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Interestingly, the use of English in German (the opposite) is not nearly as awkward, and often comes off as quite intelligent and resourceful on the part of the
by mmjaa 9y ago
Interestingly, the use of English in German (the opposite) is not nearly as awkward, and often comes off as quite intelligent and resourceful on the part of the speaker.
I think there is a cultural bias behind this, however. The English are not as inclined to learn other languages as is the case in the German-speaking world, and I think this really works in the German-speaking favor. For example, it is very difficult for an English-speaking native to come to Germany and start speaking German - everyone else would rather practice their English instead, meaning that .. the English learn German much slower than the Germans learn English.
So actually, it could be claimed that Sprachgefühl is one of those words that just should come into the English lexicon, and we ought to bloody get on with having a bit more of it, in our English-biased cultures, because it really does increase ones awareness of the world.
- humanrebar 9y agoIn defense of English speakers, one can use Spanish words relatively freely without seeming awkward: gracias, siesta, amigo, macho, etc. It's worth pointing out that these are all practical day-to-day words. Perhaps the difference is there, also. Contrast cul-de-sac and ennui.
- mmjaa 9y agoI think there is a certain stigma to English people using German words, on account of the fact that the nations have a long history of rivalry and open warfare against each other .. perhaps a linguist can pipe in and tell us if there was ever a period where Spanish words had a similar degree of stigma, after wars and so on ..
- eru 9y agoThe Brits and the Germans historically got along like a house on fire during the vast majority of the last few hundred years. If anything, the stigma you talk about should exist between English and French.
- smallnamespace 9y agoThat's easily complicated by the fact that the roots of the rivalry between France and England was in large part stoked by French-speaking Norman conquerors. Few native English speakers will read this paragraph and identify all these French-derived words as being 'French', since they have become such a plainly integral part of English: complicate, fact, rivalry, part, conqueror, native, paragraph, identify, derive TL;DR can't speak English without also speaking a bunch of French in the process, especially since French words represent all the elite, cultured words (e.g. 'cow' vs. 'beef')
- tome 9y agoIt seems that "fact" doesn't belong in that list but rather it comes directly from medieval Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fact https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fact https://www.peigencihui.com/word/fact https://www.peigencihui.com/word/fact
- eru 9y agoThe Norman conquest was way back, and wasn't even the latest invasion. (The Dutch conquered Britain in the meantime.) The Norman conquest played a role, especially in language, but the later major power / colonial empire rivalry would have developed regardless of history, just dictated by geography and clashing interests.
- mmjaa 9y agoYes, I'm aware of that, I mean in the context of the last 100 years, apropos German-English, English-English, American-English, and so on. I think a bit of American vernacular has a German'ification phase, the languages seem to be intertwined, but this is just an opinion based on observation through personal life experience not some kind of academic point of view. I'd love to know the linguistics basis behind such intermingling.
- eru 9y agoI've seen some of what looked like Germanification of idioms. Eg 'couple' in British English seems to mean exactly two. In German 'paar' (lower cased!) is basically synonymous with 'a few', and the Americans seem to be using 'a couple' also in that wider sense?
- jhbadger 9y agoThere's a lot of pseudo-English in German, though. The common German word for a cellphone is "Handy" and particularly in the former GDR, chicken meat is often called "Broiler". Both are obviously English words, but they aren't used that way in English.
- eru 9y agoThat used to annoy me a bit (as a German), but it's actually quite resourceful from a linguistic point of view. 'Smoking' is another interesting pseudo-English German word.
- mmjaa 9y agoAhem, hand is a cognate of old German and Dutch .. Also, the '-ing' part comes from the continent, as well. :)
- eru 9y agoSure, there are lots of cognates. Some of the hardest to translate words are actually cognates. For example it's almost impossible to properly translate the German word 'Brot' into English. It's a cognate of 'bread', but Germans mean something very different by 'Brot' than the British mean by 'bread'. Loaning a word ad-hoc is much easier by comparison. Eg Bundeskanzler means exactly the same in English as it does in German. As does Prime Minister.