Language barriers
Why do Germans prefer foreign languages?
Yesterday, I deliberately choose to speak French – which must have been cruel to the two French in the car – and I did not stop torturing their ears until I realised that it was impolite not to choose a language all in the car could understand, so English was our lingua franca again.
The same happens when an American friend calls or if we meet. He can speak German very well. Once he asked me whether we could communicate - i.e. text each other, exchange emails, talk etc – in German. I did not mind and when he sends emails I reply in German. Sometimes I add “nonsense” just to keep him practising. But when he calls or if we meet, we usually do not exchange more than five sentences in German before I (!) switch to English. Why do I do that?
Okay, I admit that I love the German language and I love to play around with its nuances, the connotations of words and so on. I love reading the Zwiebelfisch column and I also read the columnist’s book “Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod”. Funny to read and instructive. I learnt a lot about my mother tongue!
When I was younger and slimmer (ah, those old days), I used to correct shopping list or notes, which were attached to our fridge at home. This made my parents and sisters very angry. I have never intended to insult or offend them. Recently, when I met an American lawyer (Harvard Law School), I found myself correcting him – initially not explicitly but when he turned around I asked my English friend whether I was right… Hm, I admit that there might be another reason why I attempted to correct his English, American, whatsoever. But when I spot mistakes in German texts, I really feel the urge to suggest corrections. Is this okay? Can I send back corrected texts to e.g. my American friend? I will as him.
In the above mentioned book, there is also a funny chapter about German expressions in English. It all starts with a story about some Americans seeing a supermarket advertising for “body bags” – which should actually be rucksacks (or in German: Rucksack (m.), Rucksäcke (plural)). So, as usual the German supermarket managers wanted to be hipper than necessary and possible. But similar to the Germans who use English expressions and do all sorts of terrible things with them: gedownloaded or gedownloadet for downloaded, also the English/Americans disfigure German words like Deutschmarks or Pretzel. However some are kept in its original form:
Angst
Blitzkrieg
kaputt
Kindergarten
Kitsch
Lebensraum
Poltergeist
Rucksack
Schadenfreude
Schnitzel
Sturm und Drang
Wunderkind
Waldsterben
Zeitgeist
Another funny rumour is that of German almost becoming official language in the U.S.A., see http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/zwiebelfisch/0,1518,306711,00.html.
Yesterday, I deliberately choose to speak French – which must have been cruel to the two French in the car – and I did not stop torturing their ears until I realised that it was impolite not to choose a language all in the car could understand, so English was our lingua franca again.
The same happens when an American friend calls or if we meet. He can speak German very well. Once he asked me whether we could communicate - i.e. text each other, exchange emails, talk etc – in German. I did not mind and when he sends emails I reply in German. Sometimes I add “nonsense” just to keep him practising. But when he calls or if we meet, we usually do not exchange more than five sentences in German before I (!) switch to English. Why do I do that?
Okay, I admit that I love the German language and I love to play around with its nuances, the connotations of words and so on. I love reading the Zwiebelfisch column and I also read the columnist’s book “Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod”. Funny to read and instructive. I learnt a lot about my mother tongue!
When I was younger and slimmer (ah, those old days), I used to correct shopping list or notes, which were attached to our fridge at home. This made my parents and sisters very angry. I have never intended to insult or offend them. Recently, when I met an American lawyer (Harvard Law School), I found myself correcting him – initially not explicitly but when he turned around I asked my English friend whether I was right… Hm, I admit that there might be another reason why I attempted to correct his English, American, whatsoever. But when I spot mistakes in German texts, I really feel the urge to suggest corrections. Is this okay? Can I send back corrected texts to e.g. my American friend? I will as him.
In the above mentioned book, there is also a funny chapter about German expressions in English. It all starts with a story about some Americans seeing a supermarket advertising for “body bags” – which should actually be rucksacks (or in German: Rucksack (m.), Rucksäcke (plural)). So, as usual the German supermarket managers wanted to be hipper than necessary and possible. But similar to the Germans who use English expressions and do all sorts of terrible things with them: gedownloaded or gedownloadet for downloaded, also the English/Americans disfigure German words like Deutschmarks or Pretzel. However some are kept in its original form:
Angst
Blitzkrieg
kaputt
Kindergarten
Kitsch
Lebensraum
Poltergeist
Rucksack
Schadenfreude
Schnitzel
Sturm und Drang
Wunderkind
Waldsterben
Zeitgeist
Another funny rumour is that of German almost becoming official language in the U.S.A., see http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/zwiebelfisch/0,1518,306711,00.html.
posted by Torsten at 7:30 pm
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