Background

If Kachru's (Reference Kachru1982) triadic classification is extrapolated and applied to the study of lexical blending as a word-formation mechanism whereby two (or more rarely three) words are merged together in English – as in brunch (breakfast + lunch) – it becomes apparent that previous research has concentrated on the ‘Inner Circle’, that is, the coinage of these words in the historical bases of the English-speaking world or ‘Anglosphere’.

In this regard, no differences in terms of existing or new blends have been pointed out among varieties of English spoken in the ‘Inner Circle’; ‘Outer Circle’, where English is not the autochthonous ‘native’ language but still plays a significant role; and the ‘Expanding Circle’, where this language is used as a means of international communication (Kachru, Reference Kachru1982). As Schneider (Reference Scherling2007: 12–13) states, these three circles correlate with the traditional distinctions ENL (‘English as a Native Language’), ESL (‘English as a Second Language’), and EFL (‘English as a Foreign Language’), which explains why the ‘Inner Circle’ countries still act as norm-providers for others not only in terms of grammar but also in almost any sphere of the language.

In this paper I discuss how the ‘Expanding Circle’ is developing idiosyncratic examples of cross-linguistic word-formations, in particular, blends. Blending is a deeply rooted word-formation mechanism in English and is also attested in other languages in which compounding and clipping are recurrent mechanisms to coin new lexis (Brdar-Szabo & Brdar, Reference Brdar-Szabó and Brdar2008). Proof of this is the fact that, despite its historically marginal role in traditional linguistic studies, blending increasingly continues to be ‘an intentional and formally ingenious way of associating the semantics of two or more words in a new morphological object’ (Renner, Reference Renner, Fernández-Domínguez, Furiassi and Gottlieb2015: 119) in such diverse languages as Polish, Greek, Chinese, or Modern Hebrew. This leads me to hypothesise that cross-linguistic blended words like the ones described herein will become more and more common in the coming years.

In order to substantiate my claim I will first contextualise the emergence of cross-linguistic blending by referring to the status of English as a lingua franca. I argue that these blends can be analysed as the culmination of an on-going process of ‘Anglicisation’ of linguistic manifestations, ranging from somewhat macaronic, hybrid varieties such as Denglish (<Deutsch + English), Chinglish (<Chinese + English), Spanglish (<Spanish + English) to fully-fledged Anglicisms which have been incorporated into the recipient languages by adapting their spellings and pronunciations (e.g. Spanish fútbol [‘football’], beisbol [‘baseball’]) or escáner [‘scanner’]). In close connection with this point, I will briefly discuss a number of word-formations which evidence English influences and autonomous appropriations of the English language in a range of European languages. Subsequently, I will discuss some of the most remarkable examples of cross-linguistic blends encountered in Spanish and in what ways they are unique. Only over the last two years more than 20 instances of this type of blend have been recorded, which illustrates how popular this new trend is despite not being attested in any dictionaries or corpora. This is due to the relatively novelty – and short lifespan – of the terms and their singular character, as they are neither 100% Spanish nor 100% English.

The influence of English: a changing scenario?

The hegemonic position of English as a global language seems to be an uncontested reality. ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ (ELF), ‘World English’ (WE) – understood here as an umbrella term rather than in its narrower sense, which refers to Englishes in the so-called ‘Outer Circle’ (Kachru, Reference Kachru1982) – ‘English as an International language’ (EIL) or ‘Global English’ (GE) are just a few of the labels loosely used to describe varieties of English spoken by non-native speakers that reflect the far-reaching spread of English worldwide.

These conceptualisations seem to create a dichotomy between ‘non-standard’, non-native uses of the language and those promoted by native speakers. This reinforces a monocentric conception of English as a stable ‘standard’ entity, which sets the agenda for the rest of ‘peripheral’ Englishes, but at the same time it remains unaffected by local uses developed beyond the ‘Inner Circle’ (Kachru, Reference Kachru1982). However, this is far from the case in reality.

The possibility of codifying EFL forms – or recurrent uses – has progressively gained ground, and scholars believe that analyses of intercultural communication between non-native and native speakers will reveal how EFL speakers can also take the lead and influence native speakers’ linguistic choices (cf. Jenkins, Reference Jenkins2006: 161). The adoption of the word SMS meaning ‘a text message using Short Messaging Service’ by English native speakers is a small yet significant example of how influential the use of English as a means of international communication can be. The concept of SMS was developed by a French technician, Bernard Ghillebaert, together with the German engineer Friedhelm Hillebrand, and the term was (and still is) mainly used across Continental Europe where it is preferred over text (message), the latter being much more common in the UK or the US.

