Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Denglisch, Franglais, Chinglish, Spanglish

They are as regular as tornadoes and floods, but fortunately nowhere near as devastating. Depressingly, the masters of language will get their newspaper or website exposure. Generally, the masters of language have one main qualification as writers about all things linguistic -- they tend to be neither English nor German majors.
Which is great because in all dealings between Brits and Krauts we really, really need to get away from that militarization of yore.

In K-land, Der Spiegel online has taken the baton with a new series "Fluent English" dedicated to poking fun at the sometimes wanting English language skills of German politicians and managers.

You can recognize the master of the language right away when he states "of course, you cannot expect Germans to master English perfectly" and then eases the readers into the subject by making fun of G. W.'s version of English.

This provides the German manager or politician reader of Der Spiegel with someone to look down on as our Spiegel friend starts his blitz on their skills and attitudes.

Even after hardcore ruffling of German feathers, the ruffled can put down Der Spiegel - yes - and start to re-build their egos on the unshakable foundation of Junior: I know, my English is not perfect, but just look at Bush, OMG!

Somewhere along the line, the author, Mr. Littger, also offends just about every German to the south and east of the "ze" line, as the K-landnewseditor calls it in a fit of creativity.

In some areas of the northern German lowlands, the local dialects do in fact make "correct" pronunciation of certain English phonemes, such as "th", a bit easier.

This allows us to guess that Mr. Littger is likely to hail from Northern Germany, from above and beyond the "ze" line.

It also allows us to ask our reader, what do you think Mr. Littger regards as one of the most offensive traits of English-speaking Germans?

Arrogance, bingo.

German ex-pats or the even more important 21st century class of citizens that are the international commuters, of course, do not have a monopoly on half baked  linguistic and cultural tomfoolery. 

We are satisfied with simply adding the following language mixes to the title of our silly post: Franglais, Chinglish, Spanglish.

What really ticks off TheEditor, though, is that people get paid money for stuff like that!!!

We hope, its only euros.

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