Abstract:

The paper is based on a research of the representation and knowledge of German phraseology, for which several phraseological dictionaries and dictionaries of German as a foreign language have been used and native speakers of German were surveyed, i.e. a total number of 1,112 German phraseologisms have been analyzed.

The list of the 143 most widely used and well-known German phraseologisms for which the authors say that it is the “phraseological optimum” for German as a foreign language is in the focus of our research. Out of this, a total number 50 most popular German phraseologisms and their equivalents in English are chosen for our research.

Therefore, we will use this optimum as the starting point for our research. We will also try, by using an appropriate questionnaire, to find out what the state of the so-called “phraseological optimum” is with students studying German and English as foreign languages at the Department of German Language and the Department of English Language at the Faculty of Philology at the Goce Delcev University in Stip, R. Macedonia, with students from the first to the fourth year.

Keywords:

Phraseologism, representation, equivalence, recognizability.