Hispanicisms in Romance Fiction: An Annotated Glossary

Abstract

"The Spanish language has significantly contributed to the lexical enrichment of English throughout history. Although the Spanish influence has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, scholarly studies prove that the greatest number of borrowings come from the period of the Spanish colonization of America, when the language was "the faithful companion of empire" (Rodriguez-González, 1996: vii). ... "Actually, it is American English that is currently subject to the greatest influence, because of the impact of the Hispanic community in the United States. This has led to fears about a future Hispanicization of the country, as a result of the increasing number of Latinos who have been settling there over the years. ... "The situation can [hence] be described as one of languages in contact, or rather, contact between speakers of mutually unintelligible languages. Many factors can play a role in such situations, which means that a large number of outcomes are possible. As Trask (1999: 151) put it,'[t]he consequences of contact may range from the trivial to the far-reaching,' i.e. they may include bilingualism, language merging, or the development of code-switching skills, as well as language (and political) conflict and even language loss, as contact between languages or language varieties affects variation and change (Meyerhoff, 2006: 238-239).... "Conceived as a contribution to the studies on the role of Spanish as a loan-giver language, this volume offers an inventory of all the Hispanicisms (words and expressions) that occur in 36 English romances published mostly by Harlequin and Mills & Boon between 1955 and 2004."