Barbarism

A barbarism is a foreign word or turn of phrase not fully assimilated by the language and retaining an alien sound, and sometimes a foreign spelling: "alma mater," "tête-à-tête," "okay." Barbarisms stand at the periphery of the vocabulary, emphatically betraying their foreign origin. In literature they fulfil several functions: they reproduce the national colour of the depicted milieu, characterise a foreign personage or a person inclined to use fashionable foreign words, create an ironic or satirical effect. The accumulation of barbarisms in a character's speech often serves as a means of exposing them as affected or cut off from their native soil. Barbarisms border on exoticisms and borrowings and are an important subject of stylistics and the culture of language, which warns against the unwarranted cluttering of speech with foreign words.