
the donor language (e.g. e-mail). If necessary (e.g. case declension), such words may be
given Croatian morphological su󰰸xes (e.g. e-mailom, n. instr. sg.). The second group are
orthographically adapted words with atypical phonological features such as čips (n. nom.
sg., ‘chips’), which are called foreign words. The third group includes words such as tenis
(n. nom. sg., ‘tennis’) and tim (n. nom. sg., ‘team’), i.e. fully adapted words. Words from
the fourth group have also fully adapted, but are no longer perceived as foreign, such as
klub (n. nom. sg., ‘club’). Finally, the 󰰶fth group includes calques or literal translations,
e.g. neboder (n. nom. sg., ‘skyscraper’).
In our paper, we use the term ‘English loanwords’ to refer to lexical items borrowed
from English into Croatian that have also undergone orthographic and/or morphological
adaptations. The list includes both recognized anglicisms and loanwords that have entered
the language through English media (e.g. kapital, sistem, ekspres, etc.) but whose etymo-
logical origin is not English. Since this paper is concerned with the speaker’s language
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82 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
production, such an approach was deemed appropriate, as average language users are
rarely concerned with the origin of the word and are more inclined to assign properties to
words according to the language contexts which they are exposed to. This is to say that
Croatian learners of English are expected to treat, for example, the loanword kapital (n.
nom. sg., ‘capital’) in relation to the English word capital rather than in relation to its
actual etymological source word in French.
2.1 Orthographic adaptation
The orthographic adaptation of English loanwords in Croatian is problematic and sub-
stitution cannot always take place because the number of English phonemes (44) is dis-
proportionate to the number of Croatian graphemes (there are 30 letters in the Croatian
alphabet). The Croatian graphemes i, e, a, o and u are used to represent the 󰰶ve English
vowel phonemes /i:/, /e/, /ʌ/, /ɔ:/, and /u:/ (e.g. ‘baseball’ bejzbol /ˈbeɪsˌbɔːl/). The English
phonemes /ɪ/, /æ/, /a:/, /ɒ/, and /ʊ/ are also replaced by the Croatian graphemes mentioned
above, with /æ/ being transcribed in Croatian with both e and a (e.g. ‘jam’ džem /dʒæm/,
‘camp’ kamp /kæmp/, etc.) (Filipović & Menac, 2005, p. 21). The English phoneme /ɜ:/ is
usually represented with the Croatian grapheme er (e.g. ‘jersey’ džersej /ˈdʒɜː(r)zi/), while
the phoneme /ə/ is represented with either er or or. Since the Croatian language does not
contain diphthongs, the eight English phonemic diphthongs (/eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /aʊ/, /əʊ/, /ɪə/,
/eə/, and /ʊə/) are usually represented with either monosyllabic (ej, aj, oj) or bisyllabic
structures (au). The English diphthongs are sometimes also reduced to Croatian monoph-
thongs (/əʊ/ as o, /ɪə/ as i, /eɪ/ as e(r), and /ʊə/ as u) (Filipović & Menac, 2005, p. 22).
Croatian consonant graphemes are also readily used to represent 19 English conso-
nant phonemes (/b/ as b, /g/ as g, /m/ as m, /n/ as n, /f/ as f, /v/ as v, /l/ as l, /h/ as h, /s/ as
s, /z/ as z, /ʃ/ as š, /ʒ/ as ž, /tʃ/ as č, /dʒ/ as dž, /j/ as j, /p/ as p, /t/ as t, /d/ as d, and /k/ as k).
It is important to mention here a certain group of English loanwords that are unaf-
fected by the orthographic rules of the recipient language since their form is identical in
both languages, e.g. laptop, blog, server, enter, desktop, etc. These words are sometimes
called identical cognates. The term is used for words from the two languages that share
both form and meaning (see, for example, Carroll, 1992; Comesaña et al., 2016; Cris-
to󰰵anini et al., 1986; De Groot & Nas, 1991; Peeters et al., 2013; Xiong et al., 2020).
However, it usually refers to words from related languages, while its use in the context
of loanwords is rare (e.g. Daulton, 2010, loanword cognates; Johns & Dussias, 2021;
Otwinowska & Szewczyik, 2019). Although they are not orthographically adapted, iden-
tical cognates are phonologically adapted in spoken language, while their morphological
adaptation occurs in both spoken and written language when they are used in sentential
context where the in󰰷ected forms are required (e.g. laptopa (n. gen. sg./pl.), laptopu (n.
dat. sg.), laptopom (n. instr. sg.), etc.).
