Setting the sceneFootnote ¹

The concept of English as the nativized foreign language – or ENFL, for short – was first proposed in 2003, at the 13th International Conference on British and American Studies, in Timişoara, Romania, in a presentation entitled ‘Rethinking the status of English today: is it still a purely foreign language?’, and subsequently published as Prćić, Reference Prćić2003 and Reference Prćić2004. Identified and described in these papers are new, additional properties of English, which have developed over the past few decades, concurrently with the establishment of English as the first language of world communication and as today's global lingua franca (for accounts of this phenomenon, see Jenkins, Reference Jenkins2007; Mauranen & Ranta, Reference Mauranen and Ranta2010; Seidlhofer, Reference Seidlhofer2011). Viewed from the perspective of the Expanding Circle (Kachru, Reference Kachru, Quirk and Widdowson1985), English can no longer be considered a purely, or prototypically, foreign language, usually characterized by three defining properties: not the first language of a country, not the official language of a country and taught as a subject in schools (cf. Richards & Schmidt, Reference Richards and Schmidt2002). Three newly emerged defining properties of English, over and above the three customary ones, set it uniquely apart from all other purely foreign languages and they will be briefly summarized below (for more extensive discussions, see Prćić, Reference Prćić2003, Reference Prćić2004, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapter 2, Reference Prćić and Đorić-Francuski2011b, Reference Prćić2014).

Defining properties of ENFL

The first property unique to English is ready audio-visual availability, which means that English is not only globally used in all kinds of two-way spoken and written communication, but is also easily found in nearly all countries of the world, mainly with the aid of constantly improving internet, television and radio, and in one-way communication, in many areas of human activity, notably computing, the internet, broadcasting, economics, trade, commerce, finance, banking, advertising, science, medicine, sports, fashion, entertainment and tourism.

Its second property is dual acquisition, which means that English is often first acquired non-institutionally, i.e. picked up spontaneously, by children merely being exposed to the language from their earliest age – through television, cartoons, picture books, toys, games, computers, play stations, the internet, films, music – and growing up with it, in parallel with their native language. This in time leads to some acquaintance with English, enabling only vague comprehension of general meaning and just basic speaking and writing skills. Later on, English is re-taught and re-learnt institutionally, within the educational system, like a proper foreign language, but with contents often quite different, and sometimes more elementary, in terms of vocabulary and grammar, from those already picked up. Non-institutional acquisition of English obviously does not end when institutional acquisition begins – rather, the two go hand in hand and are complementary, the former acting as a kind of reinforcement of the latter: thus usage and technical terminologies tend to be picked up ‘spontaneously’, whereas grammar, vocabulary, spelling and phonology are taught and learnt in schools.

And the third property is supplementary language function, which means that English exerts, or, more accurately, is allowed to exert, continuous influence on both the international community and individual language communities that come into contact with it, affecting languages and their users irrespective of whether they know it or are acquiring it non-institutionally and/or institutionally. In this case, English functions as a supplementary language, because it supplements the communicative needs of a given language community by filling actual and supposed lexical and other gaps, and so it helps to form a more or less integrated communicative resource, which is made up of the native language enriched with (selected) elements from English. In the resultant language mixture English can occur in one of three ways: most often, within the native language (at the levels of words through borrowing and of phrases and sentences through calquing, as well as other usage imports, largely in spelling); or, less often, alongside the native language (with translation provided, as in film subtitling, when the two languages are used simultaneously); or, least often, above the native language (without translation provided, as in English advertising slogans incorporated into domestic advertisement, when the native language is supplanted completely).

Taken together, these three defining properties make English different from a purely foreign language and in part similar to a native language. Admittedly, there are languages to which one or even two of these properties apply, especially ready audio-visual availability, but all three properties in their totality are unique to English (at least, at present). These three properties have furthermore contributed to the emergence of a fourth sociolinguistic status of languages, viz. nativized foreign language (besides first, second and foreign), with English as the only member of this category. Hence the designation ‘English as the nativized foreign language’, where the definite article is stressed in order to mark the uniqueness of category membership and the adjective ‘nativized’ employed to emphasize that English has objectively and subjectively become part of many native languages and cultures around the world, to the diminution of some of its foreign language properties.

