# German use of 'borrowed' English words? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 26, 2014, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111 "2014-07-26T18:02:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/21 "2014-07-27T00:48:42Z")
As I understand it, the official attempts not to use English words, both in France and in Quebec, don’t work very well and are mostly ignored by the general population. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/22 "2014-07-27T00:52:35Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > The French have a special committee that meets to create new words that are suitably French to replace those borrowed from English that had snuck into the language. And the French people completely ignore them and use the word that seems best anyway. ---
**Author:** ![svd678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@svd678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/svd678)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/23 "2014-07-27T04:16:05Z")
#15 “Viewing” is frequently used for something like a wake, before a funeral. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/24 "2014-07-27T08:58:48Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > English is a remarkably acquisitive language, it borrows words from just about every other language. A fair percentage of root words are Germanic in origin. So borrowing from something that has been previously borrowed? Yep, for example - “keks” / “cake”, mentioned above, is [Germanic](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cake): > [@](#): > > … Old Norse _kaka_ “cake,” from West Germanic \*_kokon_- (cognates: Middle Dutch _koke_, Dutch _koek_, Old High German _huohho_, German _Kuchen_). ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/25 "2014-07-27T09:02:12Z")
Which others peoples / countries go in for [linguistic purism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism), anyway? So far we have the French, the Québécois, and the Icelanders. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/26 "2014-07-27T10:02:55Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > That’s very interesting - so it’s not just that English may tend to be used in an ad, but that, somehow, English is supposed to be ‘cooler’.Although, if accurate, **Steken** ’s post above says it’s not just to be cool. There’s certainly a bigger element of English loan words in youth slang, mainly due to heavier exposure to the internet, pop music other things that both skew English and young, so this would serve to set heavy use of English words apart from old farts’ language, thus making it automatically ‘cool’—which, by the way, is a word that is in such regular German usage that few would immediately recognize it as being English anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Steken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/27 "2014-07-27T10:11:54Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > thus making it automatically ‘cool’—which, by the way, is a word that is in such regular German usage that few would immediately recognize it as being English anymore. Which is a great loss. What’s wrong with _superspitzenaffengeil_? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Uniqueorn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uniqueorn/32/2807_2.png) [@Uniqueorn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uniqueorn)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/28 "2014-07-27T10:36:54Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Which is a great loss. What’s wrong with _superspitzenaffengeil_? 😉 Isn’t that a Mary Poppins song? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/29 "2014-07-27T11:17:03Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > English is a remarkably acquisitive language, it borrows words from just about every other language. Actually, English is no different from any other language in terms of borrowing. All languages borrow, it’s the nature of the beast. English may borrow from more other languages than other languages, but that’s because English speakers have more opportunity in terms of high amounts of interaction with many other languages. I once made a list of as many other languages as I could find that English had borrowed from. It was based on the etymologies from a single dictionary (one of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiates). I managed to find words from 216 different languages. I wrote my results up for Word Ways magazine and for a while had it up on my webpage. I no longer have a webpage, but have the html version of the article. You can download it from [here](http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol33/iss2/8/) or if that fails, PM me and I can send it to you. Hmm, googling on the title and my name finds that someone quoted the entire article to a message board about the Kurdish language [here](http://northerniraq.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2123&start=45). They even copied my copyright notice… I’m not sure whether to object to this or not. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/30 "2014-07-27T17:12:56Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Germans do this all the time, in ads and in conversation and so on and so forth. It’s _extremely_ common, even when the English word has a perfectly cromulent German equivalent. You see it reasonably often in Hungarian, too, especially with technology words. A mobile phone is _mobil_, where _rádiótelefon_ is the “real” Hungarian word. _Komputer_ for _számitógép_ (computer). _Szuper_, as in “super” shows up in Hungarian and Polish (spelled _super_ in Polish). _Vincseszter_ for “hard drive” (Winchester hard drive.) A similar genericization of a product name occurs in Polish with _adidasy_ for gym shoes (Adidases–although that’s a German origin.) In more slangy language, I’ve heard _kúl_ for “cool,” as in “socially/aesthetically admirable/acceptable.” _Dzinsy_ for “jeans” in Polish. “To Google” in Polish is _wyguglować_. And there’s scores and scores more I can’t come up with. I grew up in a Polish-American community, but it’s difficult for me sometimes to sort out which are Polish-American words and which are words with English roots that are common in the Polish spoken in Poland. There’s _tons_ of those kinds of Polish-English amalgams in Chicago Polish speech. