13/10/2020
Can you speak ein bisschen Deutsch with me?
A call for help went through the German press in the late 1990s and early 2000s: The German language was in danger of being flooded by English. The extinction of German was predicted.
The anglicisms were mainly found in the computer world, advertising but also in everyday life. The phenomenon of anglicisms even made it even into the music world with the "Prinzen" and their song "Be cool speak Deutsch" which shows how much it affected the German minds.
Deutsche Bahn AG even received an award in 2007 for its aggressive use of English words in German: Hartmut Mehdorn, the former CEO of DB, was awarded as "Sprachpanscher (language adulterator) of the year 2007" by the VDS (Verein der deutschen Sprache). There are plenty of examples of how Denglish is used by DB: “Auskunft” (information desk) is the service point, “Schalter” becomes a ticket counter, the toilets are given the affectionate name McClean, the “Bereich für Kurzparker” (area for short term parking) is called Kiss and Ride, the “Treffpunkt” is a meeting point, passengers are invited to “chillen”(chill out) in the lounge and on the “First-class-business-Zug” (first class busines train) you can travel to the Meeting stress-free. A DB-language of its own developed, in which German was systematically replaced by English words.
In the meantime, the Deutsche Bahn has learned from criticism and "cleans up" its language usage: a victory for German words!
This is largely thanks to the VDS, which in 2001 launched the "Tag der deutschen Sprache" (German Language Day), the aim of which is to "create and consolidate a language awareness that reduces or prevents the uncritical use of foreign words, especially the tendency to use superfluous English expressions, the English and Denglish mania.”
According to the VDS, there are about 8,000 English words in German, but they make up only a small part of the standard German vocabulary, which comprises about 70,000 words. If one adds all the specialist languages, jargons, dialect words, etc., one ends up with 5.3 million words (Klein, 2014 "Digital Dictionary of the German Language"), the Duden even comes to about 23 million words (Dudenkorpus, 2017).
The Duden has already incorporated some of the anglicisms into the vocabulary of German, amongst others words like Fake News, tindern, blogging, leaken, Briefing or Branding. Duden is a descriptive corpus of the German words and therefore, it includes the words that have become established in the German language over time. However, words that have lost relevance in the German language also get regularly removed.
Typical of modern languages - and thus also of German - is that they adapt and change to the prevailing circumstances of life. So if you look back into the eventful history of German, it is obvious that there have always been loanwords from other languages. Initially, it was terms from seafaring, such as Boot or Lotse in the 17th century (cf. Meder 2005), later in the 19th century expressions such as Budget, Kartell and then in the 20th century Computer, Handicap, Bestseller or Talkshow were added.
Since languages and their speakers are in contact with each other, the influence of languages on each other is an interaction, as German has also left its traces in other languages. Examples include Wunderkind, Kindergarten, Blitzkrieg, Schadenfreude, Übermensch or Katzenjammer in English or Waldsterben, Weltanschauung, Schnaps, Stollen or Zeitgeist in French. But also in other languages, such as Albanian, Arabic, Danish or Greek, a number of examples can be found.
Opinions differ widely about the "invasion" of English into the German language. Karin Pittner, a specialist in German studies at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum sees it more as "an enrichment of our vocabulary.”
