NYT trumpeting US political imperialism

[R. A. Stegemann]

Hi everyone,

Anyone want to bet that Richard Bernstein is not a native English
speaker who knows a little German?
What can be more ethnocentric than a journalist and the editorial board
of a major world press corps justifying their own nation's imperial
political inclinations through language?

Hamo

On 22 Dec 2004, at 02:44, Harold F. Schiffman wrote:

>> 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
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 6594 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20041222/9e316f44/attachment.bin>