Language Shift From Arabic Into English With Regard to Techniques of Borrowing and Arabicization: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Due to the unexpected number of languages that are anticipated to be lost during the next century, the present paper investigates the matter of language shift in a bilingual speech community with regard to the techniques of borrowing and Arabicization. Twenty-six Arabic contexts with loanwords and/or Arabicized items were provided to Arabic and English linguists who were asked to judge the level of acceptability and readability of them. A google forms questionnaire was used as a tool to conduct this empirical study. We found that there is a general tendency towards rejecting the items that have a foreignized sense unless the alternatives function similar to the original ones. However, some subjects valued the responses that captured the communicative sense of the original message. In the meantime, we listed the sociolinguistic factors that play a major role in creating language shift along with their influence on Arabic language.