Language transfer

The term interference is known in linguistics transfer native language structures to equivalent structures of a foreign language and vice versa or from one dialect structures on the associated standard language and vice versa. This applies to structures of semantic, grammatical ( morphosyntactic ), idiomatic, phonological and gestikulatorischer type in the source language whose acquisition can be viewed in the target language by competent listeners or readers there to be false or misleading and, where appropriate, so can lead to misunderstandings or to incomprehensible sentences. The term is not to be confused with inference in linguistics.

Interference in foreign languages

There are three forms of this type of interference:

• Transfer of native language structures in a foreign language
• Transfer of foreign language structures in the native language, such as from English to German, which is widely known under the keyword " Denglish ".
• Transfer of structures from one foreign language to another. Such interference errors occur when speakers of several languages ​​and very often then when two languages ​​are closely related (eg between Spanish and Italian).

This is the basis error when certain structures of a foreign language within this be generalized, for example, if within the English language, the German foreign dark (hard ) version of the English Laterals "l" generalized and incorrectly used even if the soft, also in German occurring variant should be used.

This phenomenon is often referred to in linguistics not only as an " interference " but also as " transference ". Synonym to is also used the term " transfer ". The latter referred to, confusingly, but actually the positive influence of the native language on the ability to correct wording in the foreign language, which is exactly the opposite of " interference ": For the speaker or writer has in such a positive case, the form he used, never explicitly learned, it is intuitively correct but based on the knowledge of his mother tongue.

Lexical interference

At the lexical interference primarily include the remote, and Hyperkorrektion, both occur especially between closely related languages ​​whose onomasiological rules but do not match, or have the clear phonological differences or use a different spelling for the same pronunciation. So like a German speaker the Dutch " Vink ", which corresponds exactly in meaning and pronunciation of the German "Finch", mistakenly read as " Wink ", because he falsely at some German Lehn or foreign words like " vase ", " Veronica" or "Victoria" oriented.

Another type of lexisch related interference occurs when the grammatical gender between two languages ​​is different. Dutch speakers use in German like accidentally " the " instead of " the " or "that ". Another example is preceded by the definite article the speakers of certain German dialect groups, the persons name. In standard German are articles before names of persons not in use, but common or even required in many local languages ​​from the west and south of the German -speaking area, and females follow, particularly in the southwestern and western varieties, contrary to the standard language norm of a neuter declension: " The Anna is a bright child. "

Semantic interference

Problems with understanding foreign languages ​​, or in the production of intelligible utterances in a foreign language cause so-called " False Friends ". These are words which are similar or identical sounds or written words as the native language, but have a different meaning. This often results in the error, the word mean the same as in the mother tongue. For example, refers to the German word "organic " in everyday language, especially a certain food category, the Danish word "organic" (from " biographer " ), however, corresponds to the German word "movie ". Especially high is the probability that " False friends " in common parlance to prevail if the two things referred to have substantial semantic similarity or equality. So it has about the word " website " from the English "web site" ( "site" = location, place ) project, which means a certain "place " on the World Wide Web. Due to the factual similarity, namely the idea that you have a "site" as a "page" hits and it BROWSE individual "pages" can, has become the German word " website " in many places as a designation not only for a single page of the WWW, but naturalized for an entire site.

A similar problem exists when an idiom is translated literally and then that is actually meant not understood in the target language. Generally caused by improper, especially metaphorical speaking or writing often understanding problems. For example, " blue " in German for " drunk " and a color, while " blue" in English called the same color, but also "sad" (cf. the musical style " blues " ) or " slippery " can mean.

Many are under the mistaken specific words of the same origin, especially internationalisms that there is in all languages ​​that belong to a family of languages ​​in the same species, in exceptional cases, in fact, some loan words in a particular foreign language into disuse, and some internationalisms be ( unexpectedly for many ) used in a form that deviates from the generally accepted standard. So for example:

• " The beer " ( German ), "the beer" (English), " la bière " (French), " la birra " ( Italian); but " la cerveza " ( Spanish), "a cerveja " ( Portuguese)
• " Trans " as in " transport / transport " (almost all European languages ​​); but " tra - " as in " trasporto " ( Italian, without the " n" )

Morphological interference

In many languages ​​there are words with the same stem, but which are conjugated and declined spoke specifically different. This applies to the verb "to arrive" (English ) or " arriver " (French) for example. Who speaks much English and writes, where the " s" suffix in the third person singular is " in flesh and blood walked ". Incorrect forms of the type " il arrives " are easily possible if the concentration of the writer wears off ( especially the verbal suffix "- it " in French exists, but there the second person singular features ). In a similar way, the wrong form explain " gearbeited ": An unfocused writer has taken over the ending of "worked " into German. Increasingly, such cases are recorded in the acquisition of English expressions into German, as in the cases " updated " instead of " updated " or " scanned " instead of " scanned ".

