As I was writing an entry over on Geek Notes about “a new LaTeX solution for slide presentations”:http://semantics-online.org/geek/2003/08/beamer_class_for_latexpdf_presentations called “beamer”, I was reminded that when I go to Germany, I am always struck by the many cases of English words in common discourse that are not really English words. In German linguistic terminology, they are called “Scheinentlehnungen”, something like “Pseudo-Loanwords”. My two favorites are ubiquitous:
- “Beamer”, for multimedia or data projector.
- “Handy”, for cellphone.
There’s a decent “article”:http://www.macmillandictionary.com/MED-Magazine/june2003/08-German-English-false-friends.htm on this and related topics in the monthly webzine of the MacMillan English Dictionary. A Google search also turned up “Professor David Yeandle”:http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/german/yeandle.html in the German Department of King’s College London, who has a forthcoming paper with the title ‘Handy Callboy Seeks Evergreen Dressman for Flipper Fun’: Pseudo-Anglicisms in Modern German, which is unfortunately unavailable electronically.
4 comments ↓
GERMANICA.
German-related links from all over: 1) A list of grammatical terms, with each Latinate term followed by a native one and one or more examples: Adverb / Umstandswort / dort, heute, dabei so. (From UJG.) 2) The Gesellschaft zur Stärkung…
Where can one find Professor David Yeandle’s article?
I am very interested in this article as I am doing research on loanwords in the technological sector; Mouse, Laptop, etc.
Best regards, Clair H. Mealy University of Texas at Austin.
I suppose you could find out by writing to him at the email address on his homepage which I linked to in my entry: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hums/german/yeandle.html
My article on this theme has now been published: Handy Callboy Seeks Evergreen Dressman for Flipper Fun or Pseudo-Anglicisms: An Aspect of the Flood of Americanisms and Anglicisms in Modern German in Vir ingenio mirandus: Studies presented to John L. Flood, edited by William J. Jones, William A. Kelly and Frank Shaw, two vols. (Göppingen: Kümmerle: 2003), vol. II, pp. 955982, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 710, ISBN 3-87452-961-4. I hope people will find it useful.
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