Found in the Blogbook’s links. (They’re great links, but they still think Herr Simon is a Simone!):
Sixth Form law weblog.

Das [geändert von dem falschen “der”] Sixth Form law weblog ist geschrieben für Sixth Formers, man könnte sagen Abiturienten, die Recht als Schulfach studieren.

Über ein Link findet man weitere Links bei Bournemouth & Poole Sixth-Form College (ein Sixth-Form-College ist eine Schule nur für die letzten zwei Jahrgänge, Alter 16-18).

Einführungen ins englische Recht auf diesem Niveau bieten einen guten Einstieg auch für Ausländer, da sie meist knapp sind und ein großes Feld abdecken.

The Küblbock cucumbers have been taken up more seriously by law blog and Handakte WebLAWg.

Rainer Langenhan says that the SZ was incorrect to say up to 25 euros was being bid – the current prices are no more than 7.50 euros (Paul Thomas, in a comment to the last entry, says he counted 117 offers). However, it may be that some have already been sold in an auction wíth a short deadline.

Udo Vetter says the public prosecutor’s office is mistaken to describe the cucumbers as worthless if they are being sold on E-Bay. Rainer Langenhan says even if they are not worth much, there is still an offence available under section 259 (2) of the German Criminal Code, Teilnahme an der Entwendung geringwertiger Sachen – participation in the misappropriation of property of little value – and that there is a public interest in prosecution in view of the auction. Veter adds that even valueless property can be stolen, although the victim (here presumably the pickles company) has to make an application for prosecution (Strafantrag) for theft of property worth less than 25 – 50 euros. But if there is public interest (see above), the public prosecutor can go ahead without an application from the victim. The exploitation of an accident might be enough – at least, if the public prosecutor wants some publicity.

And finally, Vetter adds, selling pickled cucumbers bought from the local supermarket as Küblbück accident pickles (!) is frau (Betrug).

Senioren Union: Aufruf zur Unterschriften Aktion gegen sinnlose Anglizismen.

Abnu of Wordlab (see also earlier entry) drew my attention in an email to a Deutsche Welle article in English on Denglish.

Apparently February 21st, a week ago, was International Mother Language Day. The article suggests more German is beginning to be used in advertisements in Germany – for instance, McDonalds has replaced the slogan ‘Every time a good time’ by ‘Ich liebe es’ (I love it, or, according to Deutsche Welle, I’m lovin’ it – well, OK, that’s the original US verb form, but it doesn’t really go into German, at least not as Ich liebe es).

It also recounts the study that found how poorly many Germans understand English slogans. I mentioned it briefly earlier and PapaScott had a fuller report. But this is the first report in English I remember seeing – there must have been others, though. And the article gives a number of other examples of Denglish.

There’s a group of older people in Nuremberg who are campaigning against the use of so much English in German, by shops, authorities and churches (Ticket-Office im Basement, Bratwurst Point, Feel-Good und Come-In Gottesdienst).

Thanks, abnu (I’m not sure you’d get away with that name in Germany…)

The Wordlab site has a link to an interesting article (with photo) on a new lavatory, an art object, in London, designed for tourists not wanting to miss any sightseeing time – it has one-way mirrored walls.

LATER NOTE: I see that Wordspy has an entry on Denglish. The earliest usage it found in English was in 1998.

bq. Example Citation:
“Many billboards have slogans in ‘Denglish’ — a mix of English and German. Ad posters for sleeveless jumpers call them ‘tanktops’. And Berlin’s roadsweepers are promoted under the slogan ‘We Kehr For You’ — kehr means to sweep.”
—Michael Lea, “Germans throw in towel and start talking English,” The Sun, April 7, 2000

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports that some people on E-Bay are selling jars of pickled cucumbers allegedly from the accident where a lorry loaded with pickled cucumbers was the victim of Küblböck’s bad driving (he hasn’t taken his test yet).

Some of the photos are convincing, showing the scene of the accident. Or rather one picture, which has presumably been ‘borrowed’ from the original source.

Apparently they were Specht Prager Gurken pickled cucumbers. Or else Develey, if you believe the minority. Actually, they are one firm now, so both are probably right.

To quote the Süddeutsche:

bq. Nach Angaben der Staatsanwaltschaft Landshut müssen die Gurken-Jäger, die das Gemüse an der Unfallstelle aufgesammelt haben, nicht mit einer Strafe rechnen. Die Gurken seien durch den Frost als Nahrungsmittel unbrauchbar geworden und damit wertlos, erklärte Oberstaatsanwalt Alfons Obermeier. Der Vorgang werde zwar geprüft, ein förmliches Ermittlungsverfahren sei aber wohl nicht zu erwarten.

bq. According to the Landshut public prosecutor’s office, the pickle poachers who collected the jars from the accident are not going to be charged. The pickled cucumbers are no longer edible as a result of the frost and so they are worthless, said the Chief Public Prosecutor Alfons Obermeier. The events will be looked into, but it seems unlikely that there will be formal criminal investigation proceedings.

