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Dear GERMAN-STUDIES,
Timofei Agarine ([log in to unmask]) wants you to see this article on Economist.com.
The sender also included the following message for you:
Dear collegues,
maybe the debate about Anglicisms in the forum is finally in the past, but just researching the archive of the Economist I found an interesting comment to the issue dated months ago. I hope to reinforce with this the new impetus in the debate and bring it to maybe further interesting statements.
With best regards,
Timofei Agarin
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YOU HAVE WAYS OF MAKING US TALK
SO THE French think they have a problem with FRANGLAIS. They should visit
Germany. The language of Goethe is awash today with English expressions. The
resultant mish-mash, known as DENGLISCH (but pronounced "Dinglish", in case the
point wasn't clear) is SUPER-COOL and IN.
Witness Berlin's film festival, where ageing STARS with fading SEXAPPEAL
received STANDINGOVATIONS from FANS lucky enough to have got TICKETS for their
idols' COMEBACKPERFORMANCES in FILMS with the habitual HAPPYEND. After the
SHOW, journalists in their SMOKINGS were invited to the PRESSEBRIEFINGRAUM for
an INTERVIEW with the WORKAHOLIC FESTIVALBOSS, in his TRENDY JACKET UND JEANS,
or aGET TOGETHER with some PRODUCER briefly silencing his HANDY, his mobile
phone, to puff his latest JOINTVENTURE with his JETSET POWERPARTNER, before
dashing off, being, he admitted, a trifle GESTRESST, to a late-night
FITNESSTRAINING at the BUSINESSSPORTCENTER.
While most Germans, unlike the French, have traditionally been proud of their
language's ability to absorb foreign idioms, many are beginning to think that
enough is enough. Wolfgang Gerhardt, leader of the Free Democrats, Germany's
liberals, has denounced the "flood of anglicisms descending on us from the
media, advertising, product description and technology" as a form of "violence
not coming from the people, but imposed on them." Wolfgang Thierse, Social
Democratic speaker of the Bundestag, as the lower house of Germany's parliament
happily is still known, has urged members and officials to rise up against the
threatened "ruination of our language". Eckart Werthebach, the Christian
Democrats' interior minister of the city-state of Berlin, is pressing for a
law, like one that was introduced in France in 1994, to save "our most prized
cultural possession" from a hostile foreign takeover.
But, as ever, Germany is haunted by the ghosts of its past. Did not the Nazis
seek to "purify" the German language in the 1930s? Were not Germanising
dictionaries published during the first world war, to purge it of its then most
dangerous enemy, French, much as Joachim Heinrich Campe sought to counter the
same subversive influx during the French Revolution by introducing some 11,000
German equivalents of French words? Those attempts were of little avail. Most
Germans doubt that any new one would fare better. Not a few, especially
intellectuals, regard the whole venture as faintly ridiculous, even
distasteful.
The new culture minister, Julian Nida-Rümelin, a former professor of
philosophy, says that Germany has no need of a language police or a
language-protection law; the state should not intervene in a process to which
every living language is subject. Besides, says the minister, today's
globalised world needs an international language.
In business, science and technology, English already serves that function; to
oppose its use is to deny reality, he argues. His predecessor, Michael Naumann,
was equally convinced of the futility of trying to play KöNIG Canute. Within 50
years, he once said, "English will be the common language of Europe. So
everyone had better learn it."
Well, maybe. But English is one thing, DENGLISCH is EINE ANDERE.
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