Acta Oeconomica Pragensia 2015, 23(2):54-66 | DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.470

Lexical pitfalls of business German

Věra Höppnerová
Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze, Fakulta mezinárodních vztahů (e-mail: vera.hoppnerova@vse.cz).

This study is focused on interference-related errors in economics students' written papers. These errors are caused mostly by the differently structured non-linguistic reality, which results in asymmetries of language signs. Mistakes occur particularly in polysemous words, words with different semantic ability to combine, fixed phrases, and prepositional phrases. Concerning foreign words, interference-related errors arise from their asymmetric occurrence in the mother and the target languages, and also from their different meanings in both languages. Although learning German may be facilitated by the knowledge of English, Czech students often make mistakes in German under the influence of English. Homographs in particular tempt students to identify German words written in the same or a similar way, but are semantically different, with English words and their meanings.The reason for these errors may be confusing similar-sounding words in the two languages, or possibly their semantic similarities.

Keywords: interference-related errors, business German, influence of English
JEL classification: Z19

Published: April 1, 2015  Show citation

ACS AIP APA ASA Harvard Chicago Chicago Notes IEEE ISO690 MLA NLM Turabian Vancouver
Höppnerová, V. (2015). Lexical pitfalls of business German. Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 23(2), 54-66. doi: 10.18267/j.aop.470
Download citation
  • BibTeX (.bib)
  • Bookends (.ris)
  • EasyBib (.ris)
  • EndNote (.enw)
  • EndNote 8 (.xml)
  • ISI WoS (.isi)
  • Medlars (.medlars)
  • Mendeley (.ris)
  • MODS (.xml)
  • Papers (.ris)
  • RefWorks (.txt)
  • RefManager (.ris)
  • RIS (.ris)
  • MS Word (.xml)
  • Zotero (.ris)
    • Open full article

    References

    1. AMELUNG, I.; ANTOŇOVÁ, Ch.; KERNEROVÁ, J.; KLEIN, S. 2001, 2002. Hartnäckige Fehlertschechischer Studenten: In Cizí jazyky. 2001, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 61-63; No. 3, pp. 95-97; No 4, pp. 135-137; No. 5, pp. 164-165. 2002, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 24-26; No 2, pp. 60-62.
    2. BRAUN, P.; SCHAEDER, B.; VOLMERT, J. (Hrsg.). 1990. Internationalismen. Studien zur interlingualen Lexikologie und Lexikographie. Reihe Germanistische Linguistik: Max Niemayer Verlag Tübingen, 1990. Go to original source...
    3. DUDEN, 2011. Deutsches Universalwörterbuch: Bibliographisches Institut Mannheim, 2011. FLEISCHER, W. 1982. Phraseologie der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. VEB Bibliographisches Institut: Leipzig, 2011.
    4. HELBIG, G.; BUSCHA, J. 1984. Deutsche Grammatik. Ein Handbuch für den Ausländerunterricht. Langenscheidt Verlag Enzyklopädie: Leipzig, Berlin, München, 1984.
    5. HILSCHER, A. a kol. 2003. Deutsch-tschechisches Fehlerlexikon, Kvarta: Praha, 2003.
    6. HOPPNEROVÁ, V. 2012. Der Einfluss des Englischen beim Erlernen von Deutsch. In Linguistische Treffen in Wroctaw, Vol. 8. Im Anfang war das Wort I, herausgegeben von Iwona Bartoszwicz / Joanna Szcz^k / Artur Tworek, 127-134.
    7. HOPPNEROVÁ, V. 1995. Grammatische und lexikalische Schwerpunkte im Unterricht der deutschen Wirtschaftssprache. Praha: Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze, 1995.
    8. HOPPNEROVÁ, V. 2006. Zrádná slova v němčině. Praha: Ekopress, 2006.
    9. JUHÁSZ, J. 1970: Probleme der Interferenz. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1970.
    10. KALOUSKOVÁ, L.; MUSILOVÁ, I. 2011. Vliv angličtiny na ekonomickou němčinu. Acta Oeconomica Pragensia. 2011, Vol 19, No. 3, pp. 74-78. Go to original source...
    11. KERNEROVÁ, J. 2011. K některým aspektům lexikálních chyb studentů VŠE. Acta Oeconomica Pragensia. 2011, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 81-87. Go to original source...
    12. NICKEL, G. 1972. Grundsätzliches zur Fehleranalyse. Fremdsprachen lehren und erlernen. Texte herausgegeben von Reinhold Freudenstein und Harald Gutschow, R. Riper & Co. Verlag München, 1972.
    13. RINAS, K. 2001. Interferenzfehler deutschsprechender Tschechen. Sborník prací brněnské univerzity. Brno: Masarykova univerzita v Brně. 39-92 s.
    14. SCHIPPAN, T. 1992. Lexikologie der deutschen Sprache. Tübigen: Max Niemayer Verlag, 1992. SIIEBENSCHEIN, H. a kol. 2006. Velkýněmecko-český a Česko-německý slovník. Praha: Leda, 2006.
    15. VESELÝ, J. 1983. Obtížné jevy cizojazyčného lexika. Einführung in die kontrastive Linguistik von einem Autorenkollektiv unter Leitung von Reinhard Sternemann. VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie: Leipzig, 1983.

    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


    Return to the content