The status of the nativized foreign language has far-reaching glocal implications, both linguistic and non-linguistic, for all language communities and languages which come into regular contact with ENFL; they are glocal implications because they can be observed to hold globally, but they are always realized locally, within a specific language and language community (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić and Đorić-Francuski2011b). Among the several glocal implications, the most significant is beyond doubt the impact that ENFL, in the role of the dominant, or giving, language, makes on the dominated, or receiving, languages that come under its direct or indirect influence. In what follows, key aspects of this impact will be explored in some detail, drawing on the current situation in Serbian as it is used in Serbia. It will be noticed that the state of affairs depicted here obtains, mutatis mutandis, in many, if not all, languages dominated by ENFL, especially, though by no means exclusively, those across Europe.

The observations and exemplifications to be offered are based on insights gained from three sets of sources: firstly, a corpus of around 5000 fully contextualized anglicisms, which was created for the compilation of A Dictionary of Recent Anglicisms in Serbian (Vasić, Prćić & Nejgebauer, Reference Vasić, Prćić and Nejgebauer2011, originally 2001; for an account of this lexicographic project, see Prćić, Reference Prćić, Furiassi, Pulcini and Rodríguez González2012a); secondly, seminar papers and theses, too numerous to be cited individually, by MA and PhD students at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, which deal with aspects of use and treatment of elements from English in a wide range of registers of Serbian; and thirdly, the author's own research into English–Serbian interlingual contacts, as attested by monitoring for more than two decades a rich diversity of everyday use of written and spoken Serbian, which has resulted in a series of articles (Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a), including certain theoretical, methodological and terminological innovations, some of which will be presented here.

Anglicization of Serbian

Instead of the customary and prevalent English-centred approach to describing its impact on other languages, typically headed ‘English in a given country or city’, ‘English in a given language’ or ‘English in a given register of a given language’, the focus of attention in this paper is reversed and placed on the perspective of Serbian as the dominated language. In various degrees, ways and forms, English in urban Serbia is used almost anywhere, by almost anybody, to almost anybody, in a milieu where bilingualism and diglossia are strangely intermingled, with English serving as (if) the high variety and Serbian as (if) the low variety. In such a fluid situation, the impact of ENFL has a bearing on the use of Serbian, potentially on its system and partly on its culture. This impact has two distinctive and interrelated facets of manifestation – anglicization and hybridization of Serbian, both of which will be discussed in turn (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić and Đorić-Francuski2011b, Reference Prćić2014).

Anglicization of Serbian is realized in two ways: (a) in the use, overuse and misuse of words from English in almost all registers, and (b) in the use, overuse and misuse of English words and names in domestic names and slogans of all kinds (for a critical report on the public use of English around the city of Novi Sad, Serbia's second largest, see Gajišin, Panić-Kavgić & Kavgić, Reference Gajišin, Panić-Kavgić, Kavgić, Vasić and Štrbac2011; for accounts of anglicization of a range of European languages, see Anderman & Rogers, Reference Anderman and Rogers2005; Fischer & Pułaczewska, Reference Fischer and Pułaczewska2008; Furiassi, Pulcini & Rodríguez González, Reference Furiassi, Pulcini and Rodríguez González2012; and articles published in English Today and World Englishes). In both realizations, anglicization invariably begins at the pragmatic level, the level of use of the receiving language. If a given use is repeated frequently enough and grows into a regular pattern, it may eventually establish itself and become part of the language system at the morphosyntactic, semantic, graphological and/or phonological levels, at the same time introducing innovations into that system. As a consequence of anglicization of Serbian, a number of form- and content-related innovations and associated phenomena have arisen in the past few decades.

By far the most important innovation is anglicisms, defined here as words from English, like džetleg, from jet lag, of any etymological origin and morphological structure (simple, complex, compound or phrasal), or affixes, like ko-, from co-, or combining forms, like sajber-, from cyber-, which have entered Serbian and achieved at least some degree of integration into its system by adaptation at the levels of form and/or content; such units have the status of borrowed words, affixes or combining forms. Anglicisms can be of two general types – obvious and hidden. Obvious anglicisms are recognizable as loans from English, by their characteristic graphological, phonological and morphological forms, as is the case with džetleg. On the other hand, hidden anglicisms represent existing Serbian words, phrases and sentences whose forms, (re)arrangements and/or contents reflect, or conceal, English usages, in two characteristic ways: firstly, by calquing, i.e. literal translation of forms and meanings of polymorphemic words, phrases and sentences, as in mapa puta, from road map, or in discourse formulas like Mogu li da vam pomognem?, from Can I help you?, the latter also described as pragmatic anglicisms (cf. Mišić-Ilić & Lopičić, Reference Mišić-Ilić and Lopičić2011); and secondly, by transplanting new English meanings onto existing Serbian forms, as in relaksacija, enriched with the sense ‘making the enforcement of a law or restriction less strict’, from relaxation, besides the current sense ‘recreation or rest’.

