Anglicisation or anglicization is the process of converting anything to more "English" norms. Social and economic anglicisation was an objective of the English crown in the Celtic regions of the United Kingdom, in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Social anglicisation was also a feature in some sectors of society under the British Empire. Anglicisation of language In terms of language, anglicisation is a policy of use of the English language, such as was one of the causes contributing to the Boer War. The adoption of English as a personal, preferred language is another form of anglicisation. Calvin Veltman, following the methods of analysis developed in Quebec, Canada for establishing rates of language shift, uses the term to refer to the practice of individuals in minority language groups who cease using their mother tongue as their usual, preferred language and adopt English instead. When such individuals continue to speak their mother tongue, they are referred to as "English-dominant bilinguals" and when they cease to do so, they are referred to as "English monolinguals". Rates of anglicisation may be calculated by comparing the number of people who usually speak English to the total number of people in any given minority language group. Anglicisation of non-English-language vocabulary and names Anglicisation within a language is adapting oral or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to a speaker of English; or in general, of altering something so that it becomes English in form or character. It is also called anglification, anglifying, or Englishing. Anglicisation of loan words The term 'anglicisation' sometimes refers to the process of altering the pronunciation or spelling of a foreign word when it is borrowed into English. Personal names may also be anglicised. This was common for names of antiquity or of foreign heads of state, and it has also been common among immigrants to English-speaking countries. There have also been cases of deliberate change during periods of international stress or war, for example, Battenberg was deliberately changed to Mountbatten. Non-English words may be anglicised by changing their form and pronunciation to something more familiar to English speakers. For example, the Latin word obscenus /obskeːnus/ has been imported into English in the modified form obscene /əbˈsiːn/. Changing endings in this manner is especially common, and can be frequently seen when foreign words are imported into any language. For example, 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). Anglicisation of non-English place names Some foreign place names are commonly anglicised in English as English exonyms. Examples include the Italian cities of Roma, Napoli and Milano, known in English as Rome, Naples and Milan, the German cities of Köln (Cologne), München (Munich) and, more subtly, Hannover (Hanover), the Danish city of København (Copenhagen), the Swedish city of Göteborg (Gothenburg), the Dutch city of Den Haag (The Hague), the Spanish city of "Sevilla" (Seville), the Egyptian city of القاهرة Al-Qāhira (Cairo), and the Moroccan city of مراكش Marraksh which had been called "Morocco" in medieval English literature and is renamed "Marrakesh" in modern-day English writings. Such anglicisation was once more common: nearly all cities and people discussed in English literature up to the mid-19th century had their names anglicised. In the late 19th century, however, use of non-English names in English began to become more common. When dealing with languages that use the same Latin alphabet as English, names are now more usually written in English as they happen in their local language, sometimes even with diacritical marks that do not normally appear in English. With languages that use non-Latin alphabets, such as the Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Korean Hangul, and other alphabets, a direct transliteration is typically used, which is then often pronounced according to English rules. Non-Latin based languages may use standard romanisation systems, such as Japanese Rōmaji or Chinese (Mandarin) Pīnyīn. The Japanese and Chinese names are spelled in English following these spellings with some common exceptions, usually without Chinese tone marks and without Japanese macrons for long vowels (Chóngqìng to Chongqing (重慶, 重庆), Shíjiāzhuāng to Shijiazhuang (石家莊, 石家庄), both in China, Kyōto to Kyoto (京都) in Japan)

• published: 08 Feb 2014
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