This article uses empirical data to evaluate Czech perceptions of lexical borrowing, based on a nationwide poll conducted in November 2005 by the Public Opinion Research Centre of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy ofSciences of the Czech Republic. The survey combines synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and is the first major studyof its kind since Tejnor, October 1970. It broadly concludes that most Czechs accept functionally necessary loanwords, but feel that their language contains a surfeit of peripheral foreign terms, which are used too frequently and somewhat inappropriately.
Resistance to lexical innovation from other languages is especially strong amongst the elderly (particularly men) and the less well educated.
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