Both obvious and hidden anglicisms, when comparatively new in Serbian, constitute formal and/or semantic neologisms. During the process of their integration, they enter into various formal and/or semantic relations with existing words of Serbian, domestic and naturalized alike, of which the most complex are semantic relations. Their development usually follows two courses. Firstly, it is synonymy between anglicisms, both recent and older, and existing Serbian words, where anglicisms can perform several functions: they introduce new semantic contrasts, as in bebisiterka, from babysitter, ‘a female babysitter’, vs dadilja, ‘a nanny’; they provide more economical alternatives, as in đus, from juice, ‘orange juice’, vs sok od pomorandže, ‘orange juice’; they offer stylistically marked variants, as in šoping or shopping, from shopping, ‘(a trendy word for) shopping’, vs kupovina, ‘shopping’; and they present mere formal additions with little or no real communicative contribution, as in implementacija, from implementation, vs sprovođenje and realizacija, both meaning ‘implementation’ (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapter 11; Milić, Reference Milić2013).

And secondly, it is false friendship between existing Serbian words, typically obvious or hidden anglicisms, and the form and/or content of English words, the former differing from the latter in three respects: in form only, as in hepiend, from happy ending, vs happy ending; or both in form and content, as in oldtajmer, from old-timer, ‘a classic car’, vs old-timer, ‘a highly experienced person’; or in content only, as in predstaviti, ‘to introduce or present formally’, vs predstaviti, from present, ‘to show a film or programme on television’, where the meaning of a domestic Serbian word stands in contrast to a new English-induced meaning of the same Serbian word, normally expressed by prikazati (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić2012b). All differences originate either in formal and/or semantic changes to anglicisms after they have completed their integration into the system of Serbian, or in borrowing new forms and/or meanings from English or other, often intermediary, languages.

In contradistinction to anglicisms are words and phrases from English, like by the way, which are used as sporadic or occasional interpolations into Serbian spoken or written texts and have not even started the process of integration into its system. Therefore they do not qualify as anglicisms, but rather as englishisms, a term proposed to bring out this distinction; such units have the status of foreign words or phrases (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić, Furiassi, Pulcini and Rodríguez González2012a, Reference Prćić2013). Despite the fact that there is a borderline between englishisms and anglicisms, it is tenuous, because, depending on the frequency of their use, as indicated earlier, an englishism can begin to integrate into the system of Serbian and gradually turn into an anglicism – the converse is, of course, not possible.

Instances of lexical innovation just outlined greatly outnumber all others, that have until recently been unknown to the system and use of standard Serbian. Among those rapidly gaining ground in everyday usage, the following innovations are particularly notable. Firstly, at the level of graphology, we find (a) anglicisms spelled in the English original, not only in texts written in Latin script, but also in Cyrillic, the principal alphabet of Serbian, with inflectional and derivational suffixes in Latin or Cyrillic added to such bases, often hyphenated, as in downloadovati and download-овати, where the infinitival suffix is appended, (b) initial capitalization of all lexical units in multi-word names and titles, as in Beogradsko Dramsko Pozorište (i.e. Belgrade Drama Theatre), and of some single words misconstrued as names, as in u Januaru (i.e. in January), and (c) in numbers, using a decimal point to separate decimal fractions, as in 92.5, and a comma to separate thousands, as in 125,000; the standard Serbian forms are: даунлоудовати and daunloudovati, Beogradsko dramsko pozorište, u januaru, 92,5, 125.000 and 125 000, respectively.