Other cucumbers for sale on E-Bay in Germany include weiße Gurken – white cucumber seeds. Apparently white cucumbers were quite the rage in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

What’s new on the UK legal web? is a new weblog, but its author, Nick Holmes, has apparently been publishing a newsletter for some time now – back copies on the site. See also his infolaw site. A sort of British Langenhan.

Long since recorded by other bloggers, Son of law blog, Law-Blog (with capitals and a hyphen) is by the lawyers Arne Trautmann and Dr. Christian Ostermaier in Munich. Emphasis on IT, technology, intellectual and industrial property.

Via ethicalEsq & haikuEsq: the New York Lawyer reports that some big U.S. law firms are doing something to ensure their lawyers get more exercise. For instance, White & Case have a yoga night and a tai chi night.

bq. Washington, D.C.’s Arnold & Porter recently launched an incentive program that will pay associates and staff members a $200 bonus at the end of the year if they have exercised about three times a week over the year. The firm also holds health and fitness fairs and is looking into on-site fitness activities.

Die Kommentar-Funktion ist sehr langsam. Am einfachsten, wenn man kommentieren will, nicht auf “Comments”, sondern auf “Permalink” klicken, dann wird der ganze Eintrag mit früheren Comments in einem Fenster angezeigt.

The comments function is slow. Some people have left the same comment five times (I have then deleted four).

This is partly because I use the MT-Blacklist plugin for Movable Type.

The easiest way to comment is to click not on ‘Comments’, but on ‘Permalink’. Then you see a window with the entry and all the earlier comments.

I remove comments that are obvious spam. I also remove some comments that seem totally meaningless, but not many. I remove requests for work. I have not yet removed a couple of requests for legal advice. All these comments tend to appear on much earlier entries that few people are going to see.

An example: yesterday I removed two identical comments advertising a blackjack site. I entered the advertised URL into MT-Blacklist, and the poster tried ten more times to post, but was automatically blocked. If that hadn’t happened, I might have finished up having to delete 40 or 50 comments by hand, and that takes a long time. I can quickly edit the last 5 comments, but that’s all. That’s why I use MT-Blacklist, even though it probably slows things down. (I think there’s a scripting trick to speed things up again, but I don’t intend to use that because other things are more important).

But the results can be devastating if you don’t get your Teufelskralle in time.

Teufelskralle – Harpagophytum procumbens – devil’s claw or grapple plant.
Afrikanische Teufelskralle.

Very good if you’ve been attacked with a red felt marker.

Particular uses are for pains in the joints and rheumatism.

Manche Deutsche, wenn sie englisch schreiben, benutzen nur nicht-Muttersprachlern bekannte Wörter / Abkürzungen, z.B. resp., a.o., f. ex. und furtheron. Zitat von einem Engländer, der kein Deutsch kann und resp. überhaupt nicht verstehen konnte.

Ever since I first taught English to Germans – that was at Cologne University in 1974 – I have been amazed at people’s ability to regularly use non-existent English words.

When I don’t know a language well, I know there are words I lack, or I make spelling mistakes in existing words.

But who coined the word furtheron, which seems like a combination of weiterhin and furthermore?

And then there are all the abbreviations: f.ex. instead of e.g., and resp. standing for German beziehungsweise, which very rarely means respectively. Recently I saw a.o., clearly meaning among others. Of course, German unter anderem really means inter alia or among other things, not among others, so that too was misused.

For a summary of the problems with resp., see below.

Now I have read a query from someone on a forum with a German member whose English is very good. However, he keeps including the abbreviation ‘resp.’ in his postings, and English speakers can’t make sense of it. Here are two examples:

There are two kinds of suitable Polyurethane foam. One is single
component. Works well, only requires some water moisture resp. wetness to
react and set.

And I see that the vast majority of users resp. members still would like
to post ‘Wanted’ ads here.

To quote the questioner:

I thought at first it meant “with respect to”, but I think he’s actually using it to offer an alternative word for the one he has just used. I suspect he’s using a literal translation of a German abbreviation, but it doesn’t quite get his meaning across in English.

This is interesting, because every time I read resp. I know from German what the writer means. Beziehungsweise usually means and or or. But respectively has a narrower meaning:
‘each separately in the order mentioned’, to quote the Longmans Dictionary of Contemporary English. Example:

Classes A, B, and C will start their exams at 9.30, 10.00 and 10.30 respectively.

Beziehungsweise can mean this, but more often it is used the way the German uses resp. above: water or wetness, members or users.