Loan words

Over the years I've studied a number of languages. It started in high school with Spanish, then in college I studied Italian. I must admit once you've studied a foreign language (not necessarily mastered it), adding a new one into the mix can become problematic. Once I started studying Italian I would sometimes use a Spanish word instead of an Italian one (aeropuerto instead of aeroporto, for example). When I studied abroad I had the luxury of asking Italian friends to check (or control as they say) my homework. For a while I would get my essays and letters back filled with circled words all of which I was told were Spanish, not Italian. Or there was the awkward moment when I was in Spain (also after I had started studying Italian) when I realized I'd forgotten how to count past 10 in Spanish as when I was asked by a Spaniard on which day I was leaving could only give the number 12 in Italian, not Spanish. These kinds of lexical similarities are explained in that both Spanish and Italian are romance languages (including French, Portugese, Catalan among others).

When I got back from studying abroad and still had a quarter left at UCSB, I decided to try an introductory German class just for fun and to impress the friends I'd made in Germany. It was only German 1 and I will admit with 10 weeks left to go in my 4+ year academic career I wasn't exactly putting my all into learning at that point, but once I moved here I thought at least I have some knowledge of it. A month after moving here I began five day a week three hour language courses. This had two functions: first I wanted to be able to say things to people, second, I wasn't allowed to work the first four months I was here so I had to do something.

You can pick any number of reasons why learning German is difficult, the case system, the articles, how long and convoluted some words seem, the list goes on and on. But for all of its difficulties German does have some user-friendly aspects. For one thing, it is phonetically very straight forward. Which is to say, spelling and pronunciation correspond at a pretty 1 to 1 ratio. Once you know the alphabet and the sounds each letter makes (keeping in mind the dipthongs [vowel combinations] and umlauts [ä, ö, ü]) you can pretty much read any word as the sounds stay the same. Anyone who has tried learning English as a foreign language does not have this same benefit. As an example of the spelling chaos of English, I submit the word ghoti, which based on English spelling could be pronounced fish (gh as in tough, o as in women, ti as in ignition). So then, suddenly words like Hoechsgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (maximum speed limit) or Herzkreislaufwiederbelebung (C.P.R) may take a second to sound out in your head, but aren't as intimidating as before.

Excuse the digression, the reason I began this was to discuss the benefits of being a native English speaker learning German, namely loan words. A loan word is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another. English is full of them, and German is, too! I can't count the number of times I have been in class and asked my students if they knew the word for something, and it was the same in English just with German pronunciation.

I'd like to conclude with a list of just some of the English words or phrases German has acquired-whether for business, media, technology, or some are words that just aren't found in German but people (Germans) know what they mean:

action, baby, bloggen (to blog-German verbs end in -en), annual report, boss, chatten (to chat), business, camping, catering, checken (to check)/check in/check out, city, couch, design, display, download, duty-free (aside: when Germans say duty free, they aren't necessarily referring to the lack of taxes placed on goods purchased in an airport or cruise ship, but rather, any area within an aiport or cruise ship which sells goods), DVD player, email, (un)fair, fan, flirten (to flirt), gamer, gangster, gentleman, googlen (to google), happy hour, hardcore, highlight, hippie, hobby, homepage, icon, image, info, interview, investment, jetlag, joggen (to jog), K.O, last-minute, laptop, logo, lounge, make-up, management, marketing, meeting, mindset, non-stop, outsourcing, pace, party, piercing (face or body), pop-up, power, reality TV, rock, rush hour, scanner, service, sexy, shampoo, small talk, spam, tattoo, team, terminal, ticket, toaster, training, T shirt, upgrade, VIP, website, and zombie...just to name a few!