The somewhat permeable boundaries among linguistic varieties have raised questions as to who owns English. As Crystal (Reference Crystal1997: 2–3) points out:

On a global scale, the appropriation of English has extended beyond words per se and affected semantic and structural aspects of languages. Motivations for this go beyond extra-linguistic reasons (e.g. to convey elitism or snobbery) since these new English-inspired constructions tend to favour linguistic economy (e.g. the use of noun+noun constructions instead of Noun 1 + preposition/genitive + Noun 2 structures in Romanian [Traşcǎ, Reference Schneider2012] or in Slavonic languages [Vakareliyska & Kapatsinski, Reference Traşcă2014]) or express nuances which were not so easily conveyed without making use of English (e.g. English-based nominal compounds in Russian). Over time, this tendency has resulted in a ‘greater confidence in manipulating non-native words’ (Veisbergs, Reference Vakareliyska and Kapatsinski2006: 475).

The Anglicisation of autochthonous word-formations

Along with the influx of lexical Anglicisms or English-origin words, English is exerting an ever-increasing impact on how complex words are processed in recipient languages. For example, English compounds may be translated into ‘native’ equivalents following the order existing in the recipient languages (e.g. compounds are left-headed in Spanish, and therefore, translated Anglicisms in Spanish should be left-headed as in Sp. delantero centro, literally, ‘forward-centre’ <Eng. centre-forward). However, Anglicisms may also be symmetrically rendered (i.e. word-by-word), thereby reversing the prototypical order of words in the recipient language (e.g. Eng. science fiction> Sp. ciencia ficción).

Further examples which show how Anglicisms act as a mediating factor in the use of structures which were either limitedly productiveFootnote ¹ in the recipient language or unproductive before the influence of English include some of the following: the great popularisation of noun + noun constructions in Romanian as in sistem aerisire ‘ventilation system’ or şef securitate ‘security chief’ (cf. Traşcǎ, Reference Schneider2012: 88) and the apparently similar case of French noun + noun structures (e.g. surprise partie [<surprise party] or tour opérateur [<tour operator]). The independence of these Anglicisms from English patterns is underscored by Loock (Reference Konieczna, Renner, Maniez and Arnaud2013: 263), who points out that ‘while some of the words used in the examples can be explained by the traditional morphological process of borrowing from English, others seem to have appeared and to be evolving independently of it’.

Nominal compounds in Russian have also increased their productivity as a result of the presence of English in the language, which is attested through the large number of English ‘borrowings’ in the modifiers of these compounds such as dans-terapija ‘dance therapy’, onlajn-zajavka ‘online application’, or kaver-versija ‘cover version’ (cf. Vakareliyska & Kapatsinski, Reference Traşcă2014). As Vakareliyska and Kapatsinski (Reference Traşcă2014) suggest, these [(English) Noun (Russian) Noun] patterns convey a meaning relationship which is more difficult to conceptualise using native constructions.

At the other end of the spectrum of English-induced linguistic changes in modern languages are words which resemble English but are in fact either autonomous creations or words, which despite their English-origin, are not found in dictionaries. These are known as ‘pseudoanglicisms’ or ‘false Anglicisms’. Renner and Fernández-Domínguez (Reference Plag and Brown2015) point out that, after resemanticisation (i.e. the process whereby words acquire new meanings), compounding is the most frequent process whereby false Anglicisms are coined in French, Spanish, and Italian. Some attestations of autonomous compounds include French home-trainer ‘exercise bicycle’, Spanish pressing catch ‘professional wrestling’, Italian beauty farm ‘health farm’ (Renner & Fernández-Domínguez, Reference Plag and Brown2015: 154) or Russian klipmejker / bjutimejker (‘clip maker’ / ‘beauty maker’) ‘creator of YouTube-type video clip’ and ‘stylist’, respectively (Kapatsinski & Vakareliyska, Reference Kapatsinski and Vakareliyska2013: 73). This English-inspired juxtaposition of words goes even further in Japanese, a language in which loanwords are not restricted to particular word classes but are freely used. This ‘leaves the door open’ for myriads of original combinations such as o-ba-fensu < over + fence (a ‘home run’ in baseball) or maibu-mu < my + boom (‘one's personal fad’) (Scherling, Reference Renner, Zirker and Winter-Froemel2016: 280).

