There are two main processes by which new words are being adopted into Spanish. Firstly, it has utilised the process of 'borrowing'. This means that it has adopted words from other languages, in this case, primarily from English. Secondly, it has used 'neologism'. This is where it has taken existing words and roots from its language stock, and altered them to endow them with new meanings. The more common of the two, i

The modem leads us to an area of rapid lexical change in Spanish, which is the Internet. Change, both technologically and linguistically is more rapid on the Internet than in any other area of information technology. In the last few years, we have become accustomed to a wide range of vocabulary, such as e-mail, homepage, website and so on. More so than in the area of hardware, Spanish is facing something of a struggle to constantly invent equivalents to common English terms. Due to the rate at which Internet terminology is changing, it is difficult for dictionaries to keep up, although the appearance of on-line glossaries, which are much more easily and cheaply updated, have helped to address this.

Stewart, M; The Spanish Language Today, Routledge, London, 1999

The use of borrowed English terms is also evident in more recent developments in hardware. For example, scanner is rendered as escaner. Clearly, this has been adapted to suit Spanish spelling rules, which forbid an initial 's' when followed by a consonant. The borrowed noun, however, has also spawned a verbal form, escanear, through the addition of the infinitive suffix -ear. The modem is also a relatively new device (new, inasmuch as it has only recently become accessible on a large scale). It is rendered in Spanish as modem. (Clearly this is an English term which has been adopted. Were the word derived in Spanish as it was in English, we would see a slightly different result. The term modem is derived from two English words - an abbreviation of 'modulator/demodulator', which in Spanish would be modulador/desmoduladora giving us modesm).

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1642
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)