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2.2 Morphological adaptation
Some English loanwords have undergone the process of morphological adaptation in
Croatian, which is also known as transmorphemization (Filipović & Menac, 2005, p.
36). Transmorphemization takes place at three levels: zero transmorphemization usu-
ally occurs with nouns and sometimes with adjectives, but never with verbs (e.g. bridž
‘bridge’, bos ‘boss’, šou ‘show’); partial transmorphemization occurs with loanwords
that have retained a phonologically adapted su󰰸x atypical of the Croatian morphologi-
cal system (the English loanwords ending in -er, -or, -ing, or -ment, such as diler ‘deal-
er’, kursor ‘cursor’, and bri󰞿ng ‘brie󰰶ng’, are the typical examples of such adaptation);
and full transmorphemization (at this level, English morphemes are replaced by Croatian
ones that have similar or identical meanings, e.g. kloniranje ‘cloning’, liderstvo ‘lead-
ership’, etc.).
Since Croatian is a morphologically rich, in󰰷ected language, the Croatian in󰰷ec-
tional morphemes are added to English loanwords when they are used in sentential con-
text (Filipović, 1990; Sučević-Međeral, 2016). This applies to both adapted and una-
dapted English loanwords, especially in spoken language. However, due to the nature
of the task in the present study (see § 3.2), no signi󰰶cant data on this type of adaptation
can be expected.
3 METHODOLOGY
The English loanwords used in the translation task were selected because of their high
frequency in Croatian in unadapted forms. This means that the adapted forms of these
loanwords are not used as frequently as their unadapted variants, with some exceptions
that have become part of the Croatian language standard, such as bejzbol ‘baseball’, džez
‘jazz’, gol ‘goal’, džoker ‘joker’, kapital ‘capital’, etc. Of the 392 English loanwords se-
lected for the study, only 35 (P = 8.9%) words had adapted variants that were standard-
ized in Croatian, while for the other 357 (P = 91.1%) words no such variant was availa-
ble. This means that the participants would have to adapt the loanwords to their language
on their own if they wanted to use an adapted form of the loanword in their translation.
Given the disproportion and qualitative di󰰵erences between the phonemic systems
of the two languages, variation in the orthographic adaptation of English words was ex-
pected. The highest degree of variation was expected in English words containing classes
of phonemes that do not exist in Croatian, such as diphthongs and other vowels that do
not directly correspond to any Croatian vowel (e.g. near-open front unrounded vowel
/æ/, open mid-central rounded vowel /ɜ:/, mid-central vowel /ə/, etc.). In terms of mor-
phological adaptation, for English words belonging to more than one word class (e.g. hit
as a verb and a noun), variation in the choice of word class-speci󰰶c su󰰸xes is expected.
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3.1 Participants
A total of 116 students from the University of Rijeka participated in the study. The par-
ticipants studied at the Faculty of Maritime Studies and were enrolled in di󰰵erent pro-
grammes: 20 of them were students of Technology and Organization of Transport (fe-
male N = 8, male N = 12), 49 were students of Logistics and Management in Maritime
Industry (female N = 25, male N = 24), while 47 of them studied Marine Electronic
Engineering and Information Technology (female N = 4, male N = 43). The gender ratio
was skewed, with 79 male and 37 female participants. All participants took part in the
study voluntarily and received no course credit or other rewards for their participation.
All participants were informed of the nature of their participation in the study and agreed
to sign the Informed Consent Form.
3.2 Materials and procedure
The materials and procedures in the present study were identical to those described in
Pavlinušić Vilus, Bogunović and Ćoso (2022). A total of 392 English words were ex-
tracted from The database of English words and their Croatian equivalents (Bogunović,
Jelčić Čolakovac & Borucinsky, 2022), which consists of over 1,800 English loanwords
found in the Croatian corpora hrWac and ENGRI (both corpora are easily available on
the Sketch Engine platform). The translation task from the current study was designed
to include only the most frequently used single-word loanwords from the corpora. Two
words were later dropped from the study when the subsequent analysis revealed one was
predominantly used as a German loanword (gut ‘good’) and the other as a proper noun
for a text messaging application (messenger). Further analysis was carried out for the
remaining 390 words.
The selected English loanwords were randomly distributed across six question-
naires: four of them contained 65 words, while two contained a total of 66 words. Each
questionnaire was completed by an average of 19 participants (M = 19.33, SD = 1.49).
