German loanwords in English

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

The objective of the present study is to demonstrate and explore, with the use of lexicographic and corpus analytic techniques, the presence of German loanwords in the English language. Scholars and linguists have generally tended to concentrate on the opposite phenomenon, that is the influence of English on other languages. This work describes the Germanisms or cultural borrowings characterizing English lexis which mainly regard natural sciences, such as biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and mineralogy. German loanwords with Greek or Latin etymons have generally entered English word–stock in the 18th and 19th centuries. On the other hand, American English vocabulary almost exclusively reflects the presence of the German ethnicity residing in North America and is thus marked by the inclusion of German intimate borrowings mostly related to cuisine.

SINTESI