Dutch influence on German

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During the 16th and 18th century, often called Alamodezeit in German, French threatened to replace German as the language of culture and government in the German states of the Holy Roman Empire. The German princes copied the customs and etiquette of the French court. As a result of the Huguenot Wars in France, many French refugees settled in Germany and because of the Thirty Years' War many mercenaries and foreign armies roamed the lands. Because of this, an increasing amount of French loan words entered the German language. Voltaire, when visiting the Prussian royal court in 1750, famously remarked: "I am in France here, they speak our language, German is reserved for soldiers and horses".

German poets like Gryphius, Von Opitz and Von Zesen made efforts, during the 17th century, to reduce French influence on the German language. These poets, and many other intellectual Germans at the time because of the Thirty Years' War, had studied in the Netherlands, at Dutch universities. In their attempt to reduce French influence on German they Germanised a great number of Dutch words, among them are: Abstand (Dutch Afstand), Bollwerk (Dutch Bolwerk) and Wörterbuch (Dutch Woordenboek).

A large number of mathematical terms, Dutch being one of the few European languages that use native rather than Greek or Latin-based words, were translated or Germanised, these include: Centre (geometry) (Dutch Middelpunt), Mittellinie (Obsolete Dutch Middellinie, nowadays Middellijn) and Dreieck (Dutch Driehoek).

Because of (especially southern) Germany's limited experience of the (high) sea compared to that of the Dutch a large number of maritime terms and of marine animals were also introduced from Dutch. A few examples are: Brandung (Dutch Branding), Dünung (Dutch Deining) and Pumpe (Dutch Pomp) Pottfisch (Dutch Potvis), Hai (Dutch Haai) and Makrele (Dutch Makreel).

During the 12th century, after a number of devastating floods in the Netherlands, a large number of Dutch people migrated to other areas such as The Wash (England), the Gironde delta (France) and the German cities of Hamburg and Bremen. Dutch also had considerable influence on the Berlin dialect. When the Margrave of Brandenburg invited the Dutch to settle in his realm thousands of Dutchmen and women moved to the Elbe region near Berlin where they built dikes to drain away the water of the local swamps. As a result the Berlin dialect inherited some Dutch features ^[1] such as ick (Dutch ik), ooch (Dutch ook) and koofen (Dutch kopen).

[edit] References, notes and sources

1. ^ The original dialect of Berlin was Low German, however Berlin stopped using this dialect around 1500 in favour of High German. The following words, even though they might have very similar or identical (written) counterparts in Low German, are of Dutch origin or were reintroduced by the Dutch settlers.

Main source: Onbekende Buren, by Dik Linthout. "Taal, Nederlandse invloeden op het Duits", page 101-103. ("Language, Dutch influences on the German language.")

Secondary: Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren, Dutch online/digital library on the Dutch language and literature.