English-language borrowings of the coronavirus era and their functioning in German online publications

Abstract

In post-crisis conditions, it becomes possible to assess the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on the vocabulary of the German language. A large number of English-language borrowings have penetrated into the German language, arousing the interest of linguists in the question of the influence of a new layer of vocabulary on the recipient language and becoming the subject of study by Russian and foreign linguists. For example, on the basis of research on neologisms of the Covid era, dictionaries and reference books of the vocabulary of the coronavirus era are being produced in various languages, including German. The subject of this study is English-language borrowings dedicated to Covid-19 in modern German online media (magazines, newspapers), and the aim is to identify the impact of the pandemic on enriching the vocabulary of the German language with English-language borrowings. Actual works (not older than five years) of Russian and foreign scientists in the fields of lexicology, lexicography, onomastics, and sociolinguistics became the methodological basis of the study. The analysis of the impact of the coronavirus on the process of assimilation of English-language borrowings in German is carried out on the basis of online media texts for the period February 2020 – October 2021, which makes the study innovative and reflects the trends of modern linguistic science. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the coronavirus pandemic had an impact on the German language; in most cases, the recipient language began to actively combine English-language components of words with native German words, thereby forming new hybrid lexical formations. The further perspective of the research lies in the field of comparing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the lexical composition of the German and Russian languages and determining the role of English-language borrowings in the vocabulary of both German and Russian languages.