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New High German loanwords in Czech: A frequency test to determine the general trends

Publication

Abstract

This article deals with germanisms in Czech. Frequencies of 26 different new High German loanwords were analyzed in the Czech National Corpus.

These borrowed words were standing in competition with their Czech synonyms. This comparison is used to study the question of whether germanisms or their equivalents in Czech are more used by native speakers.

For this analysis new High German loanwords were deliberately selected in order to verify the actuality of the topic. But the major part of the study was examined in a diachronic period.

This shows not only the current situation but in most cases the frequency of the selected loanwords throughout their existence. The calculations of the average frequency are made for each century (since 1650), and also in the recent modern period (from 1947 to 2008).