Latin in German
Taking Advantage of Latin-Based
Vocabulary in German and English
With the Latin Loan Words chart
All languages are influenced by other languages to some degree. English has always been a big borrower from many sources. English vocabulary reflects numerous new word constructions and loan words from Greek, Latin (Latein), French, German and Native American languages, just to name a few.
English and German are close cousins in the Germanic family of languages (see chart below), but they have both borrowed heavily from the Italic (Romanisch) branch of the long-gone Indo-European Ursprache (protolanguage). The simplified language family tree below shows how the Germanic (German, English) and Italic (Latin, French, Spanish, etc.) language branches developed from different ancestors.
KEY: AHD = Althochdeutsch (Old High German),
MHD = Mittelhochdeutsch (Middle High German),
OE = Old English, ME = Middle English.
As we can see from the chart above, the Germanic family split off into several branches. One of those branches was East Germanic, which produced Gothic (Gotisch), a language that died out and had no descendents. Another Germanic family branch (not shown) was North Germanic, in which the Scandinavian or Nordic languages of Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish developed. The other main Germanic branch was West Germanic, out of which two sub-branches developed: Anglo-Frisian and German. English arose out of the Anglo-Frisian branch (via Old and Middle English), while today's German developed from Old High German (the oldest written form of German) and Middle High German. Not shown in our simplified chart are the many dialects of both German and English, as well as some other Germanic branches (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans).
What our language ancestry chart (Sprachstammbaum) also fails to show is the fact that the Romans were all over Europe. At its height, the Roman Empire extended across Europe from the British Isles to the Mediterranean (Mittelmeer). This meant that the language of the Romans also came into contact with German and other languages. (Many German town names originate from Latin.) Later Latin became an important universal language – somewhat like English today – especially in the areas of the Roman Catholic Church and scholarship at European universities (where Latin was the language of instruction). Although German has also been influenced by Greek, French, English and other languages, Latin-derived words make up a large percentage of German vocabulary. Gutenberg printed his famous 42-line Bible around 1456 – in Latin. The first Bible in German appeared in 1466, but even as late as 1680, half of all printed Bibles in Germany were still in Latin. (In 1520 it had been 90 percent!)
Before we go into more detail about vocabulary, let's discuss another Latin aspect. The German word Grammatik and English grammar come from the Latin term grammaticus. The names of the German noun cases are the same as Latin: dativus, Dativ, dative (Germanic Wemfall). But beyond that, Latin also influenced German syntax (word order) and verb tenses (Plusquamperfekt, Perfekt and Futur are more than just Latin words).
For vocabulary examples and to find out more about how you can use Latin to your advantage, see the next page.
NEXT > MORE LATIN • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
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