Take My English, Please

I don't particularly mind it when Germans correct my English, it's just that they always want to do so whenever I'm speaking German. German being the complicated language that it is, they just couldn't leave it that way it seems. No, they decided to make it even more complicated by introducing entire boatloads of Anglicisms, Americanisms and, worst of all, pseudo-English words that have no equivalent meaning in "real" English at all. German is now so heavily laden with this strange mix of German-English vocabulary that native English speakers here can often find themselves on the language defensive.

You can call it Denglisch (Deutsch and Englisch) or Angleutsch or Gerglish or Engleutsch or even Neudeutsch for New German. But whatever you decide to call it, it all gets down to the same thing: An inundation of English vocabulary in modern German that seems to have taken on a life of it's own. And the life it leads is not always a pretty one.

Secretly infiltrating German through advertising, business and information technology terminology, this anglicized or Americanized Newgermanspeak has succeded in taking hold of major strategic positions within the language and can strike at will at unsuspecting victims at the spur of the moment. It can even strike with the help of the unsuspecting victims themselves. Many Germans are completely ignorant of the fact that they are speaking Newgermanspeak.

None of this should be all too surprising, really. It is estimated that up to one third of the world's population already speaks some form of the English language. In the United States alone this number is up to nearly two thirds of the population, for instance (my estimate). But the few language purists in Germany aware of the danger to their native language are voices crying in the wilderness and hopelessly outnumbered. Old German seems to be lost for good. Not only does most of the population readily embrace many of these new English words and phrases, they even insist on creating new ones themselves. And this, needless to say, poses a threat for the English speaking world as well. But that's another story.

Here are just a few bizarre pseudo-anglicisms that one runs into here much more frequently than one ought to:
Beamer (projector)
Beauty-Farm (spa)
Dressman (male model)
Evergreens (oldies)
Fitness-Studio (gym)
Flipper (pinball)
Handy (cell phone)
Messie (pack rat)
Mixer (blender)
Oldtimer (vintage car)
Service Point (information desk)
Shooting Star (overnight success)
Showmaster (host)
Slip (underwear)
Smoking (tuxedo)
Spot (commercial)
Tramper (hitchhiker)

Confused? You should be. That's a good sign.

And yet interestingly, when it comes to advertising English, it turns out that the same Germans who create pseudo-English terms like these do not always know what to make of the English advertising slogans so "popular" here. A recent television report brought to light how poorly understood some of this mainstream Newgermanspeak is understood by the Germans who watch or listen to it-or are subjected to it on a daily basis. Another study has revealed that less than half of the Germans tested can properly translate these marketing English slogans. When asked about a popular drugstore chain's motto "Come in and find out," for instance, many thought it meant "Come in and find your way back out." "Have a break, have a kitkat" was not clearly understood by most of those tested. The meaning of break was unclear. A Siemens slogan "Be inspired" fell on millions of deaf ears because roughly 85 percent of the potential customers asked did not know what "inspired" meant.

This surprises me. Once you become aware of just how much English Germans come into contact with it's hard to imagine that they could have trouble with slogans like these. Just looking through a German newspaper or watching a few minutes of German TV will likely surprise a non-German speaker as to how much English is curculation here these days. Here are another few examples of what you will find: Networking, capacity building, empowerment, visibility, brand awareness, noise, outsourcing, fast food, comics, cool, mountain biking, hiking, tracking, paragliding, key account manager, new, news, mail, container, meeting, notebook, talk show (or talkshow), team, tour, made in Germany, wellness, e-commerce, stretching, homepage, accessibility, car sharing, mobbing, facility management, content management, reform, start-up company, coaching, multimedia, look, feel, taste, newsletter, skills, hot spots, links, live, trends, trademarks, brain drain and home banking.

Enough is enough already. I'm going to do my part to help out here. I will continue to let Germans correct my English in the future, whether I am speaking German or not. And I will not care, honest. I feel as if I owe this to them somehow. It's their language,after all. And it's time for me to learn to respect it.

Fortsetzung folgt (to be continued).

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Originally from California's Central San Joaquin Valley and washed ashore on the coast of old West Berlin, Charles Larson is a freelance writer well versed in German and German culture. For more info, feel free to visit his website at EnglishPro & Co.