Italijs'kyj leksyčnyj komponent v ukrajins'kij movi

Contemporary Ukrainian, especially in its scientific and administrative style, seems to be characterized by a higher frequency in the use of loan-words from Latin, Romance and Germanic languages than other cognate languages such as Russian . Specific studies on Italian lexical borrowings in Ukrainian, and more generally, on Ukrainian-Italian language contacts are scanty both in the Italian and, to a lesser extent, in the Ukrainian linguistic tradition. In the second (2004) and third editions (2007) of the “Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian language”, for example, there is no mention of Ukrainian-Italian language contacts. The few available contributions on this topic belong to Ukrainian and Polish linguists. In this article, after an outline of the historical Italian loan-words, we characterize the recent trends which brought about the diffusion of a large number of Italianisms in Ukrainian, e.g. culinary sphere, commercial brands etc. In this connection it is important to underline that the Italian lexical element in Ukrainian is not only confined to the cultural field, (e.g. music, theatre, architecture etc.), as generally assumed, but it also affects other functional domains. Italianisms are treated both etymologically and according to their functional parameters. The innovative aspect of this research, compared to a previous one, consists in providing a first quantitative calculation, still obtained with traditional methods, of the approximate amount of Italianisms in Ukrainian complemented by a more clear-cut description of their degree of orthographic and grammatical adaption to the Ukrainian system.