A Gallicism is a foreign language derived from French and incorporated into Spanish or other languages. Examples of Gallicisms used in Spanish are: Fans: amateurs; Slang: slang; Batista (batiste): a type of cloth; Beige, color designated by the French word; Bon vivant: see gourmet on this same list; Boutique; DIY (bricolage): non-professional manual activity aimed at designing or decorating a house.
There are many concepts that can help us visualize the existence of Gallicisms that refer to concepts widely used in Spanish. The term boutique is used very commonly to refer to fashion stores.
There are many grammatical structures that, despite coming from French, have been integrated into Spanish naturally. It should be noted that, although in this case we focus our attention on the Franco-Spanish relationship, the influence of the first language may be present in others. And in that case, these built-in terms are also called Gallicism.
Gallicisms occur in 3 ways and are as follows:
- As a lexical loan, that is, keeping its original meaning adapting it to Spanish.
- As a semantic loan, that is, simply by adopting the meaning of a certain word, giving that word more diversity.
- As a semantic feature, that is, taking the translated meaning of the borrowed French term.
The Royal Spanish Academy reflects on how the use of foreign words can lead to an impoverishment of a language as rich as Spanish. This can be clearly observed in the fashion sector since in many blogs on this subject we can read many concepts that have their origin in English.
Sometimes, Gallicism can show the assimilation of a term that covers its own void in the language that adopts that concept. In others, it is about offering alternatives to refer to a specific object.
The concept of amateur, which can be used in the theater to refer to works performed by amateurs, is a term incorporated in French.
When studying a language, linguists are experts who analyze the origin and evolution of words.
