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Endarbeit
Linguistik

Peking University,Beijing

2013,Prof. Dr. Gao Yanmei

Andrea M. ©
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Final Paper

English Words in cultural Context

Formation and Influence of English Loanwords in Modern German

School of Foreign Languages


Contents

1.   The history of the loanwords in German. 3

2.   The formation of the English loanwords in German. 4

3.   The application of the English loanwords in German. 5

4.   The influence of English loanwords7

5.   The influence on German language. 7

6.   The influence on German society7

7.   Summary8

8.   References:8


Abstract: With the development of economy and the exchange of culture, German has borrowed a large amount of English words, which has great impacts on German language itself and its society. These English words were either borrowed completely or changed according to the lexical rules of German.

This paper analyzes the lexical formation of English words in German and makes a conclusion on its impacts on various aspects.

Key words: loanwords, formation and influence, morphology

1.   The history of the loanwords in German

German is the official languages of Germany and Austria. Also it’s one of the four official languages of Switzerland. It belongs to the West Germanic language under the Indo-European language family under Germanic. Since the location of Germany is very unique as a central country in Europe, its boundaries changed frequently due to several large tribal migrations.

Also due to the long-term political disintegration of the state, the process of German as the unified language was quite tortuous.

During 12-16th centurywith the help of Reformation, the German dialects were popularized and developed. The appearance of the German translation of Bible laid the foundation of the development of the standard German. The standard pronunciation of Modern German was formed in the 19th century.

In 1880 Konrad Duden published his German orthographic dictionary and in 1901 after the correction, it became the only rule of the standard German.

Before the 19th century, German was mainly affected by Latin, Greek, Italian and French, and borrowed lots of vocabulary from military, law, food culture, art and the other fields. In the early 19th century, the British industrial revolution brought about the development of science and technology.

During the first half of the 20th century, the United States was in the van of economics, science and technology fields in the world, which made a large influx of English loanwords into German vocabulary. To sum up, the loanwords in German come from three main parts:

a.     Loanwords from Romance, Latin and Slavic languages

Loanwords from Romance languages include French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Among these languages, German war affected by French mostly, and the absorption of French is mainly about the vocabulary of knight culture. With the trade between Germany and Italy, some Italian words were also rooted in German.

Due to the propagation of religion and the influence of monk culture, in the early 5th century Latin came into German field, most of them are the vocabulary about politics and religion. Because of the powerful political, military strength and the expansionist policy of the Germanic peoples, Slavic languages from neighboring countries also influenced German somehow, but a few words.

c.     Loanwords from other languages of the world, mainly oriental languages


2.   The formation of the English loanwords in German

There are allegedly about 3500 same words in French and English, while there are 8000 in German and English. English vocabulary has become commonplace in German political, economic, cultural, scientific fields and daily life. Generally speaking, the loanwords can be divided into four kinds: full loans, which means the spelling and meaning are the same; innovation loans, which are recreated on the basis of loan; transfer loans, which change the form on the basis of loan; section loans, which are formed from two languages.

2.1.              Full loans, similar to Aliens in English

The main method is full loans. These kind of vocabulary came into German straightly, both the spelling and the meaning hasn’t changed. For example: Computer, Internet, E-mail, Song, Manager, Hobby, Shopping and so on.

For example, the verb googeln (which means search in the Internet) from google, einscannen (same meaning of scan)from scan; the noun Chatter (the people who likes chatting)from chat; Userin (the female user)from user and so on. These words are combined with a prefix or suffix on the basis of foreign words.

2.3.               Transfer loans

Transfer loans refer to the English words, which only remain their basic form after entering the German vocabulary, some lexical and syntactic features disappeared. For example, Board-karte from Boading-card. And the German infinitive verb are all ended with -en/-n, but in English there’s no such kind of rule, therefore when some English verbs enter into German, -en/-n are added to the end, in according to meet the needs of verb conjugation, for instance, checken(check), chatten(chat), stoppen(stop), joggen(jog), boomen(boom), buchen(book)and etc.

However, not all the foreign words can be derived new word, there is no strict rule to follow, just in accordance with the custom and common usage, which makes trouble to the German users and learners. From these four ways of loaning words can be found that English loanwords are completely copied into German vocabulary or part of it through innovation and transfer.

To the former, since the German and English principles of word formation and rules of grammar are different, they are bound to have some impact on the German language itself.


3.    The application of the English loanwords in German

Speaking of the impact of English loanwords in German language, we must first know the centralized application of these loanwords, in order to understand the influence of this range. The English loanwords in German involve political, economic, cultural, technological and other industries and also daily life, but they are mainly focused on the fields below.



3.2.              Information and media fields

For example, Newsletter(), Media Corner(媒体角), High Definition Television(高清电视), Audiodateien(频文件),Hifi-Qualität(高保真品), TV-Shows(电视秀), Filmstoffe(电影素材) etc.

3.3.              Art, Entertainment and Sport fields

For example, Designobjekte(设计作品), Die Visual Gallery(视觉画廊), Beach-Partys(滩聚会), Filmhaus(电影之乡), Science-Fiction-Streifen(科幻片), die Hollywoodgren(好莱坞大腕), Champions League(军联赛), Fan-Shop(球迷商店) etc.

3.4.              Science and Technology fields and cultural fields

For example, Chip-Riese(芯片巨), Hightech-Wunder(高科技奇迹), das Immunsysterm(免疫系), Innovationskraft(创新力), Literaturtempel(文学殿堂), Multikultur(多元文化), Graduiertenschulen(研究生院) etc.


English loanwords exist in many areas. They especially play an important role in the expression of new things, to a certain extent. It shows the impact of the English loanwords in the society of German language.


4.   The influence of English loanwords

The permeation of English loanwords in every life and work aspect of German people is certainly having a huge impact on the German language vocabulary and language norms. Some scholars believe that with the development of society, the language is also developing and tends to simplify, the exchange of different languages will be more and more.

The trend of melange is irresistible, so the loanwords have played a certain role in the development of German language. However, some scholars have advocated the German purification movement from the beginning of the 19th century. They want to replace or remove some unnecessary English loanwords in German expression.

5.   The influence on German language

 Firstly, full loans is the important part of English loanwords, the meaning and pronunciation of this kind of borrowed words comes directly from English and basically maintain the features of English. So for the convenience of usage, people ignore the original German word formation principles and pronunciation principles.

But there are big differences between German and English, which form a big assault to the original German language specification. Moreover the differences between grammars have also been a big threat to German. All these factors will cause the slow change in the whole German language system.

In addition, part of English loanwords force in science and technology field, to become most efficient and fastest method of communication, which brings convenience to people, and promote the technological and economic exchanges.



7.   Summary

In summary, English loanwords expand the German vocabulary and open up a new realm of German language. Of course, English loanwords also bring some confusion in German, cause German learners and user’s great difficulties. However, according to the law ofthe development of language, this is not only conducive to the enrichment and development of national languages, but also promotes the cultural exchange and cooperation among countries in the world. I believe that, conforming to the natural tendency of language development, no-excessive interference is the sensible attitude that linguistic strategy should  take towards foreign language.


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