The number of participants per questionnaire varied: questionnaire A (N = 22), question-
naire F (N = 20), questionnaires B and C (N = 19), and questionnaire D (N = 17). The
full list of words in each questionnaire can be found in the supplementary material. The
questionnaires were distributed through six di󰰵erent Google Form links. Each word was
presented separately, out of context and in a randomized fashion, and responses were
collected through open-ended questions.
Participants were asked to provide translations for the English words they were fa-
miliar with as accurately as possible. They were instructed to use any translations they
thought appropriate, even if this meant using non-standard expressions in their responses.
The questionnaires were successfully submitted only if all the questions were answered.
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Participants’ responses were 󰰶rst classi󰰶ed into several response classes according
to language, form, and accuracy of translation (see Pavlinušić Vilus, Bogunović & Ćoso,
2022). In this paper, only the responses that were classi󰰶ed as adapted English forms
will be analysed and discussed. Therefore, the adapted English forms in the participants’
responses were analysed according to their type and degree of adaptation: orthographic,
morphological, and combined (orthographic and morphological). Given the nature of the
translation task, the degree of phonological adaptation of the English loanwords could not
be assessed directly and was therefore omitted from the present analysis.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The participants answered with a total of 198 adapted forms to the 153 (P = 39.2%)
English loanwords. For the remaining 237 English loanwords (P = 60.8%) no adapted
form was found in the responses. The adapted form was the most frequent response for
the following 17 English loanwords: band, blogger, boom, cool, display, ecstasy, goal,
jam, leasing, rally, router, sel󰞿e, shopping, software, system, wellness, and youtuber. For
inbox and smoothie, both the adapted and unadapted forms were recorded as the most
common response, while for fair both the adapted form and the Croatian equivalent were
the most common responses from participants. The percentages of responses that includ-
ed the adapted forms of these words are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: English loanwords with the adapted forms as the most frequent response class
English word Croatian single-word
equivalent Adapted form Adapted form (%)
system sustav sistem 94.7
band grupa bend 68.4
goal cilj gol 60
blogger -bloger 57.9
router usmjerivač ruter 57.9
boom procvat bum 47.4
youtuber -jut(j)uber, yutjuber 47.4
leasing -lizing 47.1
cool - kul 42.1
software omekšje softver 40.9
jam -džem, đem 36.4
rally - reli 35.3
wellness - velnes 35
sel󰗹e sebić sel󰰶, sel󰰶j 31.6
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English word Croatian single-word
equivalent Adapted form Adapted form (%)
shopping kupovanje šoping 29.4
fair pošten fer 26.3
smoothie - smuti, smutie 25
display zaslon displej 25
ecstasy - ekstazi, ekstezi,
ekstazij
23.5
inbox - inboks 21.1
No English loanword was observed for which only responses containing adapted
forms were collected. The word with the highest percentage of adapted forms in the
responses was the word system, which was translated as sistem in all but one of the par-
ticipants’ responses (see Pavlinušić Vilus, Bogunović & Ćoso, 2022, p. 7). The adapted
form sistem is homonymous with the word sistem that had been borrowed into Croatian
long before English took on the leading role in language borrowing. Sistem belongs to
a lexical stratum that 󰰶nds its origins in the classical languages (i.e., internationalisms)
and it formed a part of the Croatian standard language until 1990’s, when it was replaced
by its native equivalent sustav. Even though all the participants were born a decade after
the introduction of sustav, they might have been exposed to the word sistem as a rem-
nant from recent linguistic history, rather than as the adapted form of an English word,
which might have in󰰷uenced their responses. The responses to identical cognates yielded
only unadapted English forms and Croatian translational equivalents, i.e. no attempt at
orthographic or morphological adaptation of the English cognates was recorded in the
participants’ responses.
Of the 198 adapted forms found in the participants’ responses, 175 (P = 88.4%) were
orthographically adapted, 󰰶ve (P = 2.5%) were morphologically adapted, and 󰰶nally 18
adapted forms (P = 9.1%) showed signs of both orthographic and morphological adap-
tation. These percentages show that the participants preferred orthographic adaptation.
Although morphological adaptation is not uncommon in the context of English loan-
words, these results are likely due to the speci󰰶city of the task in which the participants
were asked to translate the English loanword isolated from the context. If the participants
had been asked to use the word in a sentence, the morphologically adapted forms would
probably have been used in a much greater number.
