journal of linguistic studies

- parking (DOOM 2005) – etymological spelling;
- taim-aut (DEX 1998) – phonetic spelling;
- time-out (DOOM 2005) – etymological spelling.
3. ANALYSIS
Lyutakova Rumyana approaches the topic under discussion in an article (The
orthographic adaptation of English borrowings in Romanian and Bulgarian) that
appeared in the Romanoslavica journal, in 2004. She explains that the English
borrowings that enter the Romanian language are first of all assimilated from a phonetic
point of view and only afterwards from an orthographic one. She also talks about the
different degrees of orthographic adaptation. Her classification bears some resemblance
to that of Hristea (1995). She mentions three stages of orthographic adaptation:
initial/preliminary adaptation, the stage of borrowings that are under way of adaptation
and the assimilation (borrowings that are completely assimilated into Romanian).
3.1. THE INITIAL ADAPTATION
The English borrowings that fall into this category have an incomplete degree of
adaptation to the orthographic system of Romanian and most of them preserve their
original spelling. Lyutakova (2004) remarks that this is actually an open-ended area
where “isolated uses” (2004) may occur but usually such usages do not go beyond this
stage of adaptation.
Most of the English borrowings belong to this stage and they have an etymological
spelling. Apart from the recent borrowings: hardware, marketing, workshop, feedback,
brainstorming, hold-up, pacemaker, killer, display, challenge-day, duty-free, airbag, etc.
(some of them are not recorded in dictionaries of present-day Romanian: DEX, MDN,
DOOM), there are also some borrowings whose spelling has not been changed yet
although they are older borrowings: team, bridge, whisky, western, twist, rummy, musical,
etc. Lyutakova (2004) states further that this initial stage can be easily covered if the form
of the etymon ranges naturally among those in the Romanian orthographic system. She
provides some examples: hit, top, poster, spot, card, and clip.
3.2. ENGLISH BORROWINGS THAT ARE UNDER WAY OF ADAPTATION
This represents the intermediary stage that” shows the evolution of the borrowing in
its way towards assimilation” (Lyutakova 2004). The borrowed word has a transitory
form displaying the features of both the donor and the receiving language (a combination
of etymological and phonetic spelling). The borrowings that are at this stage have hybrid
spellings and, for some of them, more than one spelling is recorded in the dictionaries.
The spelling variants denote “the evolution and the direction of changes that took
place in the process of adaptation” (Lyutakova 2004). As long as there are still variants of
spelling the process of assimilation is not completely over.
Mioara Avram (1987) distinguishes between the variants recorded and accepted by
DOOM and those used in every day speech which are not recorded in that dictionary or in
others that tackle normative issues. There are many examples of spelling variants
(etymological/phonetic spelling):
31