English language to get German upgrade

[Dreamer128]

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - While in Germany you can attend 'ein Meeting' that is 'gemanaget' by someone else using your "down-geloadete" information from the internet. After that you might need to rush to the airport for 'das Einchecken' before taking off in a plane with a 'stewardess' on it.

German is peppered with English words either accepted wholly into the language of Goethe or Germanified such as 'gestylt' - as in "Der Typ ist total gestylt" - that bloke is totally done up. The result is 'Denglisch' and has left some language purists crying into their coffee cups.

The language flow the other way has not been so extreme however.

English has happily assumed Zeitgeist, Schadenfreude and Kindergarten and there seems to be a creeping use of 'über' to describe 'very' or 'extremely' as in 'überhappy' but the list is relatively short by comparison.

Now the Goethe institute may be the cause of another German word entering everyday English.

It held a competition to find the word that would most benefit the English language.

The winner, announced today (8 December) is 'Fachidiot,' with the person nominating it saying it could be clumsily translated by "Idiot of your own subject."

Elaborating she said that "one-track specialist" was not quite right because "a specialist is nobody you would call an idiot. A one-track specialist is somebody who knows a lot about a particular field; a Fachidiot as well."

"The difference is that a one-track specialist still notices what is going on around him, in the world which has nothing to do with university. A Fachidiot simply does not, or not anymore."

Whether Fachidiot migrates over to English remains to be seen but it beat some other fabulous German words including 'Kummerspeck' – literally 'grief bacon' but meaning 'excessive weight gain caused by emotion-related overeating'.

Other words were 'Ohrwurm' – literally earworm – but meaning a catchy tune; 'Quatsch' meaning something like nonsense; and 'Eklärungsnot' – being in need of an explanation.

The runners up were 'Backpfeifengesicht' – meaning a face that makes you want to slap it - and 'Torschlusspanik' – the panic you get when you are rushing for something and think you are not going to make it.

(Source: http://euobserver.com/9/23060)

[ 12-08-2006, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: Dreamer128 ]

[wellard]

Whats German for "two world wars and one world cup" ? [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

My dad always says thank what eine Quatsch! My German's pretty darn rusty. 30+ years affects a lot. My wife is just on the phone with my mom in Ottawa. She usually starts in english, then switches to german with me. ..my wife calls her mutti..

[Larry_OHF]

Any German word for the French phrase de-ja-vu? There is no English Translation for this occurance and we use it in everyday life, even made a recent movie with that in the title...so if there was a way to actually have a word in our own language that could replace it, it would be fine. English is not a romance language, and since our roots are more closely associated with German, it only seems right to replace this phrase with a German one.

[johnny]

Originally posted by wellard: Whats German for "two world wars and one world cup" ? [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

Zwei Weltkriege und ein Weltmeisterschaft, although "ein" might also be "einen", my German is a bit rusty.

[johnny]

Geiles topic by the way. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

[johnny]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: Any German word for the French phrase de-ja-vu? There is no English Translation for this occurance and we use it in everyday life, even made a recent movie with that in the title...so if there was a way to actually have a word in our own language that could replace it, it would be fine. English is not a romance language, and since our roots are more closely associated with German, it only seems right to replace this phrase with a German one.

Larry, as far as i know, the Germans also use that word. Maybe there is a translation in German, but i heard them use dejavu often enough, and so do we.

[Callum]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: Any German word for the French phrase de-ja-vu? There is no English Translation for this occurance and we use it in everyday life, even made a recent movie with that in the title...so if there was a way to actually have a word in our own language that could replace it, it would be fine. English is not a romance language, and since our roots are more closely associated with German, it only seems right to replace this phrase with a German one.

There's a lot more than just dejavu from French in English. Good luck getting everyone to swap to German

[Rikard T'Aranaxz]

Vakidioot

Gedankenexperiment is a germanism in english but hardly used as much as it should (i would recommend all of you to randomly throw in gedankenexperiment into your every day speech). Also i tend to to use the term "an sich" which means "on itself" a lot both in dutch and in english [img]redface.gif[/img]

[johnny]

Originally posted by Rikard T'Aranaxz: Vakidioot Gedankenexperiment is a germanism in english but hardly used as much as it should (i would recommend all of you to randomly throw in gedankenexperiment into your every day speech). Also i tend to to use the term "an sich" which means "on itself" a lot both in dutch and in english [img]redface.gif[/img]

An sich kaart ? Uberhaupt is a word we tend to use quite often here as well.