"Ja putsari toi lihan, pääkäri toi leivän." Australiansuomen leksikaaliset lainat ja kielen säilyttäminen

• Magdolna Kovács

Abstrakti

The effect of lexical borrowing on language maintenance in Australian Finnish (englanti)

3/2001 (106)

Magdolna Kovcs THE EFFECT OF LEXICAL BORROWING ON LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE IN AUSTRALIAN FINNISH

In Australia, almost all immigrant and aboriginal languages have gone through a partial or complete language shift. The article examines Australian Finnish (AusFi), analysing its lexical borrowing from the point of view of language maintenance and language shift. Because AusFi has been little studied, the writer also gives descriptive information on lexical borrowing into AusFi as well as basic information on this variant of Finnish. A word is considered to have been borrowed into AusFi if it originates from Australian English (AusEng) and is phonologically, morphologically and syntactically adapted to AusFi. The article is based on lexical borrowing data for AusFi assembled by the writer from 50 interviews with Australian Finns recorded by Hannele Hentula in 1986.

The most obvious difference between AusFi and Finnish spoken in Finland (FinFi) is the extent of lexical borrowing from AusEng. The phenomenon of lexical borrowing connects AusFi to American Finnish (AmFi), in which lexical borrowing has been from American English (AmEng), as described by, for example, Virtaranta (1992) and Virtaranta et al. (1993). The phonological adaptation of AusEng words into AusFi follows the lines described for AmEng into AmFi (e.g. Lehtinen 1966, Martin 1989 and 1993a, b). For example, borrowed substantives usually get an additional -i in both AusFi and AmFi, and some voiced consonants lose their voicedness when borrowed. In both AusFi and AmFi, verbs are mainly adapted as contracted verbs, as is the case with most loan verbs in FinFi. Proper names are also subject to lexical borrowing in both AusFi and AmFi, behaving in the same way as common nouns.

There is no great difference between AusFi and AmFi in the distribution of lexical borrowings between word classes. Most of the borrowed words in AusFi and AmFi are nouns (78% in both AusFi and AmFi), which is also true in other languages. The typical semantic areas of lexical borrowings are similar in AusFi and AmFi. However, the similarities observed may be at least partially due to the fact that the interview questions for AusFi were almost the same as those used for AmFi.

There are also differences in lexical borrowings between AusFi and AmFi. Firstly, as Finnish migration to Australia is much more recent than migration to America, the number of established loan words is much greater in AmFi than in AusFi (although, as the writer notes, there is no phonological, morphological or syntactical difference between sporadic, low-frequency borrowings and established high-frequency loans). Secondly, although many of the same English words are borrowed into AusFi and AmFi, there are also many borrowed words unique to AusFi. These are usually cultural borrowings, that is, words describing Australian people, objects, animals, plants and institutions, for example AusFi kaaski < AusEng (wine) cask a container for 3-5 litres of wine; AusFi aussi < AusEng aussie Australian; or AusFi pomi < AusEng Pommy people of British origin (pejorative). The differences between AusFi and AmFi are sometimes caused by the fact that the vocabulary of AusEng follows British English (BrEng) more than AmEng (e.g. AusFi petroli < AusEng petrol vs. AmFi ksoliini < AmEng gasoline).

Through its lexical borrowing from AusEng, AusFi is diverging more and more from FinFi. However, there is also a tendency in contemporary FinFi for lexical borrowing from AmEng and BrEng, which is serving to bring it closer to AusFi.

Regarding language maintenance and language shift, Thomason and Kaufman (1991 [1988]: 50, 74-76) consider lexical borrowing to be the first sign of language change in a contact situation. Massive lexical borrowing from AusEng into AusFi is evidence of contact-induced language change in AusFi: a vocabulary shift is occurring from AusEng into AusFi. Structural borrowing, however, plays a much more important role in language change than lexical borrowing. The extent to which AusFi is undergoing language maintenance or language shift cannot be fully determined without analysing structural borrowing.