There were also several words for which the participants used orthographically as
well as morphologically and orthographically adapted forms in their translations: tjuning
vs. tjunirat/tuniranje ‘tuning’, performans vs. performansa/performanca ‘performance’,
striming vs. strimanje ‘streaming’, ekstrem vs. ekstreman, ekstremno ‘extreme’, ekspres
vs. ekspresno ‘express’, and buking vs. bukiranje ‘booking’.
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4.1 Orthographically adapted loanwords
An in-depth analysis of the responses indicated that the students followed the standard
principles of orthographic adaptation. For example, they omitted a consonant from Eng-
lish double-letter words (e.g. bas ‘bass’, bloger ‘blogger’, šoping ‘shopping’, etc.) or they
mostly stayed true to the word category of the English loanword in their translations.
However, the analysis revealed several discrepancies that are atypical of the orthographic
adaptation of English loanwords in Croatian.
As expected, the students’ translations revealed a variation in the responses for those
English words containing the near-open front unrounded vowel /æ/. For loanwords con-
taining the English vowel in question, the participants chose the Croatian grapheme e
more often than a (see Table 2).
Table 2: The representation of the English phoneme /æ/ in the participants’ responses
/æ/ as e/æ/ as a
trep ‘trap’ /træp/baner ‘banner’ /ˈbænə(r)/
brend ‘brand’ /brænd/kapital ‘capital’ /ˈkæp.ɪ.təl/
čempionšip ‘championship’ /ˈtʃæmpiənʃɪp/ faks ‘fax’ /fæks/
󰰷eš ‘󰰷ash’ /󰰷æʃ/klasik ‘classic’ /ˈklæsɪk/
frontmen ‘frontman’ /frʌntmæn/rankiranje, rangiranje ‘ranking’ /ˈræŋkɪŋ/
hešteg ‘hashtag’ /ˈhæʃˌtæɡ/taksi ‘taxi’ /ˈtæksi/
pek ‘pack’ /pæk/pak ‘pack’ /pæk/
hetrik, het trik ‘hattrick’ /hættrɪk/ -
đekpot ‘jackpot’ /ˈdʒækˌpɒt/ -
džem, đem ‘jam’ /dʒæm/ -
džez, đez ‘jazz’ /dʒæz/ -
menadžment, menađment ‘management’ /
ˈmænɪdʒmənt/
-
menadžer ‘manager’ /ˈmænɪdʒə(r)/ -
peč ‘patch’ /pætʃ/ -
reli ‘rally’ /ˈræli/ -
The analysis of the students’ responses showed they almost invariably used er in-
stead of the English /ə/ (baner ‘banner’ /ˈbænə(r)/, čarter ‘charter’ /ˈtʃɑː(r)tə(r)/, gejmer
‘gamer’ /ˈɡeɪmə(r)/, to name but a few), while or was used only once, in the case of the
loanword horor ‘horror’ /ˈhɒrə(r)/. In some cases, the participants responded with more
than one adapted form, e.g. blokbuster, blokbaster ‘blockbuster’ /ˈblɑːkˌbʌs.tɚ/ and re-
zort, razort ‘resort’ /rɪˈzɔː(r)t/. These spellings (blockbuster, razort) are unexpected and
could be the result of mispronunciation or lack of knowledge of English pronunciation.
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An alternative explanation is o󰰵ered by Filipović and Menac (2005, p. 32), who point out
that the English phoneme /ʌ/ is often represented with the graphemes a, u, and even e in
the recipient languages, sometimes due to another language that has played a mediatory
role between donor and recipient languages (in the case of Croatian, these languages are
usually Italian and German).
The diphthong /eɪ/ was in most cases represented with the monosyllabic structure
ej (e.g. bejzbol ‘baseball’ /ˈbeɪsˌbɔːl/, blokčejn ‘blockchain’/blɒktʃeɪn/, displej ‘display’
/dɪˈspleɪ/, gej ‘gay’ /ɡeɪ/, mejkover ‘makeover’ /ˈmeɪkˌəʊvə(r)/, etc.). The following ex-
ceptions have been recorded in relation to the diphthong /eɪ/: bas ‘bass’ /beɪs/, katering,
ketering, kartering ‘catering’ / ˈkeɪtərɪŋ/, emajl, mejl ‘email’ /ˈiːmeɪl/, ferplej, fer plej, fer
play, ferplay ‘fairplay’ / feə(r)pleɪ/, mejl, meil ‘mail’ /meɪl/, matriks ‘matrix’ /ˈmeɪtrɪks/,
rege, regi ‘reggae’ /ˈreɡeɪ/).
