Italian Loanwords in Contemporary Bosnian Language

Abstract

This article is about Italian loanwords in the contemporary Bosnian language. The article illustrates the ways of adaptation and integration of Italianisms into the Bosnian language system, on the phonetic-phonological and orthographic, morphological and semantic level, with the aim of at least partially shedding light on this alloglottic element in contemporary Bosnian language. Phonological adaptation essentially means replacing phonemes from the donor language with phonemes from the recipient language in each borrowed word. Therefore, special attention was paid to, among other things, Italian diphthongs, Italian semivowels, geminated consonants, and individual sounds, i.e. those phonological features of the Italian language that were particularly emphasized in the adaptation process. The orthographic differences between Bosnian and Italian are most noticeable in the category of recording individual consonants and consonant groups. In the process of adapting Italianisms at the morphological level of the linguistic structure of Bosnian, the main task is to compare the basic forms of words in the source language with the basic forms of the same words in the recipient language with the aim of determining similarities and differences between them. That is why the focus of the research was noun Italianisms (nouns that have the same gender in Italian and Bosnian, as well as nouns that have different genders in Italian and Bosnian), verb Italianisms, adjective Italianisms and adverbial Italianisms. The adaptation of Italian loanwords at the semantic level implies a comparative examination of the meaning of the original word in Italian in relation to the meaning that the loanword has in Bosnian. That’s why Italianisms with an unchanged meaning, as well as Italianisms with a changed meaning, were analyzed.