Global Policy Forum

By Ben Aris

The use of English terms by German speakers is of increasing concern to linguistic purists in Europe's biggest country, writes Ben Aris.

Fed up with the language of Goethe being corrupted with additions such as "die Kiddies" and "der Call Centre", Germany's politicians are proposing to ban civil servants from using "Denglish" - German mixed with English - in the workplace. Over the last decade Denglish has become widely used by schoolchildren, advertisers and businesses, and traditionalists are starting to fight back.

The trend is being pushed by globalisation, the Germans' love of holidays and the internet, where Germans have adopted the hi-tech jargon wholesale. Even perfectly good German words such as "die Rechenanlage" have been abandoned in favour of the more international sounding "der Computer". At the same time Germans abroad find few speak their language, and the numbers of other nationals studying German continue to fall.

The philological protectionists are hoping to strike a blow for pure German at a cultural conference next month, when 16 states will get together to call on Berlin's 140,000 civil servants to stop using English in the workplace. The traditionalists meet once a month to pare Anglicisms from the language and include them on a list of banned words. They have also complained to the church for using English in sermons and claim that companies with Denglish names listed on the German stock market are failing faster than those pure German names.

Abroad, the German language is in trouble, with the number of students choosing to study it falling every year. German education authorities called for a campaign to "sex up" their language in a desperate effort to encourage more young people to take German at school. German is sexy and should be used more as an international language, concluded the International Association of German Teachers at a conference earlier this year. However, they had few practical suggestions on how to achieve this goal.

A recent survey conducted by the Goethe Institute in London, which promotes German culture overseas, found that there was little interest in all things German. Britain's impression of German culture is still dominated by war and football's World Cup. A more sinister aspect of the lingering resentment between the two countries has been a spate of attacks on German schoolchildren visiting Britain this summer. London's ambassador to Berlin warned that "prejudices and stereotypes" were leading to attacks and abuse of German children visiting Britain. In June one German child was beaten up and hospitalised in Canterbury after being taunted by local youths.

The Goethe Institute has launched a campaign under the slogan: "learn German - look good" targeting British students and teachers, although the attempt to rebrand German will eventually be launched in other European cities as well. Less than 1% of British schoolchildren are studying German, and the number continues to fall. Another survey found that while two-thirds of German pupils can rattle off dozens of British celebrities and half have visited Britain, most British schoolchildren struggle to name one German star and less than a quarter have visited Europe's biggest country.

As part of the campaign, the institute is hoping to press the likes of tennis star Boris Becker, motor racing icon Michael Schumacher and super model Claudia Schiffer into service to highlight Germany's more hedonistic side. It will be an uphill battle. English is seen as cool in Germany and advertisers frequently daub English language slogans across billboards. Last year in an attempt to spruce up its image the German telephone operator changed the name of many of its services to their English equivalents, causing widespread confusion. Older people who speak little English were particularly confused and call centres were bombarded with confused calls from pensioners who had no idea what a "call centre" was.

And in Bahnhof Zoo, Berlin's mainline railway station, the management has confused everyone, including English speakers, by misnaming the coffee carts "Coffee on Rolls" when it meant "on wheels". Gayle Tufts, a Berlin-based American comedienne whose entire show is in Denglish, says: "The young want to feel hooked into the rest of the world and it helps them get over the stigma of being German. The war guilt is still about as it was a huge thing."

The influx of English is particularly ironic, as in postwar Germany foreign musicians accepted as a matter of course that if they wanted to be successful in Germany they would have to sing in German. After the war the media was controlled by Allied forces and to be included in radio play lists, which were restricted to German language songs, groups such as the Beatles and Johnny Cash had to record German versions of their big hits. Following the student unrest in 1968 the rules were relaxed and English language songs were permitted. Today they swamp the airwaves.

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