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On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

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Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#191

Post by usrusr »

derriz wrote: post #145
nologic01 wrote: post #92

Global English is both a blessing and a curse. Never before could so many people communicate across linguistic divides (even if imperfectly). But the price is that never before was the rich collective cultural heritage under such threat. The two facets are deeply related. Like any lingua franca before, global English was invented to facilitate trade (economic exchange). The fact that it is English and not Basque or S…

This is perhaps nitpicking but I wish non-native English speakers would not use the term “Anglo-Saxon” to describe anglophone or (better) English speaking countries. The term refers to the original north Germanic invaders of England and so has tribal (racial) connotations and is typically used in English to distinguish people on that basis. Many/most Americans (e.g. black or Native American) so not consider themselve…

What happened to Anglo-American anyways? Substituting that term with the wildly incorrect but similar sounding Anglo-Saxon is quite literally a linguistic attack, unfortunately one that seems to occasionally get picked up by people meaning no harm because of how "more historic" is often conflated with "more sophisticated" even if it's the exact opposite when the assumed historic implications are wrong.

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#192

Post by pimeys »

m_fayer wrote: post #169
pimeys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved eleven years ago because I loved the party scene. Took me less than a month to find a huge apartment for under seven hundred a month from a nice neighborhood. Now I cannot move out anymore without doubling or tripling my rent. Also chose to study Rust instead of German, and been having so much work afterwards that I still haven't started my German studies. My husband speaks good German so that helps. The weat…

I could have written this word for word. Maybe we should do a cranky-HNers-of-Berlin meetup. Some uneasy food for thought: we're not that far off from the brave lucky weirdos who moved to NYC in the 1970s and bought decrepit flats for a song, who now find themselves aged and bewildered among the billionaires, trying to afford groceries. Hopefully it won't progress quite that far, but NYC does show that capital isn't…

And more rich people from outside move in, everything changes into a more boring, but expensive new reality.

At least Berliners revolt all the time and the government is so dysfunctional. Change in the city will take a few lifetimes. It might feel like a good idea to invest, but then you face the German and especially the Berlin bureaucracy and how slow it works. Everything takes forever to finish.

I hope this will save Berlin from becoming the next New York. It still is so much more colorful than any other German city.

P.S. the running joke amongst my friends is how CDU will finally make the ringbahn go on time...

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#193

Post by schroeding »

mhh__ wrote: post #128
schroeding wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultimate champions in "new word creation" are languages which allow the creation of new compound words, though, like e.g. German. That's the way you get those hyper-specific words in "the language has a special word for the concept of " articles most of the time. :P "Neologismuskreierungsmeister" (new word creation champion)

I'm not sure if compounds count, it's almost a spelling convention as much as it is truly new language

I would say so, compound words are a defining feature of the German language, especially with the ability to make up words on the spot if required ("Gelegenheitsbildung"). Many of the words in the article are also compound words (e.g. "Spätkauf", "Rundfunk").

It's not possible to say the same thing without using compound words without heavily modifying the sentence structure. It would be in English, if you translate it directly, but it isn't in German:

"Sie sind die Neologismusbildungsmeister" vs "Sie sind die Meister im Bilden von Neologismen"

If those compound words are only a spelling convention, the question would be, where do we draw the line. Does "Firefighter" count, or do only the words it is made of, "Fire" and "Fighter"? "Railroad"? "Notebook"? :D

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#194

Post by camillomiller »

vanderZwan wrote: post #69

> The other day my friend S., an American Berliner, said that he had noticed his English-language social circle starting to use the word « spontaneously » wrong. When Germans say they’ll organise a social event spontan, they mean they’ll work out the details at short notice. To socialise spontaneously, in English, means something rather different. But S. and I and our Neukölln friends have started using it in the sen…

For native speakers struggling with spontan, just translate it as “let’s play it by ear”

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#195

Post by camillomiller »

kergonath wrote: post #119
ThePhysicist wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like exactly the meaning that "spontan" has in Germany. It's like you plan to be in Vegas but there you spontaneously decide to get married. In German, you would say "Wir sind nach Vegas in den Urlaub geflogen und haben dort spontan geheiratet", so pretty much identical.

Something spontaneous is something that happens on its own. If you can say that you will do something, then it is not spontaneous. You cannot decide to do something spontaneous next week because then you’ve planned it. Improvised may be better suited in that case, from what I understand. It’s similar in French: “il y aura un rassemblement spontané” (there will be a spontaneous gathering) is nonsense. Even if it is un…

“spontan” means in fact both spontaneously and, when used in a planning context, “let’s play it by ear”. So you plan to have lunch but keep it “spontan”, meaning for example that you expect each other to plan closer to the date, maybe even the same date. It’s a very Berlin thing I have to say. At the same time, spontan is even mocked to be a way to kindly part ways. You don’t really want to have another date? Then at the end you don’t make plans and say “lassen wir uns mal spontan treffen”, meaning you won’t probably ever meet again.

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#197

Post by mgraupner »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #155
flohofwoe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah weird, the description "in a way that is natural, often sudden, and not planned or forced" is exactly the meaning in German too. Maybe "spontaneous" has different semantics between US and UK English?

You are overthinking this. Words usually have multiple meanings, common ones and less common ones. "False friend" words usually swapped their common and rare semantics when entering a different language. In this case, the common meaning for "spontaneously" is "without direction" but not "on short notice". But it's the other way around in German. There actually is the German term "spontane Ordnung" ("order from chaos"…

May I ask if you're a native German or English speaker?

There is an example in another thread here which has the following example: We spontaneously decided to get married. I would translate that into: Wir haben uns spontan (dazu) entschieden zu heiraten.

What is the difference in these two? Same words, same meaning to me as a native German speaker. As I see it, spontaneously can have a subtle other meaning than spontan, but can also be the same.

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#198

Post by anditherobot »

bolanyo wrote: post #184
friendlyHornet wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is talk of dropping this requirement, but I'll believe it when I see it. I really hope it doesn't get dropped; it is unreasonable to live permanently in a country without speaking the local language There are other types of residencies available if someone is an expat and doesn't plan on staying permanently And it's not like they're asking for a high fluency; with B1, you can barely hold a simple coherent con…

> it is unreasonable to live permanently in a country without speaking the local language But what if there are countries where the 'local language' eventually becomes like Irish in Ireland? Everyone who goes to school in the Republic of Ireland will learn some Irish at school. Almost every Irish person will know some Irish expressions, Irish songs, and be aware of Irish-language culture and literature as well as Eng…

Will English supplant Dutch and German in a few generations?

In a way they are related, is it why people from those countries pick it up so easily?

Like kids growing up in metropolitan areas immersed in English only environments

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#199

Post by ricardobayes »

One example I vividly remember was somewhere in very rural Germany in the early 2000s. A new burger chain called McDonalds recently opened and they had the most bizarre slogans and scripts written, in English, but in German phonetic transcription, like in the parking lot it said "Häppi Börzdäi" or something like that.

Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch

#200

Post by ricardobayes »

MandieD wrote: post #11

Observation of Berlin from the weekend I spent there last month: literally the only place I was better off speaking German rather than English was a Turkish cafe. Everywhere else? Too many people understood English far better than they did German, especially anywhere to do with tech. Some of the tech people I talked to were running into being otherwise eligible for a permanent residence permit, but not being able to…

B1 is actually pretty strict, Spain only requires an A2 even for citizenship (after ten years of being a resident). In a parallel universe, imagine needing to learn B1 Turkish as a German to become a turkish resident. Pretty daunting.
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