s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

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Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld
This fuzziness has been also observed in our questionnaire. As the results of
the questionnaire indicate, the degree of assimilation does not play any role (see
some examples quoted above). Similarly, the discussed distinction of the two
terms is not related to the time of the introduction of, in our case, an anglicism
(e.g., very old loans like dancing, dandys were considered to be foreignisms).
This difficulty is similar to many unsolved problems in linguistics, e.g.,
there are no satisfactory definitions of such basic terms as the word, sentence,
clause, etc. Analogically, the discussion reminds us of the question posed in
Polish linguistics concerning the number of grammatical genders, to which no
conclusive answer has been ever suggested.
All in all, it may be concluded that, although we try to provide different
definitions of the two terms in question or different typologies, in fact the two
terms are so fuzzy that in practice they are not clearly distinguished either by
specialists or by well-educated native speakers. We can only state that, in the
present era of globalization, English will probably continue to influence the
vocabulary of the Polish language regardless of the status of the lexis (borrowings
or foreignisms).
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