Contemporary English Loan-Words in Ewe: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal

Abstract

As part of the colonial hangover, English continues to exert enormous influence on African languages. This is particularly true of registers and technical words connected with modern technology, medicine, law, politics, sports and games, among others. Like most languages, Ewe has been enriched by borrowings and loan words from other linguistic jurisdictions, both proximate and distant. While the corpus of borrowings from other languages appears to be stabilized or static, those from English continue to enlarge. Borrowings from English can be placed in two main categories – those in the domain of literates and those in the domain of non-literates. In this discussion, an attempt is made to highlight the contexts in which English borrowings occur and how they continue to shape the Ewe language.