Denglisch

Twenty years ago, back when I was living in Basel, I once observed how an American tourist in a McDonald’s nearly flipped out at a cashier when she didn’t understand what “a decaf coffee with two Sweet and Lows” meant. As the poor woman stared back at him, desperately trying to understand his request, he shouted out the brand name of the low calorie sweetener over and over again, increasing his already loud voice so that it now boomed through the restaurant: “Sweet and Low! Don’tcha know what Sweet and Low is? SWEET AND LOW!” It was so embarrassing that I stood up and intervened, explaining to him that no, the Swiss hadn’t yet grasped the concept of putting saccharine into their coffee. He was bewildered.

Fortunately the world is now fully trained to speak the lingo of coffee, thanks to the expansion of American chains like Starbucks. This morning, before boarding the train headed for Berlin, I ordered "Ein blueberry muffin to go bitte und ein tall double shot cappuccino" at the Starbucks in Munich’s main station. Now really, how convoluted can that be? Twelve words, only four of them in German, and when I dumped four packets of brown sugar into my coffee, there was the Sweet and Low. My fellow American in Basel would have smiled, content that Europe has finally become civilized.

It’s interesting to see what Starbucks has achieved in this short space of time, and how through its globalization specific English words and phrases have embedded themselves here to clearly articulate not only the wishes of their customers, but also the idea of portability. Take “Double shot” for example: I would never in my life imagine saying “mit einen extra schuss espresso” anymore. It’s just far too complicated, a description that just doesn’t fit if you are standing in a long line waiting to order your personalized coffee (besides, it says so on my recipt: “Add shot- 0.60”- so why bother?). The same thing goes with the cardboard “sleeve” that slips around the paper cup so that I don’t burn my hand. I don’t even know what it the word is in German- it’s just “Ein Sleeve”, and for some reason everyone who works here knows that. And yet before Starbucks arrived whenever you ordered a coffee “to go” you needed to gingerly hold the cup in your fingers. Now, almost every imitation coffee store offers them.

The phrase “to go” is also a direct result of this shift, and in my opinion it is the one single phrase that

spearheaded a mini revolution in European thinking ten years ago. When it first appeared, the concept was so popular that, here in Germany at least, those who wanted be ‘cool’ used it whenever possible, letting it’s German equivalent “zum mitnehmen” fall to the wayside. And yet, because the simplicity of “to go” wasn’t yet embedded into the German psyche, I frequently came across botched attempts to express this phrase. Signs offering coffee "for the go" and "to going" and even "to take the go" sprung up everywhere. I was once even told that “to go” was far too short to be right.

And strangely enough, it seems that the Germans, following up on this trend of expressing the ideals of freedom and portability, have adopted and reinvented American-like phrases that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. The cell phone world is the most obvious example of this: the original word “Funktelefon” is all but obsolete, first changing to “Mobiltelefon” before the dubious term “Handy” (as in, “I’ll call you from my Handy”) became common And along with the Handy arrived slew of tariff options, including, “Call Ya” and “Free n’ Easy” and “My Base”. My own tariff plan includes an “airbag,” which guarantees that my monthly costs don’t go over a certain limit (hopefully it doesn’t mean that a large pillow will explode out of my cell phone if I exceed the limit). And moving beyond the realm of coffee and telephone, a huge push to modernize German through the use of English words has taken the country by storm. There is regularly the discussions about of the need of “Knowhow,” of an individuals fear of being pushed out of an organization through “Mobbing”, and how “coole” things are “echt super” because it makes them “ganz happy, probably because they can put it in their “Bodybag” (anything ranging from a purse to a backpack).

It’s all rather bewildering, and sometimes just plain wrong:

(“Big Beauty- Ware and Handling for Cosmetic.” In German, I think the sign would be “Grosse Schönheit- Ware und Handlung für Kosmetik,” or, “Great Beauty- Products and Cosmetic Treatment.” But obviously, in the shopkeeper’s eagerness to be modern, the person decided on this.)

The Bottom Line:

As an American, I have mixed feelings about this linguistic tango between English and German. Although I like that it makes my life easier, I cannot help but wonder if it is an attempt for the Germans to make up for the fact that they never really considered speaking English as necessary. Maybe it’s time for them to change that attitude and learn English properly so that they don’t forget how to speak their own language.