I know this has nothing much to do with the regular fare around here, but I found this newspaper article quite interesting – it’s about the increasing number of English words that are making their way into German (who knew Germans can now experience a shit storm, or more likely a Shitstorm, too???).
The longer I’ve been living abroad and the less frequent I’ve been visiting Germany since we’ve had the little creatures, the more I’ve been noticing changes in German over time. Seems like whenever I go and sometimes when I talk/email with people, new words, often based on English, hit me out of the blue. Some funny – like how did they come up with ‘Handy’ for cell phone?? - some that seem to have changed from a German word to a Latin-based one (Selbstmord [suicide] to Suizid, although maybe I just don’t remember it always having been referred to as Suizid?), and some that have become anglicized over time (such that we seem to have gone from Projektor [projector] to Beamer, for example).
I don't go often enough to be up on everything, so is it any wonder I no longer feel all that at home in German or Germany?
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2 comments:
It has always been 'Suizid' as long as I remember.
What strikes me about English terms in Germany is that the advertising industry seems to think Germany is actually a slightly illiterate version of the USA. The amount of bad English that Germans have to read on billboards or in TV spots is mind blowing!
And so much of it is utterly unnecessary, too. And it doesn't even sound cool.
But hey, who am I...
I'm reading a book at the moment which might interest you, called "Speak German" by a journalist called Wolf Schneider. It's a defense of German against the flood of anglicisms that you're talking about. Now this is a more than valid area for discussion, but this book is annoying the hell out of me, because it's dressed up as rational and discursive, but it's mostly very subjective and he contradicts himself all the time. Like short words in English, like job or sex are "good", but Nervenkitzel is somehow "better" than thrill. Not much of a recommendation, I know, but I just needed to get that off my chest!
Seriously though, I think this is very common, that you start to feel out of touch with a language if you're no longer living in that community. Apart from anything else, your use of Modewörter and swearwords won't keep up with what's happening in Germany. So our generation will still be saying "geil!" for something they like, whereas the next generation is already using something else. Your kids of course are also getting your slightly outdated usage, so I guess all the more "modern" DVDs etc they get to watch the better.
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