LONDON â€" Germany is undergoing one of its periodic bouts of angst over the seemingly unstoppable spread of Denglish, an Anglicised hybrid that purists believe is corrupting the national language.
Like the better known Franglais, it is characterized by extensive borrowings of English words for which, in many cases, there are perfectly good native equivalents.
Deutsche Bahn, the national rail network, reignited the debate this week by starting a campaign against the inflationary spread of English and pseudo-English terms among its employees.
It issued staff a booklet of German words and phrases that should henceforth be used in preference to the corresponding Anglicisms. Out go the railway’s information “hotlines†and its “call-a-bke†service, to be replaced by more Teutonic equivalents.
English borrowings are sometimes seen as adding a touch of cool to the otherwise mundane.
Adoption of Denglish has also been particularly prevalent in business and marketing, giving rise to such horrors as “Inhouse-Meeting für Outsourcing-Projekte.â€
The Germans don’t always get it right. For them, a cellphone is a “handyâ€, an apparent Anglicism unknown in the English-speaking world. A “sprayer†is a graffiti artist, and “peeling†means a body scrub.
Snappy German dressers, like their French counterparts, have been wearing a “smoking†â€" tuxedo â€" for years.
But the spate of more modern borrowings is sometimes viewed as indicative of a sinister cultural imperialism on the part of the so-called Anglo-Saxon world.
The British Council, which promotes English-language study abroad, perhaps enhanced that perception when it mischievously asked its German Twitter followers on Wednesday to ! name their favorite Denglish word.
The German Language Association warned two years ago that German could become a “peripheral†language if steps were not taken to protect it from foreign invasions.
“German has been losing its importance for 100 years,†Holger Klatte, the organization’s spokesman, told The Guardian. “Particularly in the areas of technology, medicine, the internet and the economy, English is becoming ever more important.â€
Like France’s language guardians, German purists may be fighting a losing battle against international English. The results of past efforts to rid the language of foreign words had mixed results.
The words “Fernsprecher†for telephone and “Fernsehen†for television are survivors of a Nazi campaign to rid the language of its Latin element.
All languages are enriched by foreign borrowings and none is more of a jackdaw than Englih, a happy jumble of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Old French to which hundreds of words have been added from around the world.
Native English-speakers tend to be more relaxed than others about adopting foreign words, which they learn naturally from an early age, even before they get to kindergarten.
