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German loan words in south Moravian variety. Some remarks on German-Czech language contact

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2023

Abstract

This article discusses lexical borrowings from German into Czech. It is a continuation of our previous paper which deals with German-Czech language contact in Central Europe (Zeman 2021).

Due to the longstanding coexistence of both the Czech and German/Austrian ethnics, lots of German/Austrian loan-words became domesticated in the Czech. A significant language contact area in Central Europe is the contact area which is based on the former centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

From this contact area, a remarkable territory emerged in Vienna that was particularly affected by the influence of Czech on German. Although there has been a high degree of inter-national mixing at various stages in history, there was never any real harm done to the essence of either of the two languages.

A fascinating aspect is the parallel changes in pronunciation in both languages, for example, in vowel sounds and diphthongs. Today it is generally accepted that, to make these sound changes, both languages had to develop similar internal expectations and that these developed in parallel.

Aim is a short description of phonological and morphological adaptation of the German loan words in south Moravian variety. The paper enabled to confirm that the phonological and morphological structures of German loan words in south Moravian variety are more differentiated than those of German.