The diphthong /aɪ/ was represented with aj (e.g. sajber ‘cyber’ /saɪ.bɚ-/, fajl ‘󰰶le’ /
faɪl/, lajk ‘like’ /laɪk/, etc.) without exception, while /ɪə/ was represented with ej (e.g. mul-
tiplejer ‘multiplayer’ /mʌltipleɪə(r)/). The diphthong /ɔɪ/ was represented both with oi (e.g.
đoint ‘joint’ /dʒɔɪnt/) and with oj (plejboj ‘playboy’ /ˈpleɪˌbɔɪ/). The bisyllabic structure
au in Croatian was used in the case of /aʊ/ (akaunt ‘account’ /əˈkaʊnt/, brauzer ‘brows-
er’ /ˈbraʊ.zər/). The diphthong /əʊ/ was simply reduced to the Croatian monophthong o
in most loanwords (e.g. kargo ‘cargo’ /ˈkɑː.ɡəʊ/, disko ‘disco’ /ˈdɪskəʊ/, gol ‘goal’ /ɡəʊl/,
etc.), but there were two exceptions in the responses: the diphthong was represented with
ou in šou ‘show’ /ʃəʊ/ and oa in uploadati ‘uploadati’ /ˈʌpˌləʊd/ where the English verb
was partially transmorphed and retained its original orthographic form. The reduction to
a Croatian monophthong was also observed in the case of the English diphthong /ʊə/ (e.g.
sekjuriti ‘security’ /sɪˈkjʊərəti/, tura ‘tour’ /tʊə(r)/). Although /eɪ/ is usually represented as
the monophthong e(r) in Croatian, our data showed that /eə/ is represented in a similar way
(e.g. hardver ‘hardware’ /ˈhɑːd(r)ˌweə(r)/, softver ‘software’ /ˈsɒf(t)ˌweə(r)/).
As reported in Pavlinušić Vilus, Bogunović and Ćoso (2022), the English phoneme
/dʒ/, usually transcribed into Croatian as dž, was often replaced by đ, as in the following
examples: đem, džem ‘jam’, đez, džez ‘jazz’, đoint ‘joint’, đoker, džoker ‘joker’, đambo
‘jumbo’, đekpot ‘jackpot’, etc. The inconsistency in the transcription of this phoneme was
interpreted as a re󰰷ection of the complexity of orthographic adaptation (ibid.), but could
also be due to a rather low knowledge of the rules of Croatian spelling among younger
learners.
The participants found compound nouns particularly challenging when it came to
producing their responses. While for some they showed no variation in their answers (e.g.
blutut ‘bluetooth’, blokčejn ‘blockchain’, hešteg ‘hashtag’, mejkover ‘makeover’), for
others they gave more than one possible answer. For example, for the loanwords fairplay
(fer plej, fer play, ferplay), and hattrick (het trik, hetrik) multiple responses were collect-
ed. In English, it is quite acceptable to spell some compound nouns in an either open (as
two words), closed (as one word), or hyphenated way (with a hyphen (-) between words).
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It is possible that the learners have encountered these loanwords in the source language
in several spellings and consequently utilized their L1 linguistic knowledge in producing
their responses.
4.2 Morphologically adapted loanwords
The analysis of the word categories of English loanwords and those used in the partici-
pants’ responses revealed some interesting 󰰶ndings regarding the morphological su󰰸xes
added to certain word categories.
As expected, most of the loanwords in our study belong to the category of nouns,
as they are the most frequently borrowed word category – over 75% of all borrowed
words are nouns (Filipović & Menac, 2005). This fact is not surprising when we know
that lexical transfer goes hand in hand with the transfer of objects and concepts from one
language to another, which has been particularly evident in the 󰰶eld of information and
communication technology in the recent decades (e.g. akaunt ‘account’, blutut ‘blue-
tooth’, inboks ‘inbox’, etc.).
For the nouns ending in -er, a su󰰸x that has the meaning of doer and is gender-neu-
tral (e.g. bloger ‘blogger’, in󰟀uenser ‘in󰰷uencer’, jutuber, jutjuber, yutjuber ‘youtuber’,
etc.), the participating students remained faithful to the original English nominal su󰰸xes.
