# German 'Baby': How is it that very basic concepts, such as the word for "baby", can be very nearly replaced by a loanword?



## LMorland

MünchnerFax said:


> Yes, that's an English word.


Why?  

In most languages, words are borrowed either because the language doing the borrowing did not have a word to express the concept (e.g., _Schadenfreude_) or because the speakers of the language had no previous experience with the concept to begin with (e.g., Japanese _supuun, fooku_).  

_Or_ the entire language was completely dominated (politically) by a 2nd language for a very long time, as happened with the Norman Conquest of England, causing Middle English to lose such basic words as _aunt _& _uncle _< Old French _ante _& _oncle ... _the latter substitution causing a loss of distinction, as Old English had two words for uncle (ēam "maternal uncle" and fædera "paternal uncle").

None of these situations applies in the case of Hochdeutsch (Standarddeutsch?) _Baby.  _What was the original German word for _baby, _and why and how was such a fundamental concept replaced by an English word?


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## ErOtto

LMorland said:


> None of these situations applies in the case of Hochdeutsch (Standarddeutsch?) _Baby._


 
Sure?



LMorland said:


> What was *is *the original German word for _baby, _and why and how was such a fundamental concept replaced by an English word?


 
*Ba|by *be:bi, das; -s, -s [engl. baby, Lallwort der Kinderspr.]: 1. a) *Säugling*, ...


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## LMorland

ErOtto said:


> Sure?


Yes, unless German speakers have somehow been able to reproduce for the past several hundred years without making babies. 

P.S. "What _was_ the original German word for _baby_?" is perfectly good English, by the way. But your suggested alternative works as well, ErOtto.


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## ErOtto

LMorland said:


> P.S. "What _was _the original German word for _baby_?" is perfectly good English, by the way.


 
I know. 

I only wanted to notice that Säugling *is* the German word. It has not been _replaced_ by an English word. It still exists. 

Sorry for not being clear enough.


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## berndf

LMorland said:


> Yes, unless German speakers have somehow been able to reproduce for the past several hundred years without making babies.


Or (which is the case here) your premise is wrong. All kind of languages borrow all the time left, right and centre for all kinds of reasons, not only when they are missing a concept or are dominated by another culture.


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## LMorland

ErOtto said:


> Säugling *is* the German word. It has not been _replaced_ by an English word. It still exists.


Oh, well, _that _explains a lot.  Except that it is unusual to have two words for _baby.  _Are they used interchangeably?  Is there a social preference for one over the other?  Is _Säugling _seen as old-fashioned in certain areas?





> *Säug•ling* _der_; _-s, -e_; ein kleines Kind, das noch Milch an der Brust der Mutter od. aus der Flasche trinkt ≈ Baby


_Säugling _appears to be cognate to English _suckling_, most often used as an adjective (if memory serves): e.g., _suckling child_.  I'm trying to determine at what point _baby_ entered the English language, and I'm stuck at the moment, except that I've learned that as late as the mid-19th century the word _babe _was preferred to _baby,_ 'baby being a word of the nursery'.  

Therefore the word must have entered German fairly recently, no?


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## LMorland

berndf said:


> Or (which is the case here) your premise is wrong. All kind of languages borrow all the time left, right and centre for all kinds of reasons, not only when they are missing a concept or are dominated by another culture.


Really? What are these "all kinds of reasons", please?

I would love to see a few examples of borrowings that have _truly _entered a culture, and are not just advertising-speak or temporarily popular slang. If a new word is adopted on a wide scale, it's there to fill a gap. 

French, for example, has no word for _fun. _So the French lately come to adopt the English word _fun.  _It fills a gap.


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## Savra

Es gibt noch ein weiteres gebräuchliches Wort: Kleinkind.

Warum wir auch noch _Baby _haben? Eine gute Frage. Es klingt vielleicht niedlicher.


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## Gernot Back

Savra said:


> Es gibt noch ein weiteres gebräuchliches Wort: Kleinkind.


