Linguacide

I realized it has been a long time since I've updated this blog, and so I thought I would schreib a few lines.

The trip to Kassel was very fun (there are pictures posted if you want to see them!), and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm convince that if we'd lived at the same time, I would have been good friends with Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. They were linguaphiles and fairytale nerds, and were dedicated to preserving culture. The world needs more grimm people (no pun intended).

Speaking of preserving culture, in our Sprachkurs last week we did a mini-unit on the overwhelming influence of English on German. Contrary to the beliefs of bitter German 101 students, a huge chunk of accepted German vocabulary is pulled straight out of the English language.

Some of this is understandable; things like company names and such needn't be translated, and no one but the Wise Guys is advocating for a "Kleinweich*" branch of Microsoft in Germany (though that may be because nobody would want to use "Fenstern**" anyway--they'd be better off with an "Apfel***"). But there are lots of things that have a legitimate German name, that people just call by the English, because it is "trendy." Despite the US's plummeting economy, we are still the Business Nation, and all of capitalism still kneels and prays with with it's face towards Lady Liberty and the holy land of commerce.

When you get into an Auto in germany, you fasten your Seatbelt. Many people go "shoppen," instead of the german "einkaufen." There are millions of Coffeeshops, but I have yet to see a "Kaffeehaus." There are a million more examples.

Now before you start thinking that I'm just a grumpy purist, let me put it this way: The Highway Administration had to reevaluate their information policy a little while back, because there were so many anglicized words on the tickets and things that elderly Germans or people who didn't have any English background couldn't understand it without help.

Not to be blunt, but what the heck? That's ridiculous. Give it another 100 years, and watch the German language disappear. How many other languages are becoming victims, I wonder?

The end of this rant is a harangue: don't participate in linguicide--learn a foreign language, and learn it for real. Don't just sit on your monolingual throne and expect everyone to learn English, or worse, turn their language INTO English! The French get a bad rap for being snobby about protecting their language, but maybe they're not just snobs--maybe they see the writing on the wall...

*"Kleinweich" klein - small, weich - soft
**Fenstern - windows
***Apfel - apple

http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?lang=en;service=deen