Getting to grips with false loans and pseudo-Anglicisms

Words that sound or look foreign, yet are not direct imports from another language, represent a special challenge to laypeople and linguists alike. Whereas non-experts may unknowingly use such home-spun words when communicating in the foreign language, linguists may be able to spot these items but still fail to agree on how to label and define them. In the 21st century, most loans and pseudo-loans are based on English, and this article presents a number of expert definitions and delimitations of English-inspired, yet not truly English lexical items. The reader is presented with examples of pseudo-Anglicisms from a range of European languages, items demonstrating the past and present fascination with foreign-sounding words. While modern corpus searches reveal that only one word out of five thousand in continental European languages may qualify as a pseudo-Anglicism, such -isms represent a long and strong tradition of linguistic hybridity. These deceptive items are the mutant outcome of intercultural encounters in an era where English is still the prime exporter of magic words and their components.