English, English everywhere
November 21st 2007 17:34
I have to share a dirty little secret with you: I'm truly addicted to loud and colourful gossip magazines They are the literary equivalent of junk food -- cheap, easy to swallow, not particularly nourishing for your mind but quite addictive at the same time. They provide instant entertainment when you need it, just like a Happy Meal provides an instant dose of energy.
When I'm in Germany, I also indulge in one issue of my favourite gossip mag per week. Is there any big difference between German and Aussie gossip magazines? No, not really, apart from the Heidi-Klum-and-Seal-news-per- number-of-pages ratio, which is astoundingly high here, probably because Heidi Klum is German.
However, one thing always stands out to me when I pick up a German tabloid: the amount of adopted English words glaring at you from every page. It's something of a phenomenon to me, and I'll never fully understand it.
You see, it's one thing to take a foreign word to name something you don't already have a name for (every language does that), but it's quite another to just grab simple words which most certainly have their German equivalent. I have recently seen the following English words used casually in German sentences: song, story, lover, date, outfit, body, happy. I mean, "happy"??? Why on earth would you need to take a normal word like that from another language and plug it into your sentence? Even I, a non-native speaker, can think of at least two German words that mean "happy".
OK, so English may be world-dominating and trendy, but still... I personally find the whole thing cringeworthy. As a lover of linguistic sophistication, I find it a rather sad that Germans pollute their native tongue with so many unnecessary foreign terms.
To finish off this post, I will say goodbye using a word that the Germans have stolen from Italian, as if they don't have enough expressions for "bye" in their own language. Ciao!
When I'm in Germany, I also indulge in one issue of my favourite gossip mag per week. Is there any big difference between German and Aussie gossip magazines? No, not really, apart from the Heidi-Klum-and-Seal-news-per- number-of-pages ratio, which is astoundingly high here, probably because Heidi Klum is German.
However, one thing always stands out to me when I pick up a German tabloid: the amount of adopted English words glaring at you from every page. It's something of a phenomenon to me, and I'll never fully understand it.
You see, it's one thing to take a foreign word to name something you don't already have a name for (every language does that), but it's quite another to just grab simple words which most certainly have their German equivalent. I have recently seen the following English words used casually in German sentences: song, story, lover, date, outfit, body, happy. I mean, "happy"??? Why on earth would you need to take a normal word like that from another language and plug it into your sentence? Even I, a non-native speaker, can think of at least two German words that mean "happy".
OK, so English may be world-dominating and trendy, but still... I personally find the whole thing cringeworthy. As a lover of linguistic sophistication, I find it a rather sad that Germans pollute their native tongue with so many unnecessary foreign terms.
To finish off this post, I will say goodbye using a word that the Germans have stolen from Italian, as if they don't have enough expressions for "bye" in their own language. Ciao!
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Comment by timeless
Once upon a time English have adopted Germanic language elements, now they are fighting back.
To the great future of a new language Germish,
prosit !!!