Why did German borrow a lot of words from French and not the other way around?

Answer 1

When one language lacks a word for a concept, it has three major options to fill the gap: reinterpretation, coining, and borrowing.

First, a language might reinterpret an existing word and apply it metaphorically or simply afresh to a new idea or object. This is what English did, for example, with the word mouse, applying a word for a small rodent to a graphic user interface controller for a computer.

Second, a language might try to coin a new word, such as googol for 1x10¹⁰⁰. But such coinages are rarer than you might think and often require explanation.

Third, a language might simply borrow a word from a language that does have a word for such a concept, the way English did with the German word Schadenfreude. But borrowings do not flow equally between languages and in this lies the answer to your question.

German borrowed words from French because French had those words to offer—words in art, music, and philosophy, among others. But it was not simply a question of whether the words were available to be borrowed —it is also a question of whether German was willing to borrow them. And it was.

German certainly has had plenty of words to offer that other languages did not—words in military science, politics, philosophy, psychology, science. But unlike German, French is less willing to borrow foreign words.

The French language is held in great esteem by the French, who have established the Acadèmie Française to define, preserve, and safeguard the language, especially from foreign borrowings, so as to preserve its purity. Right now, the major threat to French is perceived as English and so the Academie Française will often denounce an English word like le Weekend and offer a native French word or expression in its place: le fin de semain.

For this reason, French is more likely to engage in strategies (1) and (2), above, reinterpreting or coining new words, rather than borrowing them directly from German. The Germans, on the other hand, do not have the same qualms about borrowing perfectly good French words for which they do not have an existing German one.