Germanisms in Modern English Usage: A Cultural, Historical and ESL Perspective

D. Scott Humphries; Noraseth Kaewwipat

Authors

D. Scott Humphries
Noraseth Kaewwipat

Abstract

Every language has loan words or borrowed words from contact with other languages and cultures that, after a period of time, become permanent words of that language. This is considered to be a natural phenomenon, occurring often in almost all world languages. While English words appear more and more frequently at the present time in other languages, due to the use of English as a global language, English itself has adopted words from other languages; words that we may now take for granted as or simply consider to be English words. English is, in fact, quite a heavy “borrower” of foreign words, as we plan to demonstrate in this essay. This paper will explore the incidence of borrowed words in English and, although we may mention examples from other languages, will focus on the phenomenon of borrowed German words (Germanisms) in English, especially in American English. This paper will also address issues that borrowed or “foreign” words in English might raise in the language classroom for learners of English as a second, or non-native, language.

Author Biographies

D. Scott Humphries

D. Scott Humphries has a B.A. in German and English from Hunter College of the City University of New York and a CELTA Certificate from Embassy CES International Teacher Training Institute in Hastings, England. He taught English for five years in Kassel, Germany, and is currently a lecturer of English at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

Noraseth Kaewwipat

Dr. Noraseth Kaewwipat holds a B.A. in German from Thammasat University in Bangkok and an M.A. and Ph.D. in German as a Foreign Language from the University of Kassel, Germany. He is currently a lecturer of German at Ramkhamhaeng University in Bangkok.

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