Editorial April 2001
	Dear Readers and Friends of the German language, while the Editorial Board of the Deutsche Rundschau always strives to work as a team, it also ascribes to the idea of giving voice to the individual most suited for a particular task. As such, it was felt that the topic which I am about to cover was best dealt with by someone born to the German language but who has long since become infinitely more comfortable with another – English. Yet make no mistake: “I come to praise German, not to bury it!” (Apologies to Master Shakespeare.) Hence, this month’s editorial is written in English – a “first” for the Deutsche Rundschau, but then we also believe in “Vive la différence!” A very interesting letter from a reader of the German newspaper “Die Welt” was brought to our attention recently. It began with the sentence: “Wir sind angelsächsische Studenten, die seit langer Zeit und mit unglaublichem Staunen erleben müssen, wie die deutsche Sprache zu einer Pidgin verkommt.” It ended by saying: “Wir nennen dieses Dilemma ‘The German linguistic submissiveness...’” Upon reading these snippets in the letter, I blurted aloud: “Oh yes! I fully agree! Someone should write about this...” Even though I do most of my creative writing, composing and thinking in English these days, I am a staunch advocate of “linguistic purity” in all languages, including, of course, German – my mother tongue. When I first met Juri Klugmann, shortly after the initial issue of the Deutsche Rundschau was published back in mid-1997, I quickly bonded with him in his quest to preserve and promote the German language abroad. It is a bold and powerful language, old and rich in idiomatic expressions, eminently suited to scientific and technical usage, and one has only to read Goethe and Schiller, Schopenhauer and Kant, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Günther Grass, among many others, to realize the depth of its literary nuance. Thus it irritates me when I read texts and articles written by German-speaking/-writing persons in what can be described only as “Kauderwelsch” or “Pidgin”. Consider the following examples: “Machen wir uns auf den Weg zum Festival...” Why not say: “Machen wir uns auf den Weg zu den Festspielen”? Or why say: “den Motor anpowern” instead of “anlassen”? How did the German term “Handy” for a cellular telephone come into use? It has no known Fremdwort-equivalent! Would not “Mobil-Telefon” be more appropriate? There is no excuse for “Mailinglisten” when “Versandlisten” says it so much better! And I guess it’s pure liguistic submissiveness that lets one “Etwas vom Internet ‘downloaden’” instead of ‘herunterladen’”. As I get to read and review articles from all parts of the German-speaking world, it is easy to draw comparisons. It seems that some of the worst offenders are those who have a particular penchant for liberally sprinkling their writings with “Americanisms” (all the worse because Americans win first prize in butchering the English language “real good”[sic]). Consider the following excerpts from a press agency news text: “...ist ein weiteres Lokalradio in Österreich “on the air” gegangen...und [es] wird nur durch Werbung und “Jingles” unterbrochen.” Or how about the insurance company specializing in private pension funds which offers: “‘Money-Making’ Strategien für die ‘Multi-Power’ Frauen von heute”? In the same advertisement, the insurance company exhorts the reader to check-mark the box next to: “Ja, ich bestelle gratis den neuen ‘Bestseller’”... (Since when is a freely distributed pamphlet about Pension Funds a bestseller?) What about the graduate student cum journalist discussing “Security-Leute” and “der room-check” at an English University? There are some “foreign” words and expressions, of course, which have found their way into most languages, including German, and are accepted either as an indigenous part of the local language or as an immutable cognitive expression. For example, the Arabic words “Alkohol” and “Matratze”; the French expressions “savoir faire” and “coup d'état”; the English words “baseball” and “hot dog” (even the fussy French use this expression and have not converted it to “le chien chaud”); or, the Latin phrases “persona non grata”, “tempus fugit”, “deus ex machina” and “verbum sapienti sat” can be and are used in German without causing any degradation of the language. This is because they are universally accepted immutable expressions. In the same way, certain German words have worked their way into English, and other languages, and are being used in those without any change: “Weltanschauung”, “Gestalt”(-Therapy), “Angst” (in Psychoanalysis), “Kitsch”, “Leitmotiv” and “Zeitgeist”, to name a few. The point is that German is a fairly “pure” language, unlike English which is a hybrid concoction of Anglo-Saxon, old Nordic, Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Arabic and other tongues. As German derives from West Germanic which derives from Germanic which has its roots in the Indo-European stem language, and since it is a technically versatile tongue, it has the mechanisms for converting everyday, NON-universally accepted “foreign” words into pure German words which make more sense to the reader. Consider American “computer”-words which have already been “converted” into German: “hard disk” = “Festplatte”; “memory” = “Speicherkapazität”; “drive” = “Laufwerk”; and so on I invite you to “downloaden” to me your ideas, thoughts, opinions, pros and cons, on this subject. Donald James Dunn
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