And secondly, there are innovations at the level of morphosyntax: (a) indeclinable adjectives, like fer, fit, seksi, from fair, fit, sexy, which also resist comparison and derivation, are hence regarded as an atypical class, because the typical adjectival paradigm in Serbian consists of seven cases in two numbers (singular and plural) and three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), (b) nouns, including acronyms, functioning as prenominal modifiers, not only with anglicisms, like kantri pevačica and LGBT populacija, from country singer and LGBT population, but with existing Serbian words as well, like kamilica čaj and BiH političari (i.e. camomile tea and BiH politicians, the acronym deriving from the Serbian for Bosnia and Herzegovina), and (c) word-formation patterns prompted by English models, especially lexical blending, which involves conflating (parts of) at least two Serbian bases or a Serbian and an English base, like kafućino, ‘a drink combining coffee and cappuccino’, from the Serbian kaf(a + kap)ućino, and rasFORDaja, ‘a sale of Ford cars’, from the English Ford superimposed onto the Serbian rasprodaja, ‘sale at reduced prices’ (for explanations, classifications and exemplifications of lexical blending in Serbian, see Bugarski, Reference Bugarski2006, Reference Bugarski2013; Halupka-Rešetar & Lalić-Krstin, Reference Halupka-Rešetar and Lalić-Krstin2009; Rasulić, Reference Rasulić, Radovanović and Piper2008).

Angloserbian

Closely connected with anglicization, the other facet of manifestation of the impact of ENFL on Serbian is its hybridization, which can be understood as the second, and final, phase of anglicization. Its direct result is the emergence and rise of a relatively new, or newly identified, sociolectal variety of Serbian, increasingly departing from its own usage norms and increasingly being used according to the norms of English. This hybrid variety has been named anglosrpski in Serbian, i.e. Angloserbian (cf. Vasić, Prćić & Nejgebauer, Reference Vasić, Prćić and Nejgebauer2011; Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a). It will be noticed that this designation does not make use of the widely exploited lexical blend ending in -lish or -glish, like Serblish or Serglish – for two compelling reasons. Immediately, the original, admirably simple and effective, French coinage franglais, i.e. fran(çais) + anglais (cf. Étiemble, Reference Étiemble1964), was intended to describe French interspersed with English and it reflects the typical French endocentric structure, where the head comes first (français) and the modifier last (anglais), the meaning of the structure being hyponymically ‘a kind of French...’. This French pattern has been transferred into English as Frenglish, spawning all subsequent patterns in -(g)lish, but disregarding the fact that in a typical English endocentric structure the constituents are reversed and it is the modifier that comes first (French) and the head last (English) (cf. Williams, Reference Williams1981); therefore, this infelicitous calque, structurally at least, denotes ‘a kind of English...’, whereas its intended meaning, and its conventionalized interpreted meaning, is ‘a kind of French...’. And as if to make matters more challenging and going against monosemy, the basic requirement for successful technical terminology, some of these terms are used in the one sense, some in the other and some appear in both, each of which must be inferred pragmatically from the context of their use (for a selection of -(g)lish terms and their changeable meanings, see the list provided in WikipediaFootnote ²).

In order to eliminate unnecessary ambiguity and confusion, the following division of terminological labour is proposed here, which is also applicable to other languages: for the hybrid variety consisting of Serbian with elements from English, the appropriate label is Angloserbian, where the initial combining form Anglo- serves as the modifier; and for the hybrid variety consisting of English with elements from Serbian, the label is Serblish, where the ending – in effect, the final combining form, -lish, with its allomorph -glish, both extracted from English – serves as the head (cf. Bauer, Reference Bauer1983; for an additional sense of the term(s) Serblish or Serglish, referring to hybrid varieties of Serbian with elements from English, used in English-speaking countries by members of the Serbian diaspora, see Mišić-Ilić, Reference Mišić-Ilić and Vasić2011).

After this terminological clarification, the identity of Angloserbian should be determined. In general, coming within the scope of Angloserbian are all English-induced innovations in the use of Serbian that are linguistically unjustified and therefore unnecessary, because they do not contribute anything communicatively relevant or significant to the system of Serbian, with respect to increasing either its expressive potential or its economy of expression. Besides innovations in vocabulary, as doubtless the most conspicuous ones, others involve the levels of graphology, phonology, morphosyntax, semantics and pragmatics. While taking root, these categories of Angloserbian use ‘ideally’ go through three stages: first, they start as isolated occurrences; then, if repeated sufficiently enough in everyday practice and ably assisted by the popular media, they may develop into a pattern; and last, they may become part of the unofficial parallel usage norm, or pseudonorm, which appears alongside the official usage norm, competes with it and shows a clear tendency to undermine it and gradually even take its place. The conglomerate of the said patterns and pseudonorms at all levels is what constitutes the mongrel ‘language’ of Angloserbian, which visibly poses a stiff challenge to standard Serbian. It will have become apparent that not all innovations in Serbian influenced by English qualify as Angloserbian – in fact, it must be stressed that linguistically justified and therefore necessary innovations, mainly in the form of anglicisms, that do contribute communicatively to the system of Serbian, are always welcome, and they definitely do not belong to Angloserbian, but to standard Serbian.

