Denglisch fuer alle

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes, December 21, 2004

BERLIN JOURNAL
A Snappy Slogan? In German? Don't Smile. Try English.
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

BERLIN, Dec. 20 - Not long ago, Lufthansa, the airline, made a bit of news
when it changed its slogan from "There's No Better Way to Fly," in
English, to the German, "Alles fuer diesen Moment," or "Everything for
This Moment." What was the German national airline doing with an English
slogan aimed at its German clientele in the first place? Who knows really?
But whatever it was doing, many companies in Germany have used English, or
some mishmash of German and English - the not very beautiful term for this
is Denglish, a combination of Deutsch and English - to appeal to their
German customers.

Now, as the Lufthansa example illustrates, there are some signs of a
reversal, or, at least, the German press has reported on a few other
companies reverting to the language that the population of this country
actually speaks. The chain of perfume shops called Douglas (a German
company, pronounced DOO-glahss) went from "Come in and find out," to
"Douglas macht das Leben schoener," or "Douglas makes life more
beautiful."

Similarly, German McDonald's switched from its previous slogan, "Every
time a good time" to "Ich liebe es," German for "I love it." Certainly,
McDonald's could have used its current English motto, "I'm lovin' it,"
here, and everybody would have understood. But lest you think that there
is a paradigm shift going on, McDonald's competitor, Burger King, went the
other way, from the German "Weil's besser schmeckt," "Because It Tastes
Better," to "Feel the Fire," in English.

In fact, the news here in the land of Goethe, Schiller and Thomas Mann is
that Denglish is on the march, and, as always, there are people who find
it amusing and others sort of tragic.

A private company in Hanover, Satelliten Media Design, in conjunction with
Hanover University, keeps track of one key aspect of the entire mixed
language phenomenon, annually tabulating the 100 words most used in German
advertising. In the 1980's, only one English word made the list. The word,
a bit improbably, was "fit." By 2004, there were 23 English words on the
chart.

The first four words are still German - wir (meaning we), Sie (you), mehr
(more) and Leben (life). In fifth place is the English "your," followed
farther down the list by world, life, business, with, power, people,
better, more, solutions and 13 more.

The situation seems to be similar pretty much everywhere in Europe and in
many other parts of the world as well. And everywhere there are those who
care deeply about protecting the native language and others who feel that
languages have always borrowed from one another. And, anyway, what, in a
democracy, can you really do about it?

The Nazis tried to invent more German-sounding words to replace the many
Latin-root words that had crept into German over the centuries. Nobody
seems to be complaining today that interesting is "interessant" in German,
as it is in French, or that floor is "etage," and that when audiences
clap, they "applaudieren."

Regarding Denglish, it's not hard to see the appeal of English, its
ability to provide a kind of quick verbal punch, compared with the
polysyllabic nature of German. That's probably why, on the cover of the
newsmagazine Focus, the health headline was about your "Herz-check," your
heart checkup, the standard German word for check being the more dilatory
"Untersuchung." Deutsche Telekom, the phone company, used to use the
phrases "German calls" and "City calls" in itemizing phone bills, though
these days, apparently in consideration of those people in this country
who prefer their bills in Goethe's language, it uses the terms
Deutschlandverbindungen and Cityverbindungen.

There are mysteries in this, not least of them why that's Cityverbindungen
rather than the more purely German Ortsverbindungen. But this is not a
subject where rigor and consistency prevail. Why does the popular Chinese
restaurant on Berlin's Kantstrasse call itself Good Friends, rather than
Gute Freunde? Why, in an opposite sort of example, do the posters for
"Phantom of the Opera" call it "Das Phantom der Oper," when, in this
particular instance, everybody would understand the original English?

Who knows really, but one can guess. In the subway station at Savignyplatz
in the old West Berlin, there's a poster advertising a nearby shop for
"Tattoos and Piercing." The German word for tattoo is Taetowierung. There is
a word for piercing, "Hautstechen," but nobody uses it. Maybe the store
owners thought that clients would find German a bit staid and formal for
those particular services.

The truth seems to be that English is hipper and quicker in general.
Almost all pop music is in English, whether sung on the radio or by the
high school rock band practicing in the garage. At the other end of the
culture, English is the everyday language of the European Union. If you
bump into somebody at the supermarket cashier, it's a lot quicker and
easier to say "Sorry" (pronounced with a guttural "r") than
"Entschuldigung," with its four syllables (though, of course, many Germans
do say "Entschuldigung").

Still, for many Germans, it seems a lot simpler and maybe more cheerful to
say "Happy Birthday," than "Herzlichen Glueckwunsch zum Geburtstag," which
sounds a bit like a streak of Hegelian metaphysics. Or, if you are
promoting a retail bonus points program, would you call it HappyDigits, or
would you, in the interests of linguistic authenticity, invent a German
term, maybe "Froehliche Zahlen?" Doesn't seem quite as catchy.

But how to explain the Denglish verbs? Smalltalken, brunchen, mailen,
floppen, managen, abcoolen and many others? These are not used to save
syllables or avoid complexity. They are simply in vogue, whether for
better or worse. For the verbs, linguistic globalization, or, if you
prefer, linguistic imperialism, seems the only explanation.




http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/21/international/europe/21denglish.html