Angst In Germany Over Invasion Of American English

March 14, 2014 2:03 PM

4 min 22 sec

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It seems hardly a sentence is spoken in Berlin that doesn't have an American English word in it.
One word that especially grates — and I confess to a certain bias, having learned German as a toddler when it wasn't so Americanized — is a word pronounced "sogh-ee." Or, as Americans say it, "sorry."

• "Sogh-ee" your package is late.
• "Sogh-ee" your hot water is off.
• "Sogh-ee" we can't help you.

More American English Words Germany Has Borrowed

• Baby — to refer to an infant
• Campen — to camp
• Computer
• Cool
• Downloaden — as to download on a computer
• Party — as in a festivity
• Seifenoper — literally translated means soap opera
• Sexy
• Team — as in a sports team
• Teenager
• Wellness — to refer to a spa

Anatol Stefanowitsch, an English linguistics professor at the Free University of Berlin, says it makes sense that many German businesses have adopted that word.  "I mean, 'sorry' is quite a useful way of apologizing because it doesn't commit you to very much.  It's very easy to say 'sorry.' The closest equivalent would be Entschuldigung, which is, 'I apologize,' " Stefanowitsch says. "That's really like admitting that you've done something wrong, whereas with saying 'sorry,' you could also just be expressing empathy: 'I'm so sorry for you, but it has nothing to do with me.' "

"Sorry" is one of more than 10,000 American words Germans have borrowed since 1990. Language experts here say English is the main foreign language that has influenced German over the past six decades. This cultural infusion is pervasive, with English used by journalists, by scientists and even at the highest levels of government.

"Germany doesn't really have a very purist attitude to language — unlike France, where you have an academy whose task it is to find French alternatives for borrowings; or if there is a new technology that needs to be named, then the academy will find a name," Stefanowitsch says.

Even purely domestic enterprises like the German rail system are getting into the English game. Christian Renner, waiting at Berlin's main station for a train home to Frankfurt, says it's useful to know English words if you want to find a waiting area. 

 

"I'm not sure if calling it a 'lounge' is better than using the German word 'warteraum,' " Renner says. "I guess it's more modern or hip."

Also confusing to some German passengers is the word for the main ticket "center," instead of the German word "zentrum."

To some language experts, like Holger Klatte, the widespread Americanization of German is problematic. Klatte is the spokesman for the German Language Society, which has 36,000 members worldwide.

“Languages do tend to affect one another, but the influence of English in Germany is so strong that Germans are having a hard time advancing their own vocabulary,"  says Holger Klatte of the German Language Society.  Klatte says that can be a problem for Germans who may not know any English.

"The second world war and Nazi times have led Germans to downplay the importance of their language," he says. "Unlike the French, Finns and Poles — they promote their languages a lot more than we do."

Stefanowitsch believes this linguistic angst — a word that migrated from German to English — is overblown. He says a quarter of all German words are borrowed from other languages. That's more than what's found in Mandarin Chinese, but far less than the 40 to 80 percent seen in English, he says.
Plus Germans integrate the words they borrow — for example the suffix "-gate," as in Watergate, which was voted last year's Anglicism of the year in Germany. Stefanowitsch says it has been used, among other things, to describe the NSA spying scandal on the German chancellor as "Merkel-gate."
"Borrowing doesn't mean that a language loses its vitality. It's an addition of creativity. No language has ever disappeared because it borrowed words," Stefanowitsch says.

But he says there are pitfalls to overdoing Americanized German.  Take, for example, the word "handy," which is what Germans call their cellphones. Stefanowitsch says people here assume it's an English word, and it may have come from the word "handheld" to distinguish it from car phones when cellular technology was relatively new.

He says the danger to such made-up words is that Germans could end up using them when trying to speak actual English.

German Language on a roll

When German Words Travel, Our Zeitgeist Goes Oom-Pah-Pah

Why do Finnish buses take coffee breaks? And why are the French always puzzled when they look at a skylight? It's because they use words of German origin, sometimes without even realizing it.

Learning German is for many students an excercise in delayed gratification

Many students of the German language -- especially those who suffered their way through cruel, Teutonic grammar drills, lost their sense of orientation trying to order their German words correctly, or wounded both their tongues and sense of self-esteem with sharp, unpronounceable compound words -- get rather surprised when they come to Germany and hear the language of Goethe in actual use.
People in Germany are often invited to attend "ein Meeting," asked to bring along their "down-geloadete" information and told "sorry" (with a rolling "r") when somebody bumps into them on the street.

But -- even in the age of digital communication, dominated by the English language and US American pop culture -- it is not only English words that cross national and linguistic borders.
The German Language Council recently organized an international contest called "Word Migrations." People from 70 countries -- ranging from Mexico to Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea to Nigeria -- participated in the linguistic hunt for German words that "migrated" to other languages. Over 6,000 such words were submitted. A winner was drawn from the entries and the award ceremony took place Thursday in Munich.