The concept of linguistically justified and therefore necessary needs to be explained more fully, with anglicisms serving as the case in point. Within a four-dimension classification of anglicisms (according to type, formation, justification of use and status), a five-point scale of their justification of use has been put forward, where fully justified, justified, conditionally justified, unjustified and fully unjustified anglicisms are distinguished in the following way (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapter 10): (a) an anglicism is fully unjustified if for a given meaning a ready Serbian word is available, as in menadžment, from management, ‘people managing a company’, against the three Serbian words poslovodstvo, rukovodstvo and uprava, (b) an anglicism is unjustified if for a given meaning a translation, using existing morphosyntactic and semantic resources of Serbian, is easily producible, as in kol-centar, from call centre, translatable into Serbian as pozivni centar, (c) an anglicism is conditionally justified if it offers a noticeably shorter means to express new or existing content than is possible with current means, as in afteršejv, from aftershave, against the current losion posle brijanja (i.e. lotion (to use) after shaving), (d) an anglicism is justified if it introduces a new semantic contrast into the system of Serbian, as in laptop, from laptop, against kompjuter, from computer, and računar (i.e. computer), with the former denoting a small, portable variety of the latter two, and (e) an anglicism is fully justified if it brings a totally new meaning into the system of Serbian and so fills a lexical and/or conceptual gap, as in milkšejk, from milkshake.

Since they make an appreciable communicative contribution to Serbian, fully justified and justified anglicisms, both obvious and hidden, are, naturally, linguistically justified and therefore necessary, and they belong to standard Serbian; on the other hand, unjustified and fully unjustified anglicisms, because contributing little or nothing communicatively, are linguistically unjustified and therefore unnecessary, and they belong to Angloserbian; finally, conditionally justified anglicisms represent a buffer zone between Angloserbian and standard Serbian. Needless to say, in actual practice, the theoretical and methodological neatness of this typology often looks quite different and far from being neat, about which more will be said presently. As for the remaining features that make up Angloserbian, at graphological, phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels, some of which have been touched on earlier, they are encountered regularly in many kinds of both spoken and written texts, they are less numerous in terms of distinctive patterns, but their share and frequency in real use, especially in spelling, are substantial and on the steady increase (for an analysis of Angloserbian and ways of its realization, see Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapter 7).

Anglicizers and hybridizers

It goes without saying, but often appears to be forgotten, that English on its own exerts no influence on other languages, nor is there any linguistic change occurring on its own. It all happens, as is very well known, through human agency, and any impact of ENFL on Serbian depends exclusively on the people who use Serbian in speech and writing, and in no way on English per se. Consequently, it is necessary to look briefly into the roles of key protagonists, to shed some light on their share, or lack thereof, in the anglicization and hybridization of Serbian. Sketched out now, in a somewhat critical tone, will be the roles of poor translators, anglo-enthusiast speakers/writers, average hearers/readers and professional linguists (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić and Đorić-Francuski2011b).

Chief anglicizers and hybridizers of Serbian are poor translators or, rather, quack-translators. With their painfully limited knowledge of both English and Serbian, and no knowledge of principles of translation, they produce texts that rarely go beyond literal transference of words, phrases and sentences from English, sometimes with mere mechanical copying of words and little or no attention paid to their meaning, to the usage norms of standard Serbian and to the adequacy, interpretability and comprehensibility of such renderings (for a profile of quack-translators, their methods and results, see Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapters 5 and 16; why these quacks are allowed to practise in the first place is a different matter, which will not be pursued here). By and large, their literal approach provides the source of hidden anglicisms, at the level of words, phrases and sentences, including collocations and idioms, which, even though fairly common in everyday use, are recognized only by the knowledgeable few; and their mechanical approach provides the source of obvious anglicisms, englishisms and other English-induced innovations discussed above.

Occasionally also doubling as quack-translators, anglo-enthusiast speakers/writers are principal propagators and promoters of Angloserbian, whether consciously or not, to the almost total disregard of the cooperative principle (cf. Grice, Reference Grice, Cole and Morgan1975) and potential hearers'/readers' communicative needs. Their use of anglicisms and englishisms is either profession-driven, motivated by the belief of experts in many fields that it is only terms from English that are capable of conveying a given technical meaning accurately; or it is status-driven, motivated by the belief of some people that using words and phrases from English makes them trendy and high-class, and creates an impression of belonging, at least outwardly, to a linguistically, culturally and otherwise superior milieu, above all American as the most desirable (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapter 11).