Other word-formation processes which false Anglicisms may undergo encompass metonymy (for instance, inventor/invention relationships in such words as French chatterton [<Jonathan Edwards Chatterton] ‘friction tape’ or montgomery [<Bernard Law Montgomery] ‘duffel coat’) and, more importantly for the purpose of the present paper, lexical blending (e.g. French bicross [<bicyclette/bicycle + cross] ‘BMX’ or tansad [<tandem + saddle] ‘pillion’) (Renner & Fernández-Domínguez, Reference Plag and Brown2015: 154).

Regarding blending, under the influence of English, this word-formation process has been activated not only in Spanish, but also in Polish (cf. Konieczna, Reference Kapatsinski and Vakareliyska2012; Jaworski, Reference Jaworski, Koll-Stobbe and Knospe2014) and Latvian, a language in which blending as such did not previously exist (cf. Veisbergs, Reference Vakareliyska and Kapatsinski2006: 476). Some blends reported in Latvian by Veisbergs (Reference Vakareliyska and Kapatsinski2006) are adapted English borrowings (e.g. kaplete < kapsula tablete ‘caplet’), whilst others are ingenious native creations which may play with existing words such as migrorajons ‘migrants' region’ (which results from the substitution of c with g in mikrorajons ‘micro-region’).

Either as direct borrowings (e.g. loan translations) or indirect borrowings (e.g. false Anglicisms) all these somewhere-in-between cases show how a rigid taxonomical distinction of the ‘English/non-English’ type is impractical when contact-induced changes are examined. Rather, these creations prove to be far more complex. This is particularly so in cases such as ‘hybrid loans’, words which involve material from both the source and the recipient language (e.g. Russian bryk-dans [lit. ‘kick-dance’, created by analogy with ‘breakdance’] and Japanese itameshi ‘Italian food’ [meshi meaning ‘food’]). Hybrid loans are indeed the closest linguistic realisations to cross-linguistic blends that have been examined in the previous literature.

Cross-linguistic blends in Spanish

The examples of cross-linguistic blends that I will examine next have been selected on the basis of overlapping between two words from the two source languages (namely, Spanish and English). That is to say, these novels words cannot be effectively processed by just looking at the two source words that make up the blend independently, but rather the harmonious fusion needs to be understood as a whole (e.g. APPDelantar [app + adelantar ‘overtake other vehicles / be fast’] = ‘an app which enables drivers to know the state of roads, drive more efficiently, and save time’Footnote ² ).

I excluded those words which seemed to have been modelled on existing derivative words like twitterías (<Twitter + Spanish suffix −ería [as in tontería ‘nonsense’]) or shakissimo^® (<shake + Italian –issimo). The ample number of words sharing a given ending hinders their categorisation as blends at all and leans me towards treating them as outcomes of a process of analogical extension. I also discarded those blends whose connection with English was very remote and those words that did not contain any Spanish or were not really blends, as in ‘Stop Lionel or it could get messy’Footnote ³ (playing with the footballer's surname Messi).

Still, the boundaries between English and Spanish in the blends collected sometimes remain fuzzy. Although it is possible to discern which source word (either the English or the Spanish one) prevails and acts as the blend ‘skeleton’, the blends in question may just be distinguished from the Spanish/English everyday word by just one letter, something which at the same time makes them unique (e.g. wrápidos vs. rápidos in Spanish).

Accordingly, the data I have been compiling can be broadly classified into two groups: (1) blends which mainly evoke existing words in Spanish although they contain full words in English, and (2) those which resemble English but, for the context in which they occur, it is clear that Spanish is in the background. Arguably, some purists could label these new words either as ‘pseudo-Spanish’ or as ‘pseudo-English’ respectively. However, the simultaneous familiarity with both English and Spanish that is required on the reader's/speaker's side in order to capture the real meaning and playful nature of the coinages renders this classification simplistic.

Likewise, it is worth noting that most of these words are created to catch the prospective reader's/customer's attention either in advertisements, business names, magazines, etc. Among them are imperative verbs which directly address the reader/hearer such as summergete (playing with the existing Spanish verb sumérgete [plunge] and summer, the period in which the water park that is being advertised is open), and app-based blends such as app-tualízate (app + actualízate ‘keep you updated’ = ‘keep you updated in terms of apps’) applícate (app + aplícate ‘apply yourself’ = ‘make the most of students apps’) and apprende (app + aprende ‘learn’ = ‘a company that teaches how to create apps’Footnote ⁴ ), amongst others.

