Abstract:

Over the past decade, China and Spain have dramatically strengthened their bilateral relations. The scope of cooperation covers many areas comprising "green" and digital economy, trade and investment, health care, agriculture. Reinforcement of humanitarian and cultural ties between the two countries and peoples should be marked out as well. According to the latest report of the Institute of Cervantes Chinese are studying Spanish ubiquitously all over China. The article «Why do so many Chinese students start to learn Spanish?» in the largest Chinese blog Sohu dated 01.04.2021 assures that shortly, Spanish will be included in the list of subjects for passing the state exam alongside English, as its popularity is growing exponentially.

Even though these languages belong to completely different language groups and do not overlap in any way in their structure and sound, they still have one unifying point, namely, borrowings. Thus the authors focus on the analysis of the emergence of neologisms in Spanish and Chinese as a specific feature of democratization of any language, which is now being actively observed in both languages.

The objective of the study is to determine the peculiarities of formation and specifics of the use of new words and expressions in Spanish and Chinese languages under the concept of language democratization which is regarded as changing linguistic norms to bring the codified language (norm) closer to such a concept as Usage.

In the modern language democratization processes of language tend to extend beyond the frames of explicit norms and standards. Language democratization is considered to be a decline in style and invasion of colloquialisms, slangs, vulgarisms into active vocabulary, as well as neologisms - inevitably appearing new words to assess new situations that arise in the world. It should be noted that the process of democratization is not linear, but is an alternation of periods of stability with periods of significant changes.

The 21st century is characterized by the expansion of international contacts spheres. Being the language of international communication English is quickly penetrating the system of the Spanish and Chinese languages. The use of English-language elements is becoming the norm in both speech and writing. The English language turns out to be a kind of bridge, a connecting link.

Based on the material studied it was decided to build up a list of Spanish and Chinese neologisms that emerged in the 21st century, trace the reason for their break-in and identify the spheres most exposed to this penetration. As a result, there have been recollected from dictionaries, TV broadcasts, newspapers, social networking websites (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, etc.) around 200 lexical items in both languages.

For example, (English – blog, Chinese – 博客bókè, Spanish - blog); (English – hacker, Chinese - 黑客hēikè, Spanish - hacker); (English – yeah, Chinese - 耶yé, Spanish - ya); (English - e-mail, Chinese - 伊妹儿yīmèir, Spanish – e-mail) and others.

Keywords:

Democratization, Spanish language, Chinese language, English borrowings, neologisms.