Welcome to EuroLex (European Lexemes), a Eurolinguistic project!


Goal of the Project

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In this project we want to collect Europeanisms or European internationalisms, words that occur in the large majority of European languages (everday vocabulary, not specialized vocabulary) and go back to

  • Latin (and Greek)
  • English
  • French
  • Arabic
  • Italian
  • German

These are six most important source languages for internationalisms in Europe. The project also serves to find out how Europe differs from other civilizations. We will look at when a certain internationalism was borrowed into a European language (potentially also when it died out), whether it is a general term or only part of a certain style or dialect and what the meaning of the word is in the adopting language.

The first categories, we want to cover are Anglicisms (EuroLex/E: European lexemes from English) and Gallicisms (EuroLex/F: European lexemes from French).

NOTE: There is already a number of studies whose data we will first have to enter here (if you'd like to contribute systematically and enter the data from a specific book, contact the coordinator). In a second step we shall see where data and information are missing.

Click the "►" below to see a list of items that have so far been accepted for the Project.

Article Structure

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Each article is structured the following way:

  1. the entry word is the English form of the (assumed) Europeanism, always supplemented by “(EuroLex)”, e.g. “international (EuroLex)”
  2. the original word-form in the source language, together with its meaning
  3. a table with the languages, the word-form, the borrowing date (and date of obsolescence), the current meaning and status (geographical and stylistic distribution), earlier meanings and statusses, the source of information
  4. a section for other annotations
  5. a section for information on non-European languages
  6. potentially a list of links
  7. a list of relevant categories

(Here is a sample for new articles).

Guidelines

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  • Whenever you add information be as precise as possible: say for which situation, for which age group, for which region, for which speaker-hearer constellation your information is valid.
  • Linguistic forms should be written in italics (xxx), meanings and translations should be given in single inverted commas (‘xxx’). Citations should be given in (“...”)
  • Particular attention should be paid to languages which are also spoken outside Europe (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese). Say whether the non-European varieties also use the word or not.
  • If you would like to add information on another European language feel free to do so and add a new language section.
  • If you would like to analyze an existing etymological dictionary systematically, please contact the project coordinator, Joachim Grzega (joachim.grzega@ku-eichstaett.de)

Frequent Sources

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For studies on European vocabulary see the bibliography in the ELiX section Varia; for etymological dictionaries see the Bibliography of Onomasiological Sources of Onomasiology Online (OnOn).

A frequent reference for Anglicisms is:

  • Birken-Silvermann, Gabriele (2003), ' Lexikalische Europäismen französischer Provenienz -- soziolinguistische und lexikalische Aspekte historischer Sprachkontaktsituationen in ausgewählten europäischen Sprachen', in: Ureland, P. Sture (eds.), Convergence and Divergence of European Languages, 109-146, Berlin: Logos.
  • DEA = Görlach, Manfred (2001), Dictionary of European Anglicisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • OED = Murray, James A. H. (ed.) (1884-), Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press.