Despite the fact that Croatian o󰰵ers various su󰰸xes for the feminine gender, no one re-
sponded with, for example, blogerica, in󰟀uenserica, or jutuberica. This is probably the
case because not only are the English loanwords almost identical in form to the Croatian
masculine nouns, but there is also a tendency in Croatian to employ the masculine gender
nouns in the generic sense.
However, morphological adaptation took place in the adapted English gerund nouns
ending in -ing (Table 3).
Table 3: English loanwords ending in -ing
English noun Recorded
response(s)
Type of
adaptation
(orthographic,
morphological)
Word category in
English (-su󰋢x)
Word category in
Croatian (-su󰋢x)
booking buking
bukiranje orth., morph. n (-ing) n (-ing, -anje)
casting kasting orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
catering
ketering
catering
kartering
orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
gaming gejming orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
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90 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
English noun Recorded
response(s)
Type of
adaptation
(orthographic,
morphological)
Word category in
English (-su󰋢x)
Word category in
Croatian (-su󰋢x)
kickboxing kikboksing
kikboks orth., morph. n (-ing) n (-ing, - Ø )
leasing lizing orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
mobbing mobing orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
ranking rankiranje
rangiranje orth., morph. n (-ing) n (-anje)
roaming roming orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
shopping šoping orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
streaming striming
strimanje orth., morph. n (-ing) n (-ing, -anje)
styling stajling orth. n (-ing) n (-ing)
tuning
tjuning
tuniranje
tjunirat
orth., morph. n (-ing)
n (-ing, -anje)
v (-irat)
Morphological adaptations occurred with the nouns bukiranje ‘booking’, rankiran-
je, rangiranje ‘ranking’, strimanje ‘streaming’, and tuniranje ‘tuning’. Two English
words that did not occur in the gerund form were adapted with the same su󰰸x, namely
bordanje ‘snowboard’ and streamanje ‘stream’. For kikboksing, kikboks ‘kickboxing’,
some participants omitted the English nominal su󰰸x -ing, while for šop, šoping ‘shop’
they added the su󰰸x in their translations (see Table 4). One gerund noun was translated
with both the in󰰶nitive form and the verbal noun: tjunirat, tuniranje ‘tuning’. It remains
unclear, however, why the participants were more inclined to retain the English nominal
su󰰸x -ing where morphologically adapted forms clearly exist in Croatian (e.g. gejming
instead of gejmanje, šoping instead of šopingiranje, etc.). One of the plausible expla-
nations could be that the Croatian learners have been exposed to -ing nouns in Croatian
texts, where they appeared more often with English su󰰸xes than in their morphologi-
cally adapted forms.
English compound nouns posed a challenge to the Croatian L1 speakers for another
reason, in addition to their orthographic complexity, which was elaborated on earlier in
the text. For some compound nouns the participants either added or redacted a single
word constituent in their responses. For example, they redacted shot from screenshot
(skrinšot, skrin) and snow from snowboard (bordanje, bord). It is possible metonymy
took place, where, in the case of snowboard the sporting article (the board) was used
to refer to the whole sport (snowboarding), and in the case of screenshot the tool (the
screen) was used to refer to the product (a screenshot). On the other hand, some English
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nouns were given Croatian morphemes (e.g. kompanija ‘company’, tura ‘tour’, trejdat,
trejdati ‘trade’). While kompanija and tura are frequently used Croatian equivalents for
the English loanwords company and tour, it remains unclear why the participants chose
the verb trejdat(i) in the case of the noun trade, since most of the English nouns in the
questionnaire, which have undergone the process of denominalization in English and can
be used both as nouns and verbs, were translated as nouns in Croatian (see Table 4).
