EuroLex

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

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.

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).

• 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)

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.