Left to grapple with the verbal output of both quack-translators and anglo-enthusiast speakers/writers, average hearers/readers experience difficulties in interpreting, comprehending and even pronouncing portions of their own increasingly anglicized native language, ranging from abortive attempts at contextual guesstimation to utter miscommunication. (For reports on the results of a pioneering empirical, questionnaire-based, research project into understanding new anglicisms which appear daily in the local print and electronic media, conducted on 80 native speakers of Serbian, university undergraduates, graduates and postgraduates, all of them non-English majors, see Panić, Reference Panić, Rasulić and Trbojević-Milošević2006; Panić-Kavgić, Reference Panić-Kavgić2006.) Ultimately, it is successful communication that is affected the most by the impact of ENFL on Serbian and much less so are the system of Serbian or the growth of Angloserbian, because a good deal of today's shallow speech and writing is often reduced to high-sounding form behind which there is little or no true content, either intended or interpreted, and few of those involved in this sort of exchange of ideas seem to be really concerned about the messages either sent or received.

Quack-translators, speakers/writers and hearers/readers just characterized are not to blame here, since all are victims of the inaction of those most competent and responsible in this area – professional linguists. Many of them quite indifferent towards interlingual contacts, they have failed to give the people interested timely and much-needed guidance on how to deal with elements from English in Serbian, in the form of both education and publication, which has greatly facilitated the anglicization and hybridization of Serbian. Therefore, it is high time that relevant aspects of English–Serbian interlingual contacts, including the impact of ENFL on Serbian, and, by extension, on other dominated languages, found their way into the national curriculum, for a very simple and patently obvious reason: if something is not taught and cultivated, it cannot be expected to be known and used properly, neither can the uninstructed users be criticized for gaps in their knowledge. Such teaching is envisaged to comprise contact linguistic competence, a new type of linguistic knowledge related to the proper use, at all levels, of words and names from ENFL in Serbian or any other non-English language that regularly comes into contact with ENFL. This knowledge, backed up by suitable dictionaries and practical reference guides, would be imparted within the educational system, in English classes, from senior forms of the primary school to the university (for a detailed account of the whys, whats and hows of building contact linguistic competence, see Prćić, Reference Prćić2014). It would be specifically targeted at special language users, a heterogeneous group of people who, by virtue of their profession or vocation, are able to systematically influence, actually or potentially, positively or negatively, the linguistic habits of the general public, often without being aware of it at all. As a result, they carry responsibility for the spoken and written language they produce and this is what makes them special language users, a status to which they must be duly sensitized and for which they must be adequately trained. Belonging in this group are journalists, newspaper and book editors, announcers, news readers, radio and TV hosts, graphic and web designers, advertisers, slogan writers, press and PR officers; then, researchers, teachers in primary, secondary and tertiary education, copyeditors and translators of all kinds of texts; and, most prominently, university students of English language and linguistics, as the most influential prospective special language users related to English (cf. Prćić, Reference Prćić2011a: Chapter 4; Reference Prćić2014).

Summing up and looking ahead

In conclusion, from what has been said so far, the following generalizations can be made:

• • English as a global lingua franca and English as the nativized foreign language are both here to stay.

• • The impact of ENFL on non-English languages, through their anglicization and hybridization, is also here to stay and most likely to further intensify and diversify.

• • Sound knowledge, both active and passive, of very current English has become a cultural prerequisite in today's angloglobalized world, because English makes it possible for people: (a) to interact worldwide with foreigners, native and non-native speakers of English, in two-way communication; (b) to understand a broad range of speech and writing in English in one-way communication; and (c) since comparatively recently to cope with their own increasingly anglicized native languages, even though here English alone is not sufficient, due to changes in form and/or content that some borrowings may undergo in the receiving language.

• • In order to handle the impact of ENFL on non-English languages efficiently, there is a great need to establish, build and institutionally teach contact linguistic competence.

All things considered, it is high proficiency in English supplemented with appropriate contact linguistic competence that should become an integral part of acquired knowledge of all well-educated non-native graduates of English language and linguistics in the years to come. This would undoubtedly contribute to strengthening peaceful coexistence between ENFL as the dominant language and its dominated languages, and hopefully, in time, to keeping the impact of ENFL within manageable proportions.