Das ist aber gerade ein Kind, das dem Baby- oder Säuglingsalter entwachsen ist.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinkind
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A4ugling
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neugeborenes

Ich vermute, dass wir neben dem Begriff _Säugling _auch den des _Babys_ benutzen, hat vor allem damit zu tun, dass Kleinkinder letzteres leichter aussprechen können und es ähnlich silbenreduplizierend ist wie die Bezeichnungen _Mama_ und _Papa_.


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## Hutschi

Es ist dann auch analog zu "Mami" und "Papi".


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## berndf

LMorland said:


> _Säugling _appears to be cognate to English _suckling_, most often used as an adjective (if memory serves): e.g., _suckling child_.


This is because the roots are cognates but the words themselves are not. The morphological analyses are _Säug-ling_ and _suckl-ing_, respectively. The German cognates of _suckling_ are _Säugung _for the noun and _säugend_ for the adjective (the original English suffixes _-ing _for the noun/gerund and _-ent_ for the adjective/participle merged in ME; therefore there are two German cognates).

A true cognate _suck-ling_ exists in English as well but is to my knowledge only used for animals. It is derived from ME _suken/souken_ from which both, ModE _to suck _(German _saugen_; from OHG _sugan_) and _to suckle _(German _säugen_; originally probably an_ i-umlauting_ of an unattested causative form _*sugian_ of _sugan_), are derived. The extra "l" in the ModE verb _to suckle _might be a back-formation from this _suckling_. In OE, we also find, as in German, both, the original and the umlauted forms of the verb: _sucan _and _sycan;_ the latter probably also being an i-umlaut of an original causative form _*sucian_. As a result of the loss of [y] in late OE/early ME (/y/>/u/ in West Saxon, /y/>/e/ in Kentish and /y/>/i/ in Anglian), the forms merged in ME into only one verb _suken_ (in late ME mainly spelled _souken_).



LMorland said:


> French, for example, has no word for _fun. _So the French lately come to adopt the English word _fun.  _It fills a gap.


This is a good example of a word imported into a sub-culture language, in this case youth-language, to express the feeling of a group. Semantically, French doesn't have a gap, there are enough ways to express _fun_ in standard French. It might be that the word will eventually enter standard French - maybe in a specialized meaning - but this remains to be seen (of course, I am not speaking of Quebecois here where it is already a standard word).

But this is getting increasingly off-topic here. If you are interested, I will gladly continue this discussion in our Etymology and History of Language forum.


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## LMorland

berndf said:


> This is because the roots are cognates but the words themselves are not. The morphological analyses are _Säug-ling_ and _suckl-ing_, respectively....


I was astounded at your suggestion that English "suckling" comes from "suckl-" + "ing", and not "suck'" + "ling".* Because "-ling" is a standard English suffix for a small thing; *a diminutive, in other words_. _Ex: _duckling, yearling, foundling._  Unfortunately I'm an ocean away from my dictionaries, but I found this citation online: 





> suckling mid-15c., "an infant at the breast," from suck + dim. suffix -ling. Cf. M.Du. sogeling, Du. zuigeling, Ger. Säugling. Meaning "act of breast-feeding" is attested from 1799.


On the other hand, you're in good company with this suggestion:





berndf said:


> The extra "l" in the ModE verb _to suckle _might be a back-formation from this _suckling_.


The below is from the same online etymological dictionary:





> suckle c.1400, perhaps a causative form of M.E. suken "to suck" (see suck), or a back-formation from suckling (though this word is attested only from mid-15c.).


And as for _fun:_


berndf said:


> Semantically, French doesn't have a gap, there are enough ways to express _fun_ in standard French.


I beg to differ.  I should have been more specific: there is no _noun_ to express the concept _fun. _ If you want to say _we had fun_, you have use a verb form: _nous nous sommes bien amusés _or _nous avons bien rigolé_. Sometimes not having a noun at one's disposal is no fun! 

Anyway, now that this thread has been moved, perhaps somebody will answer my questions above:_ Are Baby and __Säugling used interchangeably?  Is there a social preference for one over the other?  Is __Säugling__ seen as old-fashioned in certain areas?

_Not to mention that it would be nice to know the history of _Baby_ in German!


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## sokol

Moderator note: Split from this thread in German forum.

