Pet peeve: "realisieren" in German

[pne]

Gah. Just read an article in German Wikipedia which used the German word "realisieren" in the sense of "to realise, understand, come to know"; this is, for me, an anglicism and a false friend and rubs me the wrong way. (It should be something like "fassen, begreifen, sich gewahr werden, erkennen, verstehen" instead IMO.)

For me, the German "realisieren" should be restricted to the sense "realise a project (i.e. implement it, carry it out)".

This rant has been brought to you by Prescriptivists, Inc.

(Hmm... though my Duden does recognise the other sense, even if it's marked in the etymology as "from the English word 'realize'".)

Another pet peeve is the spelling of "Entgelt" as "Entgeld", though it's easy to see where that confusion arises.

ETA: Heh. And coincidentally, "Zwiebelfisch" has an article about the Americanisation of German.

Comments

[eilanhp.livejournal.com]

I think I even used realisieren in the other sense before I knew the other word. Aber sehr, sehr selten, weil es sich meistens wirklich so anhört, als ob man kein richtiges Deutsch kann.

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

Random questoin: Why do people use "ETA" as an abbrevation? ETA has meant "estimated time of arrival" for years and years and years, and yet recently someone invented the abbreviation to mean "edited to add", or something. Really, really bugs me.

Why not "Edit:", "Update:", or the proofreader's 'insert' symbol, the caret (^)?

Done venting now, promise. :)

[eilanhp.livejournal.com]

estimated time of arrival? Didn't even know that... :)

ETA

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hm... I suppose so. It confused me when I saw it at first as well. But:

Why do people use "ETA" as an abbrevation?

Why not, though? Abbreviations happen. Even ambiguous ones.

Why not "Edit:", "Update:", or the proofreader's 'insert' symbol, the caret (^)?

I've used "Edit:" before as well. I never gave it much thought.

Done venting now, promise. :)

Be my guest.

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

It didn't occur to me until after I'd clicked on the link that the article would probably be written in German, not American. (Or English, but it sounds more parallel that way...) My sociolinguistics prof. here was telling us about some of the ways Japanese has become more English-ized -- for example, more widespread use of 達 as a pluralizer. It used to be only applicable to (categories of) humans.

Oh well. Will add the link to my bookmarks for when I can read German!

[pne.livejournal.com]

My Japanese teacher said that "kare" and "kanojo" also originated as "translationese", but I imagine they've started to become used in natural Japanese as well to an extent?

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the origin, but they've definitely become more oft-used because of the influence of English.

realize

[denial-land.livejournal.com]

I've always been convinced that "to realize" has nothing to do with a revelation... until someone in my English LK said "to realize a dream", and the teacher said nothing. So I looked it up, and apparently it can be both... "to suddenly become aware of something" as well as "make something true".

Al least that's what I thought so far. *shrug*

Re: realize

[pne.livejournal.com]

*nods*

The English verb can have both meanings, but I believe that the German verb should only have the "make real" one and that the other one is an Anglicism.

Re: realize

[denial-land.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. I hear the phrase "Und dann habe ich endlich realisiert, dass <...>" or something similar quite often, actually.. I always thought that the German word has both meanings...

heh, this is quite interesting..it could be a regional thing, maybe? But yes, could be an Anglicism. But I'm not too sure.

Re: realize

[pne.livejournal.com]

I always thought that the German word has both meanings...

It does, according to my Duden.

But I still find that meaning a bit icky.

OTOH maybe I'm wrong and should "go with the times".