Talk:Lunch

Not a German word but rather an English term used by Germans. (As seen by the grammar, which is incorrect for German.) It is not commonly used and it is perceived as an English word (in contrast to a 'German' word of English origin such as Pudding). I could not find any noteworthy citations and the official word-book says 'a meal in Anglo-Saxon countries', marking it as a foreign term for me.Korn (talk) 12:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep per Korn. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep if attestable. English has no word "Lunch" with a capital L, so it's not English. Equinox ◑ 12:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * English word 'lunch' doesn't have a genitive either. Compare every entry in Category:German borrowed terms. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

But this is a slippery slope. The borrowed-terms list only includes words that have entered everyday/professional language. I would dislike this to be coalmine for "capitalising any word makes it a German one" or even "if a native [language]-speaker has ever used a word of a foreign language in an [language]-context, this word henceforth a word of the [language]". And, I don't know if this is relevant, but Google shows the word only in proper names.Korn (talk) 12:48, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep as German. The orthography of this word is not English and we already have an entry at [[lunch]]. [[Lunch]] would benefit from a trivial etymology as well as attestation.
 * We have lots of English entries for words that are direct borrowings (possibly as transliterations) from languages as varied as Indonesian, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, etc. Many of them "feel foreign" to me and to most other native English speakers. So what? DCDuring TALK 18:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Germans, as well as almost every other nation nowadays, borrows a lot of words from English. I found this example on a blog written in German: Das ist mein Lunch, also mein Sandwich. Und dazu ess ich immernoch Obst. Die anderen essen zusätzlich Chips, ich bin aber nicht so der Chips-Typ. It is easy to find usage for phrases like sein Lunch essen or Lunch gegessen. keep --Hekaheka (talk) 19:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I see the tendency. But just to make sure that the status of the word is clear: It is not a borrowing as e.g. sauerkraut is a borrowing in English. It is no word commonly or regularly used. It is as foreign as Mittagessen would be in English. I this stays, then, if I make an English entry mittagessen, a) saying: 'It is not capitalised, German words are capitalised' and b) finding some cite using "mittagessen" in an English text, that entry would have to stay as well. Again: The other 'borrowings' on Wiktionary, including chips, are very common in formal and everyday use in Germany, partially without any native German name (Pudding, Chips) and not simply words used sometime somewhere and written with a big L.Korn (talk) 21:13, 2 May 2012 (UTC) ps.: Looking at the examples given by Hekaheka (in Google), there needs to be said: The long quote is from a girl writing about a trip to England. In the same vein all entries for "sein Lunch essen" concern travel to Anglophonic countries. True for the second, though with the second there seem to be (did not check the pages) very few which are not travel-/English-related, which are Swiss-domains only. So apart from the few Swiss entries, I refer again to the would-be "mittagessen" entry which could for example be found in a blog from a boy spending a year in Munich - used there for local flavour. Wouldn't make it an English word.Korn (talk) 21:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * We'd accept mittagessen if used in running English text not italicized, or in running English text with English suffixes (e.g. -ed if a verb or -er if an adjective). That seems to be the common law here. (Italics are often used to indicate foreign words.) &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * How are foreign words distinguished in German running text? DCDuring TALK 23:50, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Sometimes with italics, but not as often as in English. Foreign nouns are often left uncapitalized, though. —Angr 07:17, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