The question resulted from loaning English "baby" to German, where it exists besides native words for the same concept and even has become more frequent than the latter - so English "baby" nearly has replaced native German words. Thus, the question of this thread should be (re-formulated in accordance with LMorland):

How is it that very basic concepts, such as the word for "baby", can be very nearly replaced by a loanword?

Contributions about similar phenomenons in other languages than German are welcome if they relate to the same topic.


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## Hutschi

It may be of interest that only the noun exists in this form in German.
The verb "to baby" is not transferred, also not the noun "babe" - the word "baby" is derived from as diminutive in English according to OED.
This means only the name of one or some concepts is transferred, not the whole set of concepts connected to Baby.


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## artion

It seems that in Greek the word "baby" filled a vacuum: The official Gr. _vrefos_ and the general and colloquial _moro _are neuter in gender and common for girls and boys. Strangely, the Greeks instead of giving gender to these words, they borrowed the neutral _baby_ and gave it genders: bebis (m.) and beba (f.). The Italian did the same with babino and babina. These forms (bebis/-a) are mostly used in singular and when referring to a particular baby known to the speakers (e.g. the baby of the family) and also in vocative when talking to the baby himself.


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## berndf

LMorland said:


> I was astounded at your suggestion that English   "suckling" comes from "suckl-" + "ing", and not "suck'" + "ling".* Because "-ling" is a standard English suffix for a small thing; *a diminutive, in other words_. _Ex: _duckling, yearling, foundling._


I didn't say _suck-ling _didn't exist but that _suck-ling_ and _suckl-ing_ were separate words. To my knowledge, _suck-ling_ is today only used for animals but I may be wrong. At least Webster agrees with me.

You explicitly mentioned the use as an adjective and I mainly reacted to that because only _suckl-ing_ can be an adjective. _Suck-ling_ can only be a noun.


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## hadronic

I need say : French has a noun for "fun", it's "amusement".
But funnily enough, it's English that misses a _verb _to say "s'amuser" ==> "to have fun", and moreover, "fun" in French is 99% of the cases an adjective : "c'etait fun", "une histoire fun", "que faire de fun?", and a noun in one expression figée : "pour le fun".
Thread also : http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=392383


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## berndf

LMorland said:


> And as for _fun:_I beg to differ.  I should have been more specific: there is no _noun_ to express the concept _fun. _ If you want to say _we had fun_, you have use a verb form: _nous nous sommes bien amusés _or _nous avons bien rigolé_. Sometimes not having a noun at one's disposal is no fun!


This seems to be specific problem of foreigners living in a different cultural environment that they feel the need to export their way of formulating certain things into the other language. Being like you a foreigner living in a French speaking area, I think I know the phenomenon.

French people seem perfectly happy expressing the notion with adjectives only. As hadronic wrote, the word is restricted to certain set phrases where it is mainly used as if it were an adjective.


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## LMorland

hadronic said:


> I _should add_: French has a noun for "fun", it's "amusement".


Oui, mais ça ne se dit pas assez souvent !  Moreover, according to this dictionary, it doesn't really mean _fun. _


hadronic said:


> But funnily enough , it's English that _is missing_ a _verb _to say "s'amuser" ==> "to have fun", and moreover, "fun" in French is 99% of the cases an adjective :* c'était fun, une histoire fun, que faire de fun?*, and a noun in one expression figée : *pour le fun*.


Thank you, hadronic: you're quite right to point out that English doesn't have a verb for fun -- I never thought of that!  And I thank you also for pointing out that _fun _is primarily used as an adjective in French.  

However, my point obtains whether or not _fun _is used as a noun or an adjective. (It is both in English:  _We had fun last night!  It was a fun evening.) _I believe that it fills a gap. Of course, one can say _c'est amusant, _or_ c'est le pied_, but evidently they don't quite suffice  -- otherwise why would the French have adopted the word _fun ?_

* * * * *​
In any case, berndf, I do _not _believe that I am glomming my anglophone perspective onto French.  That is, while it's kind of you to share your experience of being a foreigner living in a francophone country, I don't think that this is a case of my "export[ing my] way of formulating certain things into the other language."