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/31 "2014-07-27T19:12:09Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxVcgDMBU94), an ad for a German supermarket chain, has ‘gone viral’ with over 11 million views and counting. > > As I watched it, I was struck by the very high frequency of English words that were used. Before I was even half way through it, I counted something like fourteen English words and I may well have missed some: sexy, easy, fresh, cookies, crunchy, snack, smooth, tasty, . . . Edeka (the name of the supermarket chain) is one of the oldest brand names in Germany, going back to the 19th century. However, one typically wouldn’t think of it as being particularly hip, trendy or international, quite the opposite. I would interpret this ad as being tongue-in-cheek, maybe even self-deprecating: a company with a vintage, old-school image trying to be modern, but at the some time making fun of the excessive use of Anglicisms (which is indeed prevalent in advertising in Germany). ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/32 "2014-07-27T22:57:22Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > ‘cookie’ is a special case - a _Cookie_ is a specific sort of _Keks_ in German. I don’t understand - ‘_keks_’ are underpants over here. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/33 "2014-07-27T23:14:48Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I don’t understand - ‘_keks_’ are underpants over here. Your profile says you’re in the UK. Do you speak German there?:dubious: [Keks](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Keks.jpeg) are biscuits/cookies in German. ---
**Author:** ![Chicago\_Faucet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chicago_faucet/32/13910_2.png) [@Chicago\_Faucet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicago_Faucet)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/34 "2014-07-28T01:10:16Z")
This is weird. Just this past weekend I was visiting with my very well-read brother. (I don’t read that much, myself. I just pay attention. :)) Anyway, he was talking about [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406509164&sr=1-1&keywords=history+of+the+mother+tongue), and how he accidentally stumbled across it, and how it was one of the most entertaining and educational books he’s ever read. He said that the book stated that what is classified as the English language today is due to way back when, when England was prone to invaders from Germany and France (as well as other nations). Words from both German and French were left behind, and the divide is that a lot of English’s working-class words have close associations with German words, and a lot of the higher-class words have close associations with French. So, English did more borrowing than lending, when it came to language. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/35 "2014-07-28T01:22:11Z")
English doesn’t so much borrow from Germanic languages as descend from them. When Germanic speaking tribes migrated to Britain they didn’t influence the languages already spoken there; they replaced them. Celtic languages retreated north and west to the highlands of Scotland, to Wales and to Cornwall. They were replaced by a Germanic language which, over time, became English. Following the Norman invasion English borrowed heavily from French - and, yes, as a result of this English contains a great many near-synonyms, a Germanic word and a French word meaning the same thing, or closely similar things. Often the French word is used in polite or formal contexts, the Germanic word elsewhere. So, what is a sheep on the farm becomes mutton on the dining table, a killing become murder in the courtroom, and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/36 "2014-07-28T01:59:41Z")
We’ve discussed _The Mother Tongue_ and Bill Bryson before. He writes well but is sloppy about facts, both in this book and others that he’s written. There are many such threads, but here’s one of them: > **[Interested in languages? Stay the hell away from Bill Bryson!](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=189221)** > > I enjoyed Bryson’s travelogue Lost Continent, so while at the library I picked up his book on the evolution of the English language, Mother Tongue. This book is utter crap. I found factual errors, urban myths, and folk etymologies on nearly every... Can someone recommend some better histories of English? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/37 "2014-07-28T04:46:05Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Yes. > > Ausreichend? > > One crazy example of the German love for English loanwords is “handy,” which they turned into a noun - “das Handy” - meaning… A cellphone. Nowhere in the English-speaking world would a dude be like “yeah I’ll be on the beach, call me on my handy and we can hook up later.” But the Germans don’t care - you just gotta have a cool-sounding English word for a cool new gadget, see? Another interesting loanword is _Oldtimer_, which denotes not an old guy but an old classic car. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/38 "2014-07-28T04:53:01Z")
> [@Cub\_Mistress](#): > > I miss EDEKA! The part I can’t imagine in America is the repeated use of the phrase superhorny.’ Similarly with _Shitstorm_, which now appears in mainstream German news articles, but would be completely beyond the pale if a writer in the _New York Times_ or _WSJ_ tried to use it. For that matter, _supersexy_ would be doubtful in the U.S., given the prudish tendency in regulating OTA television. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/39 "2014-07-28T05:00:38Z")
The song is all about “Super” … This forced the author to become desperate for super words to use. The apparent popularity of it may be because its bad…its getting upvotes because so as to make it stand out… I think its so bad they should delete the “like” button from it myself… ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2014, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111/40 "2014-07-28T05:04:45Z")
Sometimes the borrowings are based on a sort of cross-language homonym effect. When I was in Germany I used to see Kauboy chewing gum for sale, the name being pronounced just like “cowboy” in English. To drive home the point, there was a grinning cowboy pictured on the package. At the same time, though, _kau-_ is essentially the German root word for “chew”, and _Kaugummi_ is the word for “chewing gum”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-use-of-borrowed-english-words/694111.md?page=3)