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What are the reasons for the introduction of new anglicisms into current German? Could someone please summarise the state of the scientific literature on that phenomenon?

Jonathan Scholbach
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  • You can also search for "Bastian Sick"'s numerous articles, if you don't know him yet. What makes me shocked, is the ongoing disappearance of the SOV ordering in Nebensätze, the futurI (futurII is already gone), and the Genitiv. I can't understand, how can it happen. Also other languages get a lot of anglicisms, but it doesn't destruct their grammatik. The lot of efforts I invested to learn German, is going wasted... – peterh Jun 16 '19 at 23:40
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    @peterh Bastian Sick is not a linguist, is merely working with weakly justified normative statements and has been proven wrong on many of his factual statements. He is not a reliable source. – Jonathan Scholbach Jun 17 '19 at 06:55
  • Sad. I like what he wrote. My layman feeling is that some irrecoverable loss is happening, and his writings seem supporting this view. Professional linguists don't share his opinion? Btw, already the ancient Romans had a "vulgar latinic" (ancestor of the today Italian language), but not even they made it a standard. – peterh Jun 17 '19 at 07:49
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    @peterh Have a look at the Wikipedia-entry on Sick and start with the critical sources of the section "Rezeption". – Jonathan Scholbach Jun 17 '19 at 07:52
  • Even though the answer is interesting, it shows no own research effort and it feels like the topic of a seminar paper. Therefore, -1 – Iris Jun 17 '19 at 12:01
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    @Iris I agree that the question does not show own research effort. Why is it a problem, if a question would be a topic for a seminar paper? Are extensive answers no good for stackexchange? This is supposed to be a knowledge base. – Jonathan Scholbach Jun 17 '19 at 12:36
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    @jonathan.scholbach, having a discussion about a seminar paper topic isn't a problem, but asking for researching literature (in German and English) as well as summarizing the literature is a bit bold in my opinon. How much literature does one have to summarize to get the current state of the phenomena? 10 books and papers or 100 books and papers? I think this is what makes the question too broad. – Iris Jun 17 '19 at 13:28
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    @Iris Thank you for the clarification. I think, I now understand your point better than before. – Jonathan Scholbach Jun 17 '19 at 13:34
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    The first part of your question is interesting and totally fine, but I'm with @Iris and still think this question is "too broad" because of the second part, even though too broad might be the wrong expression. Your question (with both parts) sounds like a next level "please do my homework"-question. But in this case it's: "write my term paper". And as Iris said: where do you start and where do you end when summarizing the literature? (Although I think, that a good first part answer should refer to some sources.) No hard feelings. – mtwde Jun 17 '19 at 20:46
  • @mtwde Also thank you for your clarification. I do not have hard feelings about the question being closed. But I would really like to understand the reason. This is the only way I can learn to reformulate my question in a way it will suit this site. Your comment really helped me here, so thank you! Considering the question where to start and where to end: Where would a wikipedia article start and end? I think, this decision could just be left to the person answering. But I see your point and will try to chop my desire to know in smaller pieces which are easier to handle. – Jonathan Scholbach Jun 17 '19 at 20:50
  • btw, this is not a demand to write a term paper for me. I am out of university :-) – Jonathan Scholbach Jun 17 '19 at 20:54
  • @jonathan.scholbach hehe, I never thought you were trying to cheat and as your question is still open it seems the majority think it's fine ;) . I think when asking a question one should consider the time and effort it takes to answer it. A good/interesting question gets the answer it deserves. A very complicated, badly written/written with no effort or highly time consuming one maybe not. Or the responders are omitting aspects and the questioner is dissatisfied with the answer. But well .. who am I to make suggestions. Your question is open :D – mtwde Jun 17 '19 at 21:24
  • Warum eine kultur- und wirtschaftsdominierende Sprache einen Einfluss auf andere Sprachen hat, ist doch ein alter Hut. Latein, Französisch, ... Warum braucht man dazu neue wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen? – äüö Jan 27 '21 at 10:18
  • @äöü Muss ja nicht neu sein. :) – Jonathan Scholbach Jan 27 '21 at 10:19
  • Viel Glück dabei, jemanden zu finden, der die Arbeit reinsteckt. Ich halte "please summarise the state of the scientific literature" als Frage in einem SE ehrlich gesagt für völlig überzogen, und von einem Moderator fast schon für frech. Die Fragestellung erfordert Forschiungsfinanzierung, nicht 500 Gummipunkte auf einer Website. Falls jemand darüber nachdenkt, das zu beantworten, wären z.B. Wikipedia oder ein Open-Access-Journal deutlich geeignetere Plattformen zur Veröffentlichung. – HalvarF Jan 28 '21 at 09:11
  • @HalvarF Der Vorwurf, mein Verhalten sei frech, beschäftigt mich. Ich versuche zu verstehen, was du meinst. Mein Gedanke war, jeder Mensch kann selbst entscheiden, wie detailliert die Frage zu beantworten ist. Falls meine Frage sehr naiv ist, spiegelt sie vielleicht einfach nur den Stand meines Unwissens wider. Wenn das die Frage so schlecht macht, bitte vote sie doch down (falls du das nicht ohnehin schon getan hast). Ab wann wird Unwissenheit zur Frechheit? – Jonathan Scholbach Jan 28 '21 at 10:20
  • @jonathan.scholbach: sorry, ich hatte nicht gesehen, wie alt die Frage war, die Zuordnung zur Moderatorentätigkeit und damit auch der Vorwurf "frech" fällt damit weg. Ich sehe SE grundsätzlich als eine Plattform, auf der Freiwillige Fragen beantworten, um konkret Leuten zu helfen -- gern auch späteren Lesern, die die gleiche Frage haben. Mehrere Regeln der Community haben zu Recht das Ziel, zu verhindern, dass deren Gutmütigkeit ausgenutzt wird. Eine Regel, die Fragen verhindert, die größeren Forschungsaufwand erfordern, gibt es nicht, aber ich halte solche Fragen genauso für missbräuchlich. – HalvarF Feb 08 '21 at 13:07

2 Answers2

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Very brief answer:

1) Practicability

English is the Latin of the modern age, a lingua franca. Many topics are discussed in international environments (science, politics, tourism, etc.)

