8 - The Americanization of the German Language

Summary

Translated by Sally E. Robertson

When cultures come in contact, languages come in contact. Describing the Americanization of the German language therefore means demonstrating linguistic traces of America's cultural, economic, and political influence on Germany. Identifying these traces as Americanisms and distinguishing them unambiguously from Britishisms is a linguistic problem. The origins of many terms are clear, so extralinguistic circumstances have to be taken into consideration - with no guarantee of absolute certainty. Wolfgang Viereck suggests that “[t]he political, economic, technological, and scientific dominance of the United States today indicates a considerably greater influence of American English on German than of British English.” We can therefore speak confidently of an Americanization of Anglicisms. Because Germany has oriented itself toward the United States, the dominant world power, we can assume “the portion of the English language in use in German today that is not clearly counted as AE (American English) or BE (British English) must be regarded as lying under the influence of the United States.” The Americanization of the German language presents the postwar variant of a gradual Anglicization of German that began in the eighteenth century.