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Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if this is happening at all in Europe. I was just reading on the internet that Brazilian Portuguese has even incorporated a lot of English words into everyday use, particularly for nouns and store bought items.
If a language as different from English as Portuguese is doing this it made me wonder if this phenomenon was happening in other Germanic language speaking countries. I have been to both Holland and Germany and everyone I met was fluent in English, so this leaves an even bigger opportunity for English to invade the local vocabulary.
I notice in Germany a lot that people will just break in to not only just english words, but entire phrases. A lot of advertising and media is also half or entirely in english, seemingly moreso in Berlin.
I can really talk only for Italian.
Here English, whereas widely used (we do not Italianize foreign words like Finns or Frenchmen) in technical words (especially in the computer and high-tech industry), is nowhere close to either invade or replace Italian vocabulary, given that Italian has a much wider range of curse words and blasphemies than English, this isn't likely to occur for curse words (as the above user said) neither.
Don't forget that English itself is a mix of Latin, French, German, Scandinavian etc etc words - its just how languages of the world change and develop over long periods of time.
My parents never had English in school. I had English class from grade 5-10. My nices are teenagers and they have English starting in first grade now.
I was just in Germany during Christmas and was surprised how many English words my nieces use in their everyday conversations. Especially when it comes to texting abbreviations. I come from the country side and found it interesting to see "SALE" signs in the store windows. When I grew up in the 80's-90's, these signs were all in German.
Lots of American Movies titles don't get translated anymore either.
Location: Segovia, central Spain, 1230 m asl, Csb Mediterranean with strong continental influence, 40º43 N
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CravingMountains
I have been to both Holland and Germany and everyone I met was fluent in English, so this leaves an even bigger opportunity for English to invade the local vocabulary.
My understanding was that the more multilingual is a society or a country, the better they preserve their own language.
The wrong habit would be the opposite of this: People that never received a solid grounding in a second language, but mispronouncing some words of it combined with their own native language, as for instance some Mexicans do when they speak Spanglish.
I think it is a little sad! With the rapid pace that this seems to be occurring I just hope that a hundred years from now all of Germanic Europe isn't speaking only English. :/ I'm sure that people are proud of their languages though and will protect them over the generations.
I think it is a little sad! With the rapid pace that this seems to be occurring I just hope that a hundred years from now all of Germanic Europe isn't speaking only English. :/ I'm sure that people are proud of their languages though and will protect them over the generations.
I don't see that happening anytime soon... While most people speak some gibberish English, the language of choice is still German here. Heck, most people even struggle to speak proper German now that I think about it...
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