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Viewing When Languages Collide, Denglisch Ueber AllesWhen Languages Collide, Denglisch Ueber Alles
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By Ian Stephenson Denglish, a hybrid form of English and German, has seen a rapid rise in popularity, not only in Germany, but also throughout the German-speaking world. Whether or not this can be seen as a good thing, however, is an issue of extreme importance. Is the German language really under threat from the English, and should the so-called German "purists" really be afraid of what they deem to be impending linguistic assimilation? With advances in computer technology and, therefore, pan-global communication methods, the English language has been at the forefront of almost every linguistic issue of the modern day. It is the lingua franca of cyberspace as well as of the business and advertising worlds. Many companies now demand a high level of English from their employees when considering them for their teams and as such, many groups have begun to spring into existence in order to defend their mother tongues. Germany is no exception, with the German Academy for Language and Poetry (GALP) and the Institute for the German Language (IGL) being two of the most prevalent guardians for the mother tongue of Schiller and Goethe in modern Germany. What concerns the GALP and IGL most is the influence the English language is currently having on scientific circles, claiming that the German language stands to be undermined and debased. GALP believes that English poses a genuine threat to the validity of German as a scientific language, and that having a preference towards English in scientific reports and papers will only serve to uproot German and re-label it as nothing more than a dialect. The president of the GALP, Christian Meier, has expressed concerns that the increasing use of English in economics, mathematics, natural science, and technology will have a detrimental effect on the experts in those fields, causing them to be taken less seriously at an international level, simply for preferring to use German as the language for their publications. What is worse, is that with the increasing number of international courses offered by German universities in order to attract foreign students, Meier believes that the level of English used in the lecture theaters and classrooms simply isn't good enough. He has also explained that it is because of the use of BSE, or bad simple English, that the German language is not able to fully develop in innovative fields. It simply cannot be denied that English is having an ever-increasing influence on language in Germany, and although the desire to quash such linguistic pressure is not new, Germans are not nearly as fastidious as the French, whose pilots and air traffic controllers still complain at having to use English when communicating instructions to each other. Today, many people will simply ignore the growing use of English in Germany, not giving a second thought to the president of the IGL, Wilhelm Krämer, who commented that English is nothing more than "pseudo cosmopolitan drivel". These are, after all, the days of globalization and Internet collaboration; words are bound to seep into other languages simply because of their extremely common current usage. Taking a leaf from the Denglisch book, the purists in Germany have nothing to be afraid of; it is simply a matter of "relaxen." About the Author: Ian Stephenson is a graduate of Modern Languages (French, German, and Russian) at the University of Sheffield, UK. An aspiring EFL teacher, Ian has worked with several local higher education institutes to promote the learning of foreign languages at advanced levels. Interested in historical linguistics, as well as linguistic theory, Ian currently focuses his studies on medieval Germanic linguistics and literature, translation theory, and 18th and 19th century continental European literature. Article Source: A Language Guide - http://www.a-language-guide.com |
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