Table 4: The participants’ responses to English nouns which have undergone denominalization
in the source language
English word (word
category)
Response (word
category in Croatian)
English word (word
category)
Response (word
category in Croatian)
band (n, v) bend (n) party (n, v) parti (n)
boom (n, v) bum (n) patch (n, v) peč (n)
brand (n, v) brend (n) play (n, v) plej (n)
chip (n, v) čip (n) rally (n, v) reli (n)
club (n, v) klub (n) resort (n, v) rezort (n), razort (n)
copy (n, v) kopija (n) rock (n, v) rok (n)
craft (n, v) kraft (n) roll (n, v) rolati (v)
cross (n, v, adj) kros (n) screenshot (n, v) skrin (n), skrinšot (n)
deal (n, v) dil (n) shop (n, v) šop (n), šoping (n)
display (n, v) displej (n) show (n, v) šou (n)
email (n, v) emajl (n), mejl (n) snowboard (n, v) bord (n), bordanje (n)
express (n, v,
adj)
ekspres (n), ekspresno
(adj/adv)
stream (n, v) strim (n), streamanje
(n)
fax (n, v) faks (n) style (n, v) stajl (n), stajling (n)
󰰶le (n, v) fajl (n) team (n, v) tim (n)
grill (n, v) gril (n) text (n, v) tekst (n)
group (n, v) grupa (n) tour (n, v) tura (n)
help (n, v) helpaj (v) trade (n, v) trejdat (v), trejdati (v)
interview (n, v) intervju (n) trap (n, v) trep (n)
jam (n, v) đem (n), džem (n) vintage (n, v, adj) viniđ (n, adj)
like (n, v, adj,
prep)
lajk (n) pack (n, v) pak (n), pek (n)
mail (n, v) mejl (n), meil (n)
The participants’ preference for nouns over verbs or other word categories is not
unusual, considering that nouns account for over 75% of all borrowed words (Filipović
& Menac, 2005). The Croatian students are thus more familiar with the nominal meaning
of club (‘an association or an organisation’) than with the meanings of its verbal form (‘to
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92 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
unite’ or ‘to strike someone with a club’). The familiarity and frequency of the meanings
of the word are also the reason why no one has resorted to the other nominal meanings of
the word (‘a bat’ or ‘a playing card’).
Some other exceptions such as trejdat, trejdati ‘trade’ can be seen in Table 4,
namely rolati ‘roll’ and helpaj ‘help’, where the participants did not prefer nouns in
their responses, but instead opted for verbs and added Croatian morphological su󰰸xes
for verbs (the 2nd sg. imperative -j in the case of ‘help’ and the in󰰶nitive su󰰸x -ti in
the case of trejdat, trejdati and rolati, each preceded by the root vowel -a-). In addition,
four English loanwords that can be used as both nouns and verbs can also be used as
adjectives in English (cross, express, like, and vintage). While all four were explained
with nouns, the responses for express and vintage also included other word categories
(the Croatian adjective/adverb ekspresno in the case of express and the noun/ adjective
viniđ in the case of vintage).
Some other interesting examples of morphological adaptations were also recorded
in the responses. Some English loanwords ending in -y/-ie (kari, kuri, karij-začin ‘curry’
/ˈkʌri/, ekstazi, ekstezi, ekstazij ‘ecstasy’ /ˈekstəsi/, sel󰞿, sel󰞿j ‘sel󰰶e’ /ˈsel󰰶/) were added
-j by the participants. Here, perhaps the intuition of the native speakers played a role –
Croatian nouns do not usually end in vowel -i and therefore the participants felt the need
to change the su󰰸x from -i to -ij in order to adapt it to their own language. Another inter-
esting example is the noun crossover, which was misinterpreted as a phrasal verb cross
over, and accordingly morphologically adapted into a semi-calque krosirati preko ‘cross
over’. Finally, there were a few recorded cases where the students resorted to a semanti-
cally related loanword, namely bodigard, sekjuriti ‘security’, plej lista ‘soundtrack’, and
smuti, smutie, šejk ‘smoothie’.
5 CONCLUSION
The results indicate that the Croatian student population is familiar with the possibility of
using the loanwords in the adapted forms. They are also mostly familiar with the princi-
ples of orthographic and morphological adaptation of English loanwords. However, the
overall percentage of adapted forms in the responses was lower than the percentage of
unadapted forms (see Pavlinušić Vilus, Bogunović & Ćoso, 2022), suggesting that the
adapted forms were a less preferred option in the translation task. The results of the pres-
ent study show that there is some variation in the production of the adapted forms among
students, re󰰷ecting underlying di󰰵erences in the phonemic systems of the two languages.
This could be one of the reasons why learners tend to avoid the adapted forms and prefer
their unadapted variants. The fact that the unadapted English loanwords used in the study
were selected on the basis of their frequency of appearance in the web corpora further
underlines their lexical status in Croatian.
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In addition, the study revealed some interesting results for which no explanations
could be found in our current research. Additional investigations could be carried out
in the 󰰶eld of semantic adaptation, which might shed some light on the lexical substitu-
tions recorded in this study (for example, why some participants felt inclined to translate
security as bodigard, etc.). It would also be interesting to further explore the status of
English-Croatian identical cognates, a category of loanwords that has been shown to be
impervious to changes at both orthographic and morphological levels. The status of such
words in Croatian has yet to be determined and should de󰰶nitely become a focal point of
the future studies on the nature of English loanwords in Croatian.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The study outlined in this paper has been supported in part by the Croatian Science Foun-
dation (HRZZ) under the project number UIP-2019-04-1576.