2) Fashion

Due to the cultural hegemony of the English speaking world (Holywood, etc.) everybody is exposed to English, and usually in contexts that are understood as being positive. Using English terms is therefore seen by many as "cool".

Christian Geiselmann
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    Since OP explicitly asked for scientific literature: Do you know any linguistic books or papers that support your claims? – Arsak Jun 19 '19 at 06:02
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German has a very valuable and useful feature, that some other languages don't have: You can enrich it with words from other languages. (As far as I know you can't do this with Icelandic and with many other languages.) So, when there is a word in another language, that has a meaning that a German word doesn't have, you can introduce this word into German language and use it as if it was German. If you want, you also can use a synonym from another language, that has the same meaning as a German word.

Fremdwort

The first step is to use it as a foreign word (Fremdwort): If it's origin is a language that is written with latin letters (Spain, Polish, Hungarian, ...), you use it's basic form with the original spelling, only if the word is a noun, it's first letter is written in uppercase. Words from languages with other writing systems (Russian, Chinese, Arabic, ...) are used in the official transcripted form. Also the pronunciation is as close to the original spelling, as it is possible for German native-speakers. But still in this phase you inflect and decline those words with the rules of German grammar. Nobody who uses foreign words needs to learn foreign languages grammar.

Some examples: Spaghetti (Italian), Friseur (French), Kaftan (Arabic), Chuzpe (Hebrew), Hazienda (Spain)

Lehnwort

The second step is to use the word as a loanword (Lehnwort): The spelling is changed to match the German rules for the mapping between sounds and letters (bureau → Büro) and the pronunciation is even more German-style.

Some examples: Frisör (French), Kaffee (Arabic), Jubiläum (Hebrew)

Erbwort

The last step is to interpret a word that was adopted from a foreign language as an inherited word (Erbwort), i.e. it's status is that of a word, that "always" was German.

Some examples: Fenster (Latin), Zucker (Arabic), Sack (Greek)

The classification as foreign word, loan word or inherited word is often unclear. Some people might say, that Fenster, Zucker and Sack are loanwords, because they don't origin form some proto-germanic languages. But I think, that 99% of all German native speakers are not aware of the fact, that those words were imported from other languages, so I would count them as inherited words.

Also the border between foreign words and loanwords is very blurry, as you can see on many words with a french origin like my example from above (Friseur, Frisör)

Anglicisms

So, what is so special about words that are imported from the English language?

I would say: nothing, except the time when they were imported.

German contains thousands of words with a Latin origin. Most of them were imported many centuries ago, in an era, when the bible was available only in Latin and when educated people used to correspond with other educated people from other languages in Latin. The same is true for (ancient) Greek.

Then, there are also thousands of words with a french origin. Most of them were imported in the 18th and 19th century, when it was considered noble to speak French.

Today we live in an epoch, where it is important to have international contacts, and where it is important to be able to communicate with people from other countries. And you need a language for this international communication. Long ago, this international language was Latin. Then it was French, for some purposes also Italien and German too. (Think of all the German loanwords in English language, many of them in scientific context: eigenvektor, eigenvalue, aufbauprinciple, but also: doppelganger, rucksack, leitmotif, kindergarten, poltergeist, ...) But now this language is English, and the need to speak an international language never was more important than now.

So, everybody who grew up in West-Germany and Austria, and who was born after world war II had to learn English in School. This is why today almost everybody in this region speaks English. So today, English is a language, that German native speakers are very firm with. So, today German has is a very intense contact with English. Maybe even stronger than the historic contacts to Latin and French ever have been.

So, it would be very strange if we had not tons of English words entering the German language.

Hubert Schölnast
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    I'd say the Linguistic purism in Icelandic is rather the exception then the norm. You find loanwords, technical terms from other languages and the like in many, if not most languages. I know for sure that besides German they're common in English, French and Japanese. – Henning Kockerbeck Jun 17 '19 at 06:55
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    This does not mention the scientific literature at all. – Carsten S Jun 17 '19 at 08:06
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    Why do you state that "German has a very valuable and useful feature, that some other languages don't have: You can enrich it with words from other languages."? My knowledge about languages is small, I just doubt that there is any language where it is from the language itself impossible to have loan or foreign words - I claim that the speaking people decide wether a foreign term gets adopted and that I would need to find societies without any contact [sic] to avoid it practically. My imagination leaves no room to avoid it theoretically - and I understand your statement that there is such. – Shegit Brahm Jun 17 '19 at 14:47
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    This answer makes no sense. Loan and foreign words are an incredibly common feature, and pretty much inevitable in any non-isolated culture that doesn't go out of its way to avoid them at all costs. Even then loanwords tend to still exist, they just won't be acknowledged politically. For instance, there's a large number of german loanwords used in english: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English – Cubic Jun 18 '19 at 15:23
  • All languages that aren’t geographically completely isolated (an island in the Indian Ocean jumps to mind that is forbidden to visit) have contact with other languages; this contact will result in an exchange, this exchange will result in borrowings. This is not a feature of German. –1 – Jan Jan 27 '21 at 08:13