Is "technisch gesehen" an anglicism?

Question

As the title says, is the phrase technisch gesehen an anglicism? I'm wondering because, for one, I don't remember this being used so much in the past and, for another, I always think of techniques or mechanical or electronic stuff if the word technisch comes up.

In an example in an article of Tagesanzeiger, some guy responsible for finances talks about something being "technisch gesehen eine Rezession". He uses technisch gesehen in the form of technically, but of course a recession has nothing to do with technological matters.

Answer 1

Other than German, English strictly distinguishes between technique and technology. In German, both resolve to "Technik", while the former meaning is, in a lot of uses, probably better translated as "Methode". This obviously has some influence on derived adverbs and adjectives.

technically is the English adverb for both technique and technology, while technisch is the adverb/adjective mainly for the technology part of the meaning of Technik.

Still, there are uses of -technisch outside the technology area in German that relate more to the "Methode" meaning of technisch:

Versicherungstechnisch gesehen ist das Problem lösbar

Die lerntechnische Kompetenz der Schüler ist beeindruckend

My comment above on the standing expression "to technically agree on sth" relates to the "Methode" usage in German. A direct translation to German "technisch einer Meinung sein" would however be commonly understood as "to agree on technical matters" rather than "to agree in principle". This applies to your example "technisch gesehen" as well (but, admittedly, a bit softer than in my example - "from a technical viewpoint" already in English refers more to technology than technique and is not so much a standing expression as my example)

So, in case the expression would be used outside of a technology area, I would agree (and, at least partially) assume it is an (soft, because technically speaking (sic!) not wrong) anglicism or a literal translation into a rather uncommon usage.

Answer 2

No.

None of the words are English, so why should »technisch gesehen« be an anglicism?

An anglicism is an English word (or phrase) used in German. So it is strictly mandatory to have English words. If you use words from other languages, it never can be an anglicism.

---

technisch

This adjective is derived from the noun Technik. Both words (»Technik« and »technisch«) began to be used in German language in the 18^th century. The German words was derived from the Neolatin noun »technica« and the Neolatin adjective »technicus«, which already was in use as foreign words in German language in the 17^th century.

Those Neolatin words meant: "art, science, artificial, scientific", and they have an ancient greek root: τεχνικός (technikos) which means: »skilled, professional, artfull, expertly, ...«

On its way from its ancient greek root to modern German the adjective »technisch« never touched English language.

---

gesehen

This word is Partizip II of sehen, and this is a very old inherited word that always was German and can be traced back to Proto-Indo-Germanic roots.