engleski

Lexical access to unadapted English loanwords in Croatian: evidence from translation priming

The influence of English as lingua franca has resulted in an influx of unadapted English words into numerous languages, including Croatian. However, cognitive processing of such words has not been studied yet. A translation priming experiment was designed to examine the processing of 64 unadapted English loanwords in Croatian. Croatian native speakers with different levels of English proficiency participated in the study. A significant translation priming effect was observed in both language directions, while language direction and proficiency did not show a significant effect on participants’ reaction times. This suggests that the most frequent unadapted English loanwords are well integrated into Croatian despite their unadapted forms and processed highly efficiently by Croatian speakers of variable English proficiency levels.

bilingualism, lexical access, English loanwords, translation priming, lexical decision task

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