Well, Easterner, it seems that in German today, borrowing words from English, without even changing their spellings, besides adding the requisite verb endings onto them and like, seems to be absolutely rampant as a whole. A lot of words are even borrowed unnecessarily, for there are already native German words for many things which words are borrowed for from English, and I myself tend to strongly avoid using such English loanwards when writing/speaking in German as a whole. While I somehow doubt that this will really fundamentally change German much, as a whole, it seems just quite unnecessary and pointless as a whole, and seems to be done just because English is the most fashionable language, by far, at the present.
Adam wrote: "I think about 80 of the most commonly used languages in English are native words, coming from Old English."
I basically agree. I don't mean to be a nit but it might be more accurate to say "Teutonic" or "Germanic" instead of Old English. Teutonic includes words of Dutch (toy, spoon, landscape) Flemish (boy, rabbit), Low German (gang, girl, booty, booze),Scandinavian (cake, sky, jump, wrong), Frankish (blue, guard, helmet, warrior), Yiddish (klutzy, schmuck, tush) origin as well as the original Old English. If you add all of these up together with Hengst & Horsa's Anglo-Saxon words you have an everyday English vocabulary that is easily 80% Germanic.
Travis,
English loans in German often have undergone no real spelling changes. West German adopted Bodybuilder, and Wildwestfilm (Western movie) from English while West- and East German both had der Rockstar and das Volleyball. English Instant-Kaffee found its way into West German during the Cold War but East German was still using the older Pulverkaffee. West German used Astronaut and East German, of course, Kosmonaut as in Forschuengskosmonaut "Research Kosmonaut."
there're many in finnish taken from english.. manytimes we just add -i to the word to make it 'finnish'
internet - internetti
font - fontti
to download - downloadata (well this is a verb.. )
printer - printteri
frame - frame *not sure of the spelling*
Thanks. Jonne. Yes, some people have said that technology is ruining languages and I agree.
Yes... I can't think of the real finnish words for those up there..
Many Latin American countries also use loan words from different languages in there varieties of Spanish. I know in the country of Panama they have taken many loan words from Italian and French such as davvero ( spelled davero in pamamanian spanish) from Italian, and pettit pois ( English for peas) from French. The universal greeting of chao ( ciao in Italian ) is now widely used in Panama and throughout Latin America.
<<English Instant-Kaffee found its way into West German during the Cold War but East German was still using the older Pulverkaffee. West German used Astronaut and East German, of course, Kosmonaut as in Forschuengskosmonaut "Research Kosmonaut.">>
Do East Germans still say Pulverkaffee and Kosmonaut or have they now adopted the West German forms?
J Greco,
Interesting. I've noticed the use of Italian "ciao" for "bye" or "bye-bye" in Latin American Spanish on the Univision cable channel. Venezuelans, especially, seem to use it a lot along with some English loans like "basket (basketball), las cherleaders (the cheerleaders), nerd, sandwich, show, and charming."
I know! I get really angry when I here some of there interviewers when they are exicited about something say "Super Bueno". It kind of gets underneath my skin that particular word only because there are perfectly good words to use other than "super" in english. Note: I'm not against loan words in any languages from one to another. Just that particular word loaned into spanish makes spanish sound like slang.
Lazar,
I'm not an expert but just from my general reading it looks like the German government is trying to stamp out all traces of vocabulary in East German from the Communist era. German dictionaries still list Kaufhalle (supermarket) and Intershop (department store) as specifically East German but there are a lot of other words from the Communist period that are missing. One of them is Kolkhoz-Bauer or "collective farmer", borrowed from Russian. Russian-Korean dictioanries show this word as also existing in North Korean, koholjuu-win, but it is absent in all English-Korean dictionaries which are based on the South Korean standard.
In reply to the post by JGreco, the phenomenon is not unique to Central America, "ciao" is also used as a common greeting in Serbian, a language quite ready to absorb foreign words in general. Croatian, on the other hand, seems more resistant to this trend, the informal greeting there is "bok", derived from "zbogom", meaning "(go) with God", although "ciao" may also be in use there. Finally, "ciao" is also used in Hungarian, although to a much lesser extent. Looks like this particular form of greeting has a very strong appeal. :)
During my experience of learning other slavic languages, i ve noticed very many loans especially from german and latin, unlike russian where we use slavic words, so sometimes, the text in polish or czech doesnt look slavic at all. also Serbian has many words from turkish, i cant name them right now, but i do remember that slavic languages are very damamged by loans...i thougt that russian is in a desastrous situation, but after comparing with other slavic languages it s almost pure...I dont count such words like TV, computer, but rather everyday words, like in Bulgarian they say "chao" and dont have their own equivalent...
yes there are a quite a few loan words in Serbian/ Macedonian etc from Turkish. Some example
kismet - fate but also the slavic word of "sudbina" means the same thing.
astal - table (slavic equivalent "stol" or "masa")
Pastries are generally Turkish words - baklava, burek etc
and you can say "muftadzija" for a miser!
re chao - you can say "zdravo" instead, well for Serbian/Macedonian you can - not sure about Bulgarian
Frances wrote: "there are a quite a few loan words in Serbian/ Macedonian etc from Turkish."
Yes. A legacy of the Ottoman Turkish occupation for 500 years. The same thing is true for Albanian. Less for Greek, but still we see words like tufekion "rifle", flitzani "cup, keftedes "meat patties", mazilari "pillow" and mousama (dialectal) "raincoat".