Tadeusz Lewaszkiewicz – Post-1989 lexical changes in the German (as used in the former East Germany), Polish, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian languages

The unification of Germany and the growth of new Europe caused linguistic change, especially as regards lexis, in many European languages. During the more than forty years after the end of the Second World War, certain linguistic (mainly lexical) varieties arose in German used in West and East Germany. After 1990, these divergences were gradually eliminated. Changes in German affected simultaneously the lexical systems of the Lusatian languages (Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian) which are in constant interaction with German. The appearance and expansion of the European community speeds up the rate at which English is influencing lexical systems of Slavic and non-Slavic languages, not infrequently through German, which also plays a certain role in propagating feminine forms in the Lusatian languages and in Polish. English and German contribute the most to the emergence of affixal compounds such as euroobligacja, ekorolnictwo, e-book in these tongues.