What German words are commonly used in the US? Apart from ‘kindergarten’ I can’t think of any right now.
Off the top of my head, zeitgeist, sauerkraut, gesundheit, schadenfreude.
I don’t know how common this is, but I heard Shardenfrauder(sp?) on the Simpson’s. Just in case I completely mangled the spelling, it’s the word which means taking sinful pleasure in anothers downfall.
gestalt
gotterdamerung
Goethe
Delicatessen
Volkswagen
Zugzwang for chess-nuts
The correct spelling is ‘Schadenfreude’ - like jjimm wrote.
Wurst
Wiener
Frankfurter
Pretzel (from bretzel)
Lager
Pilsener
… but most of all:
Hamburger
Zeitgeist is another
Angst
ersatz
Fahrvergnuegen
Mensch
Weltschmerz
blitzkrieg
putsch
juggernaut
doppelganger
bildungsroman
jjimm already mentioned that, but he forgot to capitalize it.
-1 for redundancy; +1 for proper capitalization.
Arm, Finger, Hand, Ball, and Gift*.
I forgot Gymnasium. Also with an asterisk.
There are more English words of German origin than any other language. For instance:
the
me
I
have
hand
mouse
street
thank
fart
eat
sleep
ring
English is a Germanic language, after all.
… already mentioned by jjimm.
Welcome to the Dope!
Some more:
Bauhaus
Blitz, blitzkrieg
Howitzer
Reich
Führer
Nazi
Doberman
Rottweiler
Hamster
Doppler
Kitsch
Edelweiss
Eigenvector, eigenvalue
Poltergeist
Glockenspiel
Leitmotiv
Lied
Realpolitik
über-something
That’s about all I can think of.
My dictionary lists “juggernaut” as Sanskrit in origin. It’s pretty old, though, so it may not be correct…
I’ll back you up on that. John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins, © 1990, agrees with the Sanskrit etymology.
Ah, but are we, as writers of English, required to capitalize German nouns if we’ve borrowed them?
May have come through german, either old german from the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons or direct borrowing thereafter.
No.