Coffee break par excellence
"The response to our first advertisement was enormous," said Rudolf Hoberg of the Association for the German Language, one of the organizations participating in the German Language Council.
The winning entry also showed that Germany is not only a language of profound philosophy and utmost, technical efficiency, but also a language of leisure and procrastination.
Susanne Bätjer from Germany was wondering why a Finnish public-transit bus, which she saw in 2005, had the word "Kaffepaussi" displayed on its automated destination display. Do Finnish buses really take coffee breaks? Bätjer learned in the end that the German word for coffee break had acquired an additional, slightly different, meaning in Finnish: "out of order."
Some German words -- such as kindergarten, zeitgeist, and sauerkraut -- have long been known as German imports into the English language. But the goal of the project was to go beyond the obvious examples and explore the extent to which German words have infiltrated other languages.
"We wanted to find out what German words are used on an everyday basis in other countries," Hoberg said.

A colorful collection
The results of this survey -- which one could best place in the category of linguistic anthropology -- told a fascinating story of German technical expertise, colonial history, cultural stereotypes and a delightful sense of humor.
The Turkish rail system was started in 1913 with German assistance, which is why Turkish train conductors always cry "fertik" ("fertig" -- ready or finished in German) when the train is about to leave the station. In Cameroon, once a German colony, train stations are called "banop" ("Bahnhof"). If one is anesthetized in Tanzania, they are -- all joking aside -- "nusu kaput" (half-broken). In Afrikaans, the language of Dutch settlers in South Africa, an impatient German is an "Aberjetzte" ("aber jetzt" in German means "on the double" or "ASAP").
"The vocabulary of the German language is far better known abroad than we thought," Hoberg said.
And even though contributions came from all over the word -- the Russians raise a glass of vodka to "Brudershaft," a gesture of friendship and brotherhood (German "Brüderschaft"), while some American presidential candidates can be best described as wishy-washy (from German "wischi-waschi," lacking a clear-cut standpoint) -- most of the words were submitted from Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon cultural areas.

What's that?
It may come as a surprise, however, that the most frequently submitted entry was the French word for skylight -- "vasistas." In the original German, "was ist das" means, literally, "what's that?" Yet most French speakers probably don't pay attention to the fact that skylights in French provoke, etymologically speaking, a sense of puzzled inquiry about the state of the world.
It is also unlikely that Japanese students who have an odd student job called "arubaito" realize that they are, from an etymological point of view, part of Germany's labor-intensive work culture ("Arbeit" means work in German).
"The project does not attempt a linguistic investigation," Hoberg said. "Some words that were sent in might well be only passing fads."
Whether as temporary guest workers in foreign languages, or as naturalized citizens, German words have long left the confines of the German-speaking world. A large collection of colorful cross-linguistic gems -- along with personal anecdotes and insights into the way cultures collide and enrich each other -- has now been collected and published as a book under the title "Ausgewanderte Wörter" (available in German only).

EUROZONE CRISIS Southern Europeans flock to German classes

Deutsche Welle   TOP STORIES

• Date 19.08.2012
• Author Kathrin Erdmann (nh)
• Editor Sean Sinico

(The) German (language.... has a reputation for having) ....grammar.   (Duh!  But after years of dwindling interest in foreign language learning in general), the European debt crisis seems to help German to some sort of a renaissance.  German language courses are in high demand.

It's three p.m. at the adult evening education center VHS in Hamburg. A long line of people has formed and one after the other, they take a number from the machine and join the crowd already sitting in the waiting room ready to register for the German language classes. Over the next three hours, Anna Neves from VHS and her four colleagues will work non-stop.

"The demand for language classes started rising about a year ago," Neves said. "Every day, we are now dealing with an average of 100 people who we consult and whose language skills we assess."

In comparison to 2010, the number of applications for German classes has increased by 30 percent at the center in Hamburg. Neves said people from southern European euro crisis countries, in particular, are now coming to learn German.

"Many come to us from the Spanish-speaking world, from Spain itself or from South America, who reside in Spain," Neves said, adding that Portuguese and Greeks didn't come at all in the past while now their number is also on the rise.

Large crowds at registration

The Office of Statistics for Hamburg confirms Neves' observations. In 2011, Hamburg saw a considerable rise in the number of residency registrations. Some 2,200 people moved to Hamburg, 600 more than in 2010, and most of them from Spain.

The air is stuffy in the waiting room at the education center. Susana Millan Prol holds a slip of paper with the number 78. There are 30 people still ahead of her. The 31-year-old came to Hamburg two months ago. "In Spain, I study tourism," she said, "but I only ever have a job in the summer. I came here to learn a bit of German. I believe that'll be good for me."