Other blends attempt to be singularly descriptive. Examples of this include the company name funtástico (fun + fantástico ‘fantastic’ = fun and fantastic), whose translated motto is ‘Gadgets for a funtastic life!’ (¡Gadgets para una vida funtástica!); wrápidos (wrap + rápidos ‘fast’ = ‘food packs containing all the essentials to make wraps quickly’ (see Figure 1); and freección (free + ficción ‘fiction’ = ‘a network of film-makers that create non-fiction’). Other catchy blends that primarily evoke Spanish altered words are clowndestino  (clown + clandestino ‘clandestine’ ‘an ‘exclusive’ drama company which specialises in clowning’Footnote ⁵ ) or a restaurant's summer party freshderica (fresh + Frederica, the restaurant's name). This blend deliberately coincides with the setting up of an air conditioner, which is why the atmosphere will still be ‘fresher’. In fact, the translation of the promotional message reads as follows ‘from now on cool off [refréshcate] at Freshderica!’Footnote ⁶ .

Figure 1.

The use of the blend wrápidos in an everyday product

Other blends deviate more prominently from existing words. Batucats is a clear instance of how more than two languages may influence the coinage of cross-linguistic blends. Batucadas (referring to percussion performances) is a very common word in Spanish, whereas the ending in -ats/-ades is the equivalent in Catalan (a co-official language in the region where this blend was coined) to the past participle ados/adas (English -ed). The local club responsible for these performances wanted to incorporate the image of a cat to its logo, which is why they played with the ending in -ats and the English word cats (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Batucats logo

As for blends based on English-looking words, three examples are worth examining: cinking, fintonic, and cocktéls. These epitomise varying degrees of semantic transparency. The meaning of fintonic is perhaps more difficult to identify than that of cinking because of the contextual cues available. The former one, fintonic, is a money management app and sonorously evokes the word gintonic (a simplified version of gin and tonic used in some countries of the ‘Expanding Circle’ such as Germany, Japan, or Spain). Even though the name of this app usually occurs in isolation, that is, without any context from which to derive meaning, as shown in Figure 3 there is sometimes a gloss which points out that the first source word is fitness (rather than financial as it could also be hypothesised). This gloss reads as follows, ‘your accounts in shape’ (‘tus cuentas en forma’). Therefore, arguably the app enables customers to manage their own accounts and ‘get their money fit’ without the pressure of external factors (hence, the reference to the cocktail).

Figure 3.

Fintonic and its gloss

On the other hand, unlike fintonic, the word cinking is always visually and verbally explained in the advertising campaign of cars in which it is used. It is in the interest of the car factory that the message does get across and that it is easily remembered, which is why the definition of this cross-linguistic blend is clearly stated: ‘cinking is thinking about 5’. This message is accompanied by a thinking bubble and the number 5, which is repeated several times when explaining the conditions of their products.

Prospective customers are given many chances to think about their cars: it includes a five-year warranty, five-year roadside assistance, and five-year auto maintenance (see Figure 4). Besides, customers are also allowed to change or return their brand-new car if they are not satisfied (implicit is the fact that customers can think about this product even when they have already purchased it).

Figure 4.

The meaning of cinking contextualised

Finally, cocktéls (‘a cocktail which contains tea’) is a noteworthy example as it plays with two English words which have been fully integrated into Spanish: coctel ‘cocktail’ + té ‘tea’. Cocktail is used along with coctel in Spanish, but ck is not a permissible Spanish consonant combination (cluster) because of the phonotactic constraints in the language. Therefore, this blend may be perceived as a foreign word. However, although the English spelling of cocktail has been kept, the Spanish word té (‘tea’) is embedded in the word cocktail in mid-position (i.e. cocktéls). This is a clear sample of how Spanish speakers have completely assimilated English words and gone a step further, creating new words which only work well in Spanish.

Overall, a smaller number of this type of English-looking blends has been encountered because it is likely that neither English nor Spanish people can easily process these English-like – yet non-English – words, but instead they would probably find them alien and require more time to process unless the context is explicit (as in the case of cinking).

All these words exemplify how cross-linguistic blending can be an attention-grabbing strategy to powerfully convey a message in just one word. This type of lexical blending had not been previously attested in Spanish, which leads me to believe that the constantly increasing number of speakers of EFL is revolutionising the ways in which words (regardless of their Spanish or English origin) are manipulated to meet speakers’ expressive needs.

Spanish speakers not only use English-origin words but also draw on their knowledge of both Spanish and English to create words that engage the recipient in a word play in which both parties (coiners and recipients) partake. Those which are able to produce and understand these blends ‘navigate between two seas’, taking advantage of their understanding of both languages in a display of what I would call ‘EFL speakers’ creativity’.