English in today’s German language

von Winfried Schrödter

It seems difficult to describe the problem to a foreigner.

As all other languages, German has a large amount of loanwords. Some are very old and feel like a part of the language, some describe things or facts previously unknown which came to us with their foreign word, some describe a fact more precise or in one word instead of a long explication.

Now, since the war, American culture began to flood our country, including music and science. While I grew up I observed that German songs were replaced by English productions whose lyrics at first were translated and finally accepted in their original language. In turn, German bands began to produce in English language. Except for the time being, where German-language so-called popular music (Volksmusik) is high up in the charts (I see parallels to new nationalist politics), we have sort of an English sub-culture now. Adding to this, modern science talks English so that many technical terms are used in English instead of their German translation. Even this is still acceptable to s degree.

I should add that English is taught in the Lower Secondary Education (Level 2), i. e. to everybody.

However, there is a wide-spread tendency to use English terms without any of the above mentioned legitimations. They are only used to prompt attention, let the spesker or writer look educated, modern or „cool“ (cool is on of these words), and there is a widespread use or, in many peoples‘ eyes, abuse in this sense in the advertisements. The examples in the above cut-out show this usage in the names for events (event is also such a word). I could try and make examples in English:

„Tomorrow is a big ereignis. Everybody finds it kühl to go there. A kapelle will play which is famous for their klang. Afterwards we’ll frieren at a nice platz.“

That’s the language you can hear and read everywhere. The advertisements are similar, I could walk through the town and take pictures, or you could watch it on satellite TV.