Lexical pitfalls of business German

Lexikální slabiny českých studentů při studiu hospodářské němčiny

Věra Höppnerová

Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, 2015, vol. 2015, issue 2, 54-66

Abstract: 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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.18267/j.aop.470

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