The differences and similarities between English and German language at the basic level of translation

The differences and similarities between English and German language at the basic level of translation

SOFOVIC, Dina

I have aimed to concentrate on the comparative analysis between English and German language and to investigate the differences and similarities concerning the major word formation processes in English and German at the basic level in this paper. Similarity between the two languages stems from the fact that much vocabulary has common roots, as they, English and German, belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. They are both Germanic, even though each has borrowed many words from Latin, French and Greek, that means that many common words are similar in both languages, for example: house/Haus, man/Mann, here/Hier and good/gut, and even some words are identical for example: Hand, Arm, Sand and Finger. Modern English has evolved into one of the dominant world languages, and it also had a growing influence on other languages. Loaned words cover different fields such as popular culture, politics, business and the environment, because of profound changes in the life and language, the influence of English language worldwide and that many expressions from English appear as loan words. According to Garrod and Sanford definition of a specific communicative task such as a description or instruction, the information to be expressed is not mapped directly from memory into linguistic form. Hence, speakers generate a temporary conceptual structure which focuses on a specific set of pragmatics, semantic, and syntactic options and sets guidelines for the process of mapping information into linguistic form. Translation is often thought to be primarily about words and their meanings, what the words in the source text mean, and how words in the target language will convey meaning. Recent linguistics research has not yet been able to come up with the actual percentage of Anglicism in German language.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2013

1443