Frequency of usage of internationalisms and their equivalents in the Latvian language

Abstract

The current variationist sociolinguistic study illustrates the frequency of usage of internationalisms and their Latvian counterparts in the contemporary Latvian language. The present research has the aim to explore which type of words is more often used in media and in everyday speech. The first part of the study focuses on linguistic variables, such as word length, number of meanings each word has, and parts of speech. With the help of a list of internationalisms and their Latvian counterparts one examines two 0.5 million word corpora consisting of online news articles from 2007 and 2018. The second part of the research consists of language tests and is devoted to social variables: age, gender, and ethnicity. Results based on the examination of linguistic variables show that international words increase their number within a period of approximately 10 years. Whereas in the bigger part of the cases shorter words are preferred, the number of meanings a word has seems not to be of significance. Besides, examination of parts of speech shows that adjectives are the group in which international words are mostly preferred. Regarding the second part of the study, it turns out that each word constitutes an individual case that represents the background of the participants. In general, people under 40 years old use internationalisms slightly more often, while gender does not play any crucial role for the choice between international and Latvian words. At the same time, ethnic Russians living in Latvia tend to use internationalisms more frequently than Latvians.