Anglicisms Used in the Law on Higher Education in Kosovo (2011): Contrastive Analysis with the Law on Higher Education in Kosovo (1974)

Abstract

English is one of the most widely used and influential languages worldwide. In Albanian, its influence is present in the entire lexis and almost all domains and styles of use, and anglicisms, defined as words borrowed from English, are frequent in contemporary Albanian. Today, it seems as if any obstacles to the penetration of foreign words have been removed, and the Albanian Law on Higher Education in Kosovo (2011) is not an exception. The main purpose of this paper is to research the use of anglicisms in the field of higher education in Kosovo with a special emphasis on the contrast between this law and the Law on Higher Education in Kosovo (1974), the first such law in Kosova. This study, the first of the 1974 Law, demonstrates the impact that English has had on the Albanian legal language since 1974, as many Albanian words have been displaced by anglicisms in the period since. To this end, we present an overview of all the anglicisms in the 2011 Law, focusing on the overall number of anglicisms used, their classification by word class, examples of morphological and phonological adaption, and a contrastive analysis with the language used in the Law on HE (1974). Specifically, we look at the Albanian words in the Law of 1974 that were later substituted with anglicisms and these anglicisms’ frequency of use. 

Received: 17 January 2024 / Accepted: 25 February 2024 / Published: 5 March 2024