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96 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
POVZETEK
JUTUBER, JUTJUBER ALI YUTJUBER: PRILAGOJENE OBLIKE PREVZETIH BESED
IZ ANGLEŠČINE V PISNIH IZDELKIH HRVAŠKIH ŠTUDENTOV
Med jeziki nenehno poteka izmenjava novih pojmov. Vpliv enega jezika na drugega se lahko
odraža na vseh jezikovnih ravneh, najbolj izrazit pa je na področju besedišča. Hrvaščina je postala
zelo dovzetna za prevzemanje besed iz angleščine in vpliv angleščine na hrvaščino je opazen v
različnih funkcijskih jezikovnih slogih. Prestižni položaj angleščine, ki zmanjšuje verjetnost za
prilagoditev prevzete prvine pravilom ciljnega jezika, je eden od razlogov, da je angleščina postala
neizčrpen vir novega besedišča za hrvaške učence jezika. Cilj pričujoče raziskave je proučiti rabo
hrvaških prilagojenih oblik prevzetih besed iz angleščine, pri čemer posebno pozornost posvečamo
vrsti in stopnji njihove prilagojenosti. Zaradi razlik med fonemskima sistemoma obeh jezikov smo
pričakovali, da bodo hrvaški učenci angleščine podali različne predloge prilagoditev prevzetih
besed. Prevajalsko nalogo s 392 najpogosteje rabljenimi neprilagojenimi prevzetimi besedami iz
angleščine v hrvaščini je opravilo 116 dodiplomskih študentov Fakultete za pomorstvo. Rezultati
analize odgovorov kažejo, da študenti dajejo prednost neprilagojenim oblikam prevzetih besed
iz angleščine. Poleg tega se pogosteje odločajo le za pravopisne, ne pa za hkratne pravopisne in
oblikoslovne prilagoditve prevzetih besed. Opažene razlike v pravopisnem prilagajanju odražajo
razlike med fonemskima sistemoma proučevanih jezikov. Na splošno rezultati analize kažejo, da
so se v hrvaščini uveljavile neprilagojene oblike prevzetih besed iz angleščine, ki so priljubljenejša
leksikalna izbira med mlajšimi rojenimi govorci hrvaščine.
Ključne besede: prevzete besede iz angleščine, prilagajanje besed, jezikovna produkcija, izposo-
janje besed, hrvaščina
ABSTRACT
JUTUBER, JUTJUBER OR YUTJUBER: ADAPTED FORMS OF ENGLISH LOAN-
WORDS IN THE WRITTEN PRODUCTION OF CROATIAN UNIVERSITY-LEVEL
LEARNERS
New concepts are constantly being borrowed across languages. The in󰰷uence of one language on
another can occur on all linguistic levels, with lexis being the most sensitive. Croatian has become
most receptive to borrowing from English, and the in󰰷uence of English on Croatian has been doc-
umented in di󰰵erent functional styles. The prestigious status of English, which reduces the likeli-
hood that a borrowed element will adapt to the rules of the recipient language, is one of the reasons
why English has become an inexhaustible source of new words for Croatian learners. The aim of
the present study is to investigate the use of adapted forms of English loanwords in Croatian, with
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97Eva Pavlinušić Vilus et al.: JUTUBER, JUTJUBER OR YUTJUBER: ADAPTED FORMS OF ENGLISH ...
particular attention to the type and degree of their adaptation. Due to the di󰰵erences between the
phonemic systems of the two languages, it was expected that the Croatian learners would show
diversity in their responses regarding loanword adaptation. A translation task with the 392 most
frequently used unadapted English loanwords in Croatian was given to 116 undergraduate students
at the Faculty of Maritime Studies. The data showed that the participants preferred the unadapted
forms to the adapted forms of English. They were also more inclined to orthographically adapt a
loanword, than to adapt it both orthographically and morphologically. The di󰰵erences observed
in orthographic adaptation re󰰷ect the underlying di󰰵erences in the phonemic systems of the two
languages. Overall, the results suggest that the unadapted forms of English words have become
established in Croatian and are a preferred lexical choice among younger L1 speakers of Croatian.
Keywords: English loanwords, word adaptation, language production, lexical borrowing, Croatian
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