Ja, I go to ze Animal Doktor, nicht ze Veterinarian

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One has often heard the German language being called rather ‘compact’. This is due to its ability to easily form compound words by adding them to each other to form a longer word for an object or idea, which in English would be described, maybe, by two or more words.

A good example is the word der Tierarzt.

This is made up of the words –

das Tier – the animal

der Arzt – the doctor

Therefore, der Tierarzt = the animal doctor, or, in other words, the veterinary doctor.

Another example is die Vogelgrippe = the bird flu,

made up of the words der Vogel = the bird, and die Grippe = the flu

The French equivalents would be -

the veterinary doctor - le médecin vétérinaire (normally shortened to le vétérinaire = the veterinarian)

the bird flu - la grippe aviaire

Let’s have a look at the word formation (or term formation) of the equivalents for ‘veterinary doctor’ in all three languages in a little more detail –

German –

der Tierarzt =

das Tier (n.)

der Arzt (n.)

All commonly used German words.

English –

the veterinary doctor =

veterinary (adj.) from Latin veterinarius

the doctor

Here we see that, instead of a prefix or a qualifying adjective like ‘animal’, the Latinised adjective form is preferred – veterinary.

Similarly in French –

le médecin vétérinaire =

le médecin (n.) – the doctor

vétérinaire (adj.) – again from Latin veterinarius

Now, considering the fact that in French, the adjective normally appears after the noun, we again notice that the qualifying adjective is derived from a Latin root instead from the French l’animal, which is the normally used French word for ‘animal’.

Similarly for ‘the bird flu’ –

German –

die Vogelgrippe =

der Vogel (n.) - the bird

die Grippe (n.) - the flu

All commonly used German words.

French –

la grippe aviaire =

la grippe (n.)

aviaire (adj.) – derived from the Latin avis ‘bird’

instead of using a form derived from the standard French l’oiseau ‘the bird’.

Even in English, we sometimes see the form ‘avian flu’, ‘avian’ also being derived from Latin avis.

Why do some languages prefer to borrow from ‘mother’ languages like Latin or Greek, while others look to themselves to borrow and thereby create new or derived terminology? Using a Latinised form of the word ‘animal’ to make up the word for ‘animal doctor’ would sound completely ridiculous in German, while being completely normal in French.

Similarly, using a commonly used word to derive certain adjectives in French would be rather non-standard and would sound strange, while in German, it would be the norm.

We see a similar situation in a lot of Indian languages, which mostly look to Sanskrit to borrow from. For other languages which have an Islamic influence like Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Balochi and Divehi (Maldivian), the ‘mother’ language is usually Persian or Arabic. Sinhala normally derives from Pali, itself a descendant of Sanskrit.

My personal opinion is that it makes more sense if a language ‘borrows’ from itself, rather than from a ‘mother’ or parent language. The derivations from the parent language can often sound artificial and ‘snobbish’, as does ‘avian flu’ in English instead of simply ‘bird flu’.

An example in an Indian language that immediately (and coincidentally) comes to mind is the Hindi word (adjective) for ‘artificial’. Standard Hindi uses बनावटी /bənaːʋəʈiˑ/ as opposed to the Sanskrit-derived word कृत्रिम /krɨt̪rɪm/, which itself sounds highly artificial.

Updated: 2008-12-30