Gallicism
A Gallicism (occasionally Gallism or Frenchism ) is a language peculiarity taken from French , mostly a word, but sometimes also entire sentences and phrases. There are also words that ultimately do not come from French but from other languages, for which French acts as a mediating language. A special form are false gallicisms that only look as if they correspond directly to French models. Also noteworthy are mixed forms such as “courage someone” for “court someone” from “faire la cour” .
Gallicisms in German
Borrowings from French are the second largest group in German after Latinisms (however, it is usually disputed whether a word comes from French as a mediating language or directly from Latin, according to some counts, French can come first and Latin third Place); they have had a major impact on German vocabulary. The development of the Gallicisms follows the Piotrowski law / language change law .
Examples of Gallicisms:
- L'art pour l'art
- Honi soit qui mal y pense
- Rien ne va plus
- à propos
- Commitment - engineer - journalist
- Pompfüneberer after pompe funèbre: Österr. Term for undertaker
An example of a word that was adopted from French, but ultimately not from French, is café / coffee ; According to Kluge, the word comes from Arabic and came into German via Turkish, Italian and French. In this case, French is not the language of origin, but one of the intermediary languages involved.
With sham Gallicism or "Frenchizing education" are words that seem to come from French, but are unknown in the French-speaking area. Examples of this are terms such as embarrassment , hairdresser , curtain , staffage or rigging .
Plural form of Gallicisms in German
| Singular | Plural |
|---|---|
| the march | the marches |
If one observes closely the plural formation of masculine and neutral borrowings from French, one finds that the plural markings (umlaut +) "-e" and "-s" are suitable for monosyllabic masculine and neutral nouns. It is noticeable that the plural morphem "-s" occurs more often in masculine and neuter than the plural suffix (umlaut +) "-e". It is noticeable that the umlaut of the stem vowel with the plural morph "-e" only occurs in four cases, namely in the ball - the balls , the march - the marches , the place - the places , the rank - the ranks . The present four nouns are phonotactically adapted to the system of the German language.
Polysyllabic neutral and masculine borrowings from French with a stem-ending pseudo-suffix form the plural entirely with the zero mark. There is no umlaut of the stem vowel in any case. For polysyllabic masculine nouns in Schwa and with a derivation suffix, which are masculine personal names on “-ant” and “-ist”, the weak declension “- (e) n” comes into consideration, as with the rival - die rival , the journalist - the journalists , the astronaut - the astronauts etc.
The plural marker - (e) n is assigned to almost all feminine borrowings. Even with the few feminine nouns that form the plural with -s suffixation, there is a competing plural formation with "- (e) n" in several cases, for example with the cream - the creams or the creams , the chaise longue - the Chaise longues or the chaise longues . There are also few feminines that form their plural with -s-suffixation, as in the case of bouillon - the bouillons .
In summary, one could say that monosyllabic masculine and neuter, which were adopted from French, form their plural with -s suffixing in about 70 percent of cases and only about 30 percent with -e plural. The formation of plurals with the suffix “-s” in nouns taken from French is completely excluded. Masculine and neutral borrowings ending with a pseudo-suffix have no plural marking in the plural. Most feminine borrowings from French form their plural with the - (e) n-suffixation.
literature
- Karl-Heinz Best : A contribution to the discussion of foreign words. In: The German language in the present. Festschrift for Dieter Cherubim for his 60th birthday . Edited by Stefan J. Schierholz in collaboration with Eilika Fobbe, Stefan Goes and Rainer Knirsch. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. a. 2001, pages 263-270. ISBN 3-631-37009-1 .
- Tobias Streck: From Scheßlong to Boddschamber and retur ... French borrowings in the Baden dialects , in: Alemannisches Jahrbuch 2005/2006, pp. 261–315 ( full text as PDF )
- Rudolf Telling: French in German vocabulary. Loaned and foreign words from eight centuries. People and knowledge Volkseigener Verlag, Berlin 1987. ISBN 3-06-521804-6 .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helle Körner: On the development of the German (loan) vocabulary . Glottometrics 7, 2004, 25-49; see overview on p. 30 (PDF full text ).
- ↑ Best 2001, p. 265 for data based on Telling 1987.
- ↑ Kluge. Etymological dictionary of the German language . Edited by Elmar Seebold. 24th, revised and expanded edition. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002. ISBN 3-11-017472-3 , keyword: "Coffee".
- ↑ Köpcke, Klaus-Michael: Schemas in the plural formation in German. Attempt at a cognitive morphology . Narr, Tübingen 1993, page 145. ISBN 3-8233-4748-9 .