Even Greener Pastures

Quote from: SHL on June 15, 2019, 08:55:23 pm

The number of American/English words in German today is appalling.

Oh, that's nothing, Herr Steve. You ought to count up the number of German words that have insinuated themselves into English. It's appalling, I tell you! Kindergarten, for example. What's wrong with simply saying classes for little kids? Pass the smelling salts. The pure English had been corrupted and polluted for too long! Hey, I'm sounding like a Frenchman.

I am curious why it bothers you so much. It's not your native tongue. If they don't care, why should you?

Jerry, because I want to keep the German language pure, unadulterated! (Just kidding)

Remember when the French used to be like that about French? I think they’ve given up on it now.  That old clip I posted with Noam Chomsky mentioned it. He said just about every national language has this sort of mythology to it, that it has to remain “pure”, which he laughingly said didn’t mean anything.  He said he didn’t know if it had ever been studied, but it was kind of extreme with the French, almost comical. And, he gave an example.

I have my old passports which were written in English and in French. My new one is in English, French and now Spanish. (Most people pay no attention to this.) I sort of get the Spanish part, but why in the world would French be in there? In Canada, yeah. I could understand that. But here? I always thought it was due to some UN resolution the French pushed through decades ago or something, because they really wanted French to become the international language.

I have no idea why languages change like this. You can draw some assumptions. Like with the computer age, the “internet” is going to be “das Internet” in German. Same with der Computer, German has that word too of course but it always had der Rechner as well because computers aren’t new.

I think movies, music and TV have a lot to do with it. They get our stuff but we don’t get much of theirs. And, although it’s just my personal observation, Germans sort of like English, or at least English words, for some odd reason. I never understood that. So, I think that means they readily adopt English words like “sorry” when there really is no reason for it.

But, English is not like that. While there are a few German words English has adopted, they pale in comparison to the number of English words German has taken on.

So, if the French are still wishing to keep their language “pure”, and they may have given up on it, the Germans seem to never have had that sentiment.