Determining the gender of Anglicisms according to the examples from German Press

Abstract

When included in the German language, Anglicisms integrate with the German grammar system. As it is known, nouns in the English language have no gender, but if they are accepted in German, they immediately get grammatical gender which is expressed in the use of an article. In the German language gender of Anglicismzs is determined according to the following: 1. Biological sex; 2. Lexical similarity; 3. Group analogy; 4. Hidden semantic analogy; 5. The number of syllables; 6. Morphological analogy. The article provides an overview of each criterium on the basis of examples from the German press. The material for illustration is taken from DWDS Korpus. Particular examples are taken from the following magazines and newspapers published in 2000: Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, Die ZEIT. The article presents the suffixes that help us identify the gender of Anglicisms. The Angicisms ending in -ster, -or, -ik, -ist  are also masculine. The English gerund with the -ing suffix corresponds with the German noun infinitive and hence takes the neuter gender. The Anglicisms with the suffix -ment have the neuter gender. In analogy with the German suffixes -heit/-keit, the Anglicisms with the suffix -ness are feminine. They express physical or mental state and are derived from adjectives. The Anglicisms that consist of a verb and a particle are either masculine or neuter. Gender in the German language is often vague and hard to identify. In certain contexts, gender is not distinct. The less familiar the word for the user, the greater the uncertainty related to it. The abovementioned criteria are not the dogma for determining the gender of Anglicisms in the German language. Gender can change over the course of time. There were some cases where gender was ambivalent, but it is distinct today. As the study indicates, English nouns in the German language undergo changes according to German grammatical rules. As the category of gender is not morphologically expressed in English nouns, the German language had a great influence on Anglicisms.