Another case is the identification of the plural by the suffix "-s" is: In English, this form is usually correct, but in the Deutsches rare. That " the fisherman " the "family fisherman " means and not " living from fishing people," people with little expertise of the Germans must not know. Some confusion may be about the fact ensure that the influenced by Low German North German forms such as " boys and girls " strongly spread to the south and there so suggest the impression that it is a generally correct use of the suffix "-s". A moment often jocular use of this kind is often the result of may where necessary and generalize over time.

Phonological interference

Transfer of mother tongue Phoneminventars to the foreign language

Non-native speakers can often be recognized at first due to their non-standard pronunciation of a foreign language. Specifically, with reference to the specific debate, tend to German -speaking learners of English, the following problem areas show:

• Differences in the phoneme inventory between mother tongue and foreign language.
• Differences in the Phonemdistributionen and phoneme
• Differences in Allophonbestand
• Differences in the rate phonetic phenomena (voice clock, rhythm, stress / intonation )

Differences in the phoneme inventory of two languages ​​lead to the in their own language that does not exist sounds of a foreign language are replaced by similar sounds of the native language. This becomes problematic when doing phoneme boundaries are crossed - so if the substitute According to another coincides According to the foreign language.

In case German English learner is the most famous example, the so -called English "th", which exists in two versions: as unvoiced and voiced as interdental fricative. Since there is no inter-dental fricatives in English, German native speakers replace the variants of the English "th" by the alveolar fricatives [s ] as in " rip " or " Sing " [z ] as in. It is thus, for example, both Engl. " Thing" as well as Engl. "Sing" as "singing " ( [ sɪŋ ] ) realized. If this is done by the context no clarification to understanding difficulties arise.

In a matrix, this pronunciation characteristics can be represented as follows:

Thing and singing, writhe and rise, west and vest as well as bath and bed so sound the same in each of these false debate.

Such interferences are due to the categorical perception of so-called: The acquisition of the native language of each infant learns to chance articulated sounds in phonetic classes together and secretes both in perception and in their own articulation of all other possibilities. Now hear a native speaker of a phoneme that does not exist in their own language, this is "automatically" filed into an adjacent sound class and articulated accordingly. These cases of interlingual interference are therefore predictable and form the basis of pronunciation exercises in informing the foreign language.

In contrast to the morphological and syntactic interference phonological interference of correction or modification is usually less accessible.

Mother-tongue interference could be off almost completely by an awareness of the learner on the facts. To this end, however, the knowledge of the conditions of human speech articulation and a particularly intensive study of a foreign language in addition to overcoming a language psychological inhibitions usually necessary. This is possible but usually only when someone who wants to learn a foreign language, staying for some time in the country of the target language. When the speaker of the foreign language of the phenomenon of mother-tongue interference is not aware or he can not overcome them, such errors solidify in a foreign language, so that elimination of mother tongue influence is virtually impossible. In the language acquisition research, this state is referred to as " fossilization ".

Transfer of foreign language Phoneminventars in the native language

Contact with a foreign language can also lead to change that speak, but also the writing of a man in his mother tongue. Or is it possible that German -speaking boy named David and Patrick suddenly want their name is pronounced in English, although it is not to original English names. It can also be to " Johnny" "John". Such anglicisms, however, apply only as "negative transfer", ie as interference phenomena, if one evaluates them negatively as a case of " Denglish " ( "inappropriate " alignment with the standards of the English language ).

Failure to recognize the origin of a word

A special case of phonetic interference put proper names and foreign words is when they are not automatically expressed by the rules of the native language or the presumed origin of language, but according to the rules of an ( other ) foreign language. For example, many do not know that the singer Roger Cicero would have pronounced his first name French; many speak German " Roger " from English. The same applies to " Albert Camus ": Anyone who does not know the name of the French author, it could also speak German or English. The same applies to the Hungarian physician named " Kaposi " after the " Kaposi 's sarcoma " is named: Regardless of how you articulate the "a" and the "o" in his name - correct the "s" must be a "sh " are pronounced. In general, foreign words, it happens about that someone "create" as " krei - ng " is interpreted, if he does not understand immediately that is " cre- ming " meant. It supports such failures through suggestive hyphenation ( like this " cre-ate ", but how they can also occur in genuine German words " include " as in the case of that instead of " con-tain " often called " leg - hold " falsely is read ).