Anglicisation (linguistics)
In linguistics, anglicization or anglicisation is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce or understand in English. The term commonly refers to the respelling of foreign words or loan words in English, often to a more drastic degree than that implied in, for example, romanisation. One instance is the word "dandelion", modified from the French dent-de-lion ("lion's tooth", a reference to the plant's sharply indented leaves). The term can also refer to phonological adaptation without spelling change: for example, pasta (pronounced in Italian) is accepted in English with Italian spelling, but anglicised phonetically in being pronounced in American English and in British English. The anglicisation of non-English words for use in English is just one case of the more widespread domestication of foreign words that is a feature of many languages, sometimes involving shifts in meaning. The term does not cover the unmodified adoption of foreign words into English (e.g. kindergarten) or the unmodified adoption of English words into foreign languages (e.g. internet, computer, web). Loan words Non-English words may be anglicised by changing their form and/or pronunciation to something more familiar to English speakers. Changing grammatical endings is especially common. The Latin word obscenus has been imported into English in the modified form "obscene" . The plural form of a foreign word may be modified to fit English norms more conveniently, like using "indexes" as the plural of index, rather than indices, as in Latin. The word "opera" (itself the plural form of the Latin word opus) is understood in English to be a singular noun, so it has received an English plural form, "operas". The English word "damsel" is an anglicisation of the Old French damoisele (modern demoiselle), meaning "young lady". Another form of anglicising is the inclusion of a foreign article as part of a noun (such as alkali from the Arabic al-qili). "Rotten Row", the name of a London pathway that was a fashionable place to ride horses in the 18th and 19th centuries, is an adaptation of the French phrase Route du Roi. The word "genie" has been anglicized via Latin from jinn or djinn from , originally meaning demon or spirit. Some changes are motivated by the desire to preserve the pronunciation of the word in the original language, such as the word "schtum", which is phonetic spelling for the German word stumm, meaning silent. The French word "homage" was introduced by the Normans after 1066, and its pronunciation became anglicised as /ˈhɒmɪdʒ/, with stress on the first syllable; but in recent times showbusiness and Hollywood have taken to pronouncing "homage" in the French fashion, rhyming with "fromage". Place names Some places are named something different in English than they are in their native language, e.g. Florence for . This is not always the case; some places are just transferred instead, e.g. old names like Amsterdam and Madrid and new names like Port-au-Prince. De-anglicisation has become a matter of national pride in some places and