Borrowing words from German into sixteenth-century standard Slovenian

Abstract

The book Besedje slovenskega knjižnega jezika 16. stoletja (The Sixteenth- Century Standard Slovenian Lexicon, 2011) reveals a relatively large share of words borrowed from or via German and new words coined from them. The loanwords were gradually adapted to Slovenian in terms of phonetics, morphology, word-formation, and ultimately spelling. This article presents the features of borrowing foreign words in the emerging standard language norm and the consequences and new elements that influenced the overall character of the oldest form of standard Slovenian.

Keywords

• slovenian
• standard language
• protestant-era writers
• german loanwords
• coined words