Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I moved to Berlin 15 years ago, this was not the case. Many bars and cafes were staffed by German-speaking people in their 30s - underpaid artistic or intellectual types or professional partiers making an extra buck. This had a particular charm - they were often cranky and unconcerned, but they kept the same job for a long time and you could get to know them and feel like a "regular." This kept me returning to t…
My theory is that this is completely due to the raising cost of housing - it's no longer easy (possible?) do make due in Berlin on that kind of job long-term.
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
341–350 of 362 posts
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its both: Leave Country A for Country B = expat Move to Country B from Country A = immigrant The words mean exactly the same. It's just which perspective you want to highlight. Whether you left a place or moved to a place.
I might have been traumatized by US visa process, but in my mind "immigrant" has a very specific meaning: moving to a country with the intent of settling there permanently. And the US is very strict on that meaning: when I went to the US my work visa was explicitly non-immigrant, and calling myself an immigrant at the US embassy when applying for the visa, or while crossing the US border would have resulted in the de…
In practice, though, "expat" is used by people who want to define themselves in terms of where they're from, and not admit (to themselves any more than to anyone else) that they are where they are and are probably going to stay there for the foreseeable future: "I don't belong to the riffraff here in the country where I live, I'm an expat, which is something far fancier."
And possibly by a few naïve fuckers who don't actually mean it that way, and don't realise that that's how they're coming off because of all the stuck-up arseholes who do.
HTH!
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I make a distinction between a highly educated Japanese person working at a university and a boat refugee from Sudan. Got nothing to do with race. We are a civilised people we judge on economics.
And you never let race be a shorthand for economics either.
Expats are yacht refugees, not boat.
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#344As a native Urberliner I am both flattered and confused by the fact so many young Americans choose to live in my home town. I always wondered what makes it so attractive to you. I mean, winters are miserable, the city is ugly compared to many others in Germany, the people are rather not friendly to each other, the German language is difficult to learn, our history is troublesome, German immigration laws still difficu…
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…
> find a huge apartment for under seven hundred a month from a nice neighborhood.
Wait, what, find things from -- is this a...? And then I looked into the darkness: Yup, that's where you're from.
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#345Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
I certainly considered the Netherlands… «maar ik kan een beetje maar Nederlands spreken» and I'm not even sure I'm supposed to use "maar" twice in that sentence or not. (Sadly I don't even get to use the wonderful «Ik ben groot», because I'm only tall by non-Dutch standards).
> «maar ik kan een beetje maar Nederlands spreken» and I'm not even sure I'm supposed to use "maar" twice in that sentence or not. “maar” can both mean “but” or “only” but you have to use it like this: «maar ik kan maar een beetje Nederlands spreken» literally translated as: «but I only can speak a little Dutch». A native speaker would use it twice.
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#347As a native Urberliner I am both flattered and confused by the fact so many young Americans choose to live in my home town. I always wondered what makes it so attractive to you. I mean, winters are miserable, the city is ugly compared to many others in Germany, the people are rather not friendly to each other, the German language is difficult to learn, our history is troublesome, German immigration laws still difficu…
Bowie. It all goes back to Bowie. He's really the one who made Berlin so attractive to young Westerners. We think Berlin is a lovely city, with lots of tolerant people and a diverse set of cultures providing a rich and interesting outlook. Of course, the reality is, Berlin is as much of a shit-hole as any other major European city, but the fantasy of meeting an intelligent, inspired, enlightened 'newly free' young Ge…
(East) Berlin (along with the rest of East Germany) was 'newly freed' over thirty ears ago, so none of the people who actually experienced that liberation are all that young any more.
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is from the English Wikipedia. [1] Nowhere in the article is there any hint that the term is perceived as problematic by native English speakers or that it has racial overtonens. If indeed there is a critical mass of people who feel offended by it, you know what you need to do :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model
The article about the actual people the anglo saxons does reinforce their point though. > The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity and was integral to the founding of various kingdoms. > Catherine Hills summarised the views of many modern scholars in her observation that attitudes towards Anglo-S…
Nope. On the contrary, it rather directly contradicts it.
> > The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity and was integral to the founding of various kingdoms.
And that's why "Anglo-Saxon" is nowadays used to mean at least the British nation -- a nation that includes the conquered Celts of Scotland and Wales, and lots of more recently immigrated ethnically and religiously diverese groups, but still as a whole the somewhat coherent Christianity-based English-speaking culture descended from the original Anglish and Saxon tribes that migrated to the British isles a millennium and a half ago -- or indeed that nation, plus the Anglophone erstwhile colonies that were settled and inherited their mainstream cultures from Britain (i.e the USA, Canada, Emutopia and Kiwiland, and possibly some smaller ones I'm forgetting at the moment). It is, as Wikipedia so correctly notes, a cultural identity.
It's just a convenient shorthand, because "Anglo-Saxon" is a fucklot easier to say than "the somewhat coherent Christianity-based English-speaking culture descended from that of the original Anglish and Saxon tribes that migrated to the British isles a millennium and a half ago, encompassing all the tribes they subjugated and assimilated since" or "all the preceding plus the Anglophone erstwhile colonies that were settled and inherited their mainstream cultures from it". That's how language works.
Re: On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#350Borrowed words and phrases can lead to weird things that we don't even notice. For example the author of the essay casually calls English the lingua franca without pausing to realize that he's using an Italian phrase for "French language", and means English by it! This borrowing, adapting and linguistic evolution has been going on for a very long time.
Definition of lingua franca: "bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca And it does not mean French, but Frankisch tongue. And by the definition this phrase means "language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language" - which is English nowadays, at least in th…
Yeah, but "Frankish" in the sense of what we now call French. What is nowadays called "Fränkisch" is the dialect of German spoken in the north-west corner of Bavaria, and that sure as fuck wasn't what was used as a universal pidgin around the Mediterranean in the days of the Crusades.
> And by the definition this phrase means "language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language" - which is English nowadays, at least in the Western Hemisphere.
Yup. Which in the days of the Crusades was a mixture of many tongues, prominent among them knights from, if not then, then what is now France and whose language(s) even then were seen as variants or close relatives of that "Frankish" we now call French.