| Author(s) | Ernst-Norbert Kurth |
| Affiliation | Assistant Professor, Department of European Languages and Translation, College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia |
| Title | American Idiom in Modern German: Socio-linguistic Motives |
| Source | Journal of King Saud University. Languages & Translation. Volume 11, No 1. (1999/1419) |
| Abstract | ,Due to post-war American cultural predominance and the aggressive expansion of English as a world language, countless English loan words have entered German through pop culture, advertising, technological transfer, and media language. In the course of this process, cultural and linguistic receptiveness reinforced each other. Increasingly, English terms are taken over that do not denote new rea1ia, but compete with exij>ting TL terms. Many of these predatory loan words get lexicalized. Today, there is a tendency of not translating English terms for new items and phenomena, and a general fashion of using anglicisms instead of TL terms. This linguistic behaviour differs ttom the mere instrumental use of loan words. It involves assimilation! submission to a foreign culture instead of assimilation of foreign words to one's own language. Using examples ttom German newspapers and magazines, this paper sets out to analyse the perceptible and hidden influence of American English on modern German. It looks at the sociocultural motives governing the coinage ofloan words, loan blends, and loan translations. |