The adoption of the English word _fun_ into French is a phenomenon; it exists!  All I'm trying to do is to deconstruct it.  The fact that hadronic can quickly cite 4 uses of _fun _testifies to the fact that it's becoming rooted into French soil. A Google search of _fun_ restricting to French (France) brings up 3,600,000 results! Here are some (all commercial sites, as it happens) selected at random:

Fun Radio, Videos Fun, Trop Fun, Fun Parc Aventure, Fun Chryzode, Annuaire Fun, Humour-Fun.net, Fun Style, Fun XP, Fun Rider ....

Further, the link hadronic gave reveals that the word _fun _was  adopted into Quebecois French half a century ago at least: _*C'est l'fun! *_

*So it's incontestable that the French language has adopted the word fun.  My question is 'why'?  
* 
If the "need" wasn't there, that leaves only one other explanation:  the sole factor for lexical borrowing that I omitted in my original post is called "prestige".  It's possible that the taste for English words is so very high among French young people that it has driven the adoption of this word into the lexicon.  

But the same wasn't true among Germans at the time _Baby _was brought into the language.  Or was it?  We still have not resolved my original question.


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## berndf

LMorland said:


> Fun Radio, Videos Fun, Trop Fun, Fun Parc Aventure, Fun Chryzode, Annuaire Fun, Humour-Fun.net, Fun Style, Fun XP, Fun Rider ....


I said it was a youth-culture term but not a standard language word and I still think this is true. Commercial terminology is stuffed with Anglicisms all over Europe. That doesn't prove much.
*****************************


LMorland said:


> Further, the link hadronic gave reveals that the word _fun _was  adopted into Quebecois French for half a century at least: _*C'est l'fun! *_


No disagreement. I wrote earlier:


berndf said:


> (of course, I am not speaking of Quebecois here where it is already a standard word).


*****************************


LMorland said:


> the sole factor for lexical borrowing that I omitted in my original post is called "prestige".


I agree with you that this is the explanation here and in many other cases:





berndf said:


> ...to express the feeling of a group.





LMorland said:


> But the same wasn't true among Germans at the time _Baby _was brought into the language.  Or was it?  We still have not resolved my original question.


Indeed, because it is not the "sole" other reason. I think many factors might have played a role. One of them being "fashion" or "prestige" but it was probably only an accelerating factor as the word started to gain currency already in the 19th century before it became fashionable to use English loans (click). Gernot probably gave the most important reason:





Gernot Back said:


> Ich vermute, dass wir neben dem Begriff _Säugling _auch den des _Babys_  benutzen, hat vor allem damit zu tun, dass Kleinkinder letzteres  leichter aussprechen können und es ähnlich silbenreduplizierend ist wie  die Bezeichnungen _Mama_ und _Papa_.


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## апопумоуs

Folks, throw a look at ngrams googlelabs dot com. Bébé first appears 1820s and becomes truly big in the 1850s. Baby, in the English language corpus, parallells this developement tenfold lower frequency. The baby of German, resembles that but is even rarer. Question is: why did they borrow bébé all of the sudden from their baby talk? Knowyourmeme doesn't reach as far back yet. Too bad.


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## Kevin Beach

Baby (bébé) clearly started as "baby-talk", like the other repetitive words: mama, dada, papa, nana, baba etc.

I wonder whether it's absorption into German is a post-WWII phenomenon, when the country was influenced by modern American and British culture, with so many pop songs containing the word "baby".

Others may know better.


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## berndf

It was clearly an accelerating factor but the word existed before (see chart in #20).


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## swift

Excusez que je m'incruste ici.

En espagnol, nous avons un cas similaire à celui évoqué dans le premier message : le mot *bebé* est en effet un emprunt au français « bébé ». Ce mot est retenu pour la première fois dans l'*édition de 1927* du _*Diccionario Academia Manual*_ de l'académie espagnole, et il porte la marque _gallicisme_. « Bebé » a pratiquement remplacé le mot _nene_ dans de nombreux pays hispanophones. Ce mot est lexicalisé à tel point que dans certains pays, comme le Vénézuéla et le Chili, on trouve la forme féminisée *beba* pour les petites filles. Nous avons aussi le mot _rorro_ qui appartient au registre familier et qui désigne non pas le nourrisson mais tout "petit enfant".


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