The main goal of this work is to map Spanish loanwords in contemporary Slovak. Based on the defined criteria, we found 108 words of Spanish origin. We paid great attention to the etymology of the words, which was a key criterion in their selection. In addition to these loanwords, we offer an overview of words that came into Slovak from Arabic and Indian languages through Spanish, as well as of those that originated in other languages, but with the original basis of the word also coming from Spanish. We analyze the Spanish loanwords as for the adaptation processes, in terms of classification into thematic areas, we classify them chronologically according to the century of the first written occurrence as well as the frequency of their use in Slovak.
In Spanish, so-called learned words, derived from Latin, form etymological doublets with popular words, both of them tracing their origin to the same Latin etymon. While popular words have undergone many acoustic and sometimes semantic changes, learned words have been subject to only minor formal and, to a lesser extent, semantic alterations. Learned words are used mostly in specialized and technical terminology, sometimes in literary style. In Slovak there are very few etymological doublets because the main source of loanwords was neither its preceding Paleoslavic stage, nor Old Slavonic, or any other Slavic language. On the other hand, in Russian we can observe many loanword doublets consisting of popular words alongside Old Church Slavonic lexis.
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