Nouns with oscillating grammatical gender are by no means isolated cases. Surprisingly, nonstandard gender occurrences are remarkably widespread. On the one hand, they can be found in peripheral areas of the lexicon, especially foreign words, neologisms and obsolescent words, as well as academic and technical nouns. On the other hand, core areas of the lexicon are also affected: a) nouns that exhibit limited morpho-phonological series formation; b) nouns with an "inconspicuous" gender that are rarely used with the definite article and/or in the singular; c) nouns that are characterised by a loss of transparency, especially derivatives with a fading meaning of the suffix, compounds with a change in meaning or a general loss of salience of the base word, and abbreviations. Gender oscillations are therefore not due to occasional slips, but should be interpreted as an indication of the inherent instability and dynamism of a grammatical subsystem.
The study examines the extent to which the Youth Word of the Year, which has been determined by Langenscheidt Verlag since 2008, reflects the linguistic diversity of a multicultural society. Although the selection draws public attention to language, its significance and representativeness are questionable due to non-transparent selection processes. The study analyzes 260 nominated lexical units from 2008 to 2024. It shows that Anglicisms account for just under 44 % of the suggestions. Lexicon with a migrant language background is significantly underrepresented. Only eight nominations (3.1 %) come from Arabic and/or Turkish. Despite contrary claims in the media, there is no evidence of an increase in migrant language terms. Languages of numerically relevant migrant groups, such as Polish, Russian, or Romanian, are not represented at all in the nominations. The popularization of the few nominated Turkish and Arabic terms is mainly through the music scene and social media, where they often have emotive-expressive functions. Overall, it is clear that the Youth Word of the Year does not reflect the linguistic reality of a multicultural society and instead serves the commercial interests of the publisher.
The formation of plural nouns in German is seen to be complex. This poses a challenge for learners of German, especially when the morphology of their first language differs greatly from that of German. This empirical study investigates how Chinese learners of German process German plurals, and which theoretical model offers a better explanation for their performance. Results of the current study show that for Chinese learners of German, the processing of the plural demands more time than that of the singular. However, no interaction effect between the grammatical number and other factors was observed. This suggests that the Chinese learners of German use a single mechanism for processing the plural regardless of the dominant form of the noun, the plural ending, and the proficiency level of German, according to which all plural forms are first morphologically decomposed, and their components are processed separately. This pattern is similar to that of German native speakers of comparable age and may be due to a lower level of access to morphologically complex forms.
This essay tries to examine the -position in Greek foreign words, starting from Ancient Greek until the take over in Latin far into the period of a new control order of correct spelling up to the year 2000. While the hard endings - of e.g. th - can be followed by a glottal fricative, one can however argue where the breathing with rh really takes place. In the extensive dictionary by Gemoll one can find that the aspiration of r goes back to the preceding but already silent Sigma a and Digamma F [w]. The rest of aspiration is indicated by a special sign (of aspiration) which was placed in front of all vowels so that they were handled in the same way as vowels with an initial IN. It is to understand that one should write hr, hR (e.g. hRodos) and the h - placed afterwards - presumably would be wrong. As soon as - after a short vowel - rr is placed in between, a following aspiration afterwards was possible (e.g. King Pyrrhos = Pi upsilon rho rho omicron sigma). The written display was optional so the spelling of Pyrros (Pi upsilon rho rho omicron sigma) was permitted. In view of this chaos (rooting in Ancient Greek) the spelling of all r (without the ) could be a relief in every day usage (such as *Rythmus, Katarr). In technical language and in topographic traditional spelling the rh can/may/should be maintained (e.g. Rheinfall).
In this paper, the image of Germany in economic, cultural and political terms is examined by means of a semiotic landscape analysis of German representations in the public space of the city of Shanghai, taking into account the actors. In doing so, conceptual patterns and stereotypes in Chinese society's discourse on Germany are put up for discussion. It is shown that the resulting Chinese image of Germany is both rooted in Chinese discourse and co-constructed by German institutions in China.
