English influence on the Swedish vocabulary 1800-2000

Abstract

The present study is the result of a project intending to investigate the development of the Swedish vocabulary between 1800 and 2000, financed by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. This paper is based on the two reports published on the influence of English during this period (Stålhammar 2002, 2003). The aim in collecting and analysing the material was to get as complete an overview as possible of the lexical borrowings from English (including words imported via English). This was done by tracing the diachronic distribution, i.e. establishing when the different words entered the Swedish vocabulary, here defined as printed matter registered in major dictionaries or in electronic corpora. These loanwords were also categorized by area of use, in order to trace the causes and channels of word importation. For a better understanding of the mechanisms of linguistic borrowing, the material was divided into different types of loans (primarily direct loans or translation loans) over the period. The overriding aim was to obtain a better understanding of when, why and how words are imported from another language.