move to RFV. I have the feeling this will prove to be unattestable. -- Liliana • 05:31, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think that it would be difficult. I have found more than enough at |dein|mein+lunch%22&num=30 this bgc search. What the word attestably means (eg, only "a meal that a native of US would call 'lunch'" or "a light mid-day meal") is not be obvious to me. DCDuring TALK 09:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep: It may be an English borrowing, but it's one with a long history in German. DC During's search (above) even finds an example from 1844 (there are earlier hits, but they seem to be OCR errors for words like Lauch). Applying the lemming test, the German version of The Free Dictionary has it (masculine, though I can't make sense of their declension notation - I think they're saying the genitive is Lunchs or Lunches, and the plural is Lunchs, Lunches or Lunche), as does the TU Chemnitz dictionary (which has it as neuter). Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:41, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added your 1844 find as a citation, which incidentally shows the word being used as a neuter ("ich nehme mein Lunch" rather than "ich nehme meinen Lunch"). —Angr 18:56, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * @Angr Thanks!
 * @Korn What do you mean by the "offical word-book", by the way? Unlike French, German doesn't have an official vocabulary (and even if it did, that wouldn't stop us including slang, like we do for the French Verlan) - are you talking about Duden? Duden's use of "Lunch" (masculine, in case you're wondering, and apparently in the top 100,000 of German words) doesn't look to me like they're saying "This isn't a real word" at all, it looks like they're just pointing out that its use indicates Englishness - much like how dejeuner (which we don't have an entry for in English, but probably should) indicates Frenchness. They do, after all, also have the verb lunchen (which isn't marked as an Anglo-Saxonism), along with Lunchzeit - defined as "Zeit, zu der gewöhnlich der Lunch eingenommen wird" and two spellings of Lunchbuffet ("Tisch o. Ä. mit verschiedenen zu einem Lunch gehörenden Speisen und Getränken, an dem sich der Gast seinen Lunch selbst zusammenstellt"). The fact they use "Lunch" seems to me to imply that they see it as a perfectly valid German word (a dictionary might contain a few loanwords that wouldn't really be considered words, but it wouldn't then use them to define other words). Smurrayinchester (talk) 22:28, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I have to resettle for move to RFV. I still can't see it as a normal German word; the 1844 quote again is from a book about very English ('Bellamy's and 'Esquires' and 'Sir's and 'Mr. Baily junior') people in an anglophonic environment and might just as well have been chosen to convey Englishness. Anyway, when would it be courteous to remove the RFD tag?Korn (talk) 20:42, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you a language purist? If so, *high fives* -- Liliana • 20:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I am. But then again I am well aware that this project's aim is to depict languages as is, including words that I would like to vanish. I simply cannot see how "Lunch" is part of the German language atm.Korn (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The Dickens translation is not a very good citation for illustrating current usage. I would prefer to see it on the Citations page and replaced with citations other than translations. The pronunciation certainly seems unGermanic. DCDuring TALK 22:54, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That's the pronunciation Duden gives (except for a ‿). Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Assuming it was a borrowing, it wouldn't change its pronunciation. Modern (post 1800) borrowings into German usually keep their original pronunciation or at least the closest representation with sounds from the German inventory.Korn (talk) 17:46, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Removed RFD But I'm not sure whether I like what this implies. Korn (talk) 15:27, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

RFV discussion: July–October 2012
Passed RFD, but has yet to meet attestation standards -- Liliana • 13:14, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added two cites, both from native German writers. One is talking about English speaking Kiribati (but uses both Lunch and Mittagessen for separate meals, without (as far as I can tell) ever using both words to describe a single meal, so it doesn't seem to just an affectation), the second is about Zurich, and explicitly contrasts the two terms. (It also has a verb form, lunchen, which it contrasts with mittagessen, though it takes some elements of English grammar rather than German: "Lunches" and "Lunching", not "Lunchs" and "Lunchung" or "Lunchen".) Hopefully my translations are OK. Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:55, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * For the second one, can you double-check that the German actually says "Dann gibts es" and not "Dann gibt es"? If it's "Dann gibts es", it means "Then it's already time to eat it [some previously mentioned food in the neuter gender] again". —Angr 16:43, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, whoops, don't know where that error crept in from. Yes, it's "Dann gibt es" not "Dann gibts es". Smurrayinchester (talk) 20:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)


 * RFV-passed. - -sche (discuss) 07:07, 6 October 2012 (UTC)