Last week the suffix -gate was chosen as the German Anglicism of the Year 2013. Unusually, this award recognizes the positive contribution of anglicisms to the German language. -gate has been around a long time, even in German, but was particularly common last year.

I seem to have missed Mopsgate (puggate). And this despite the fact that I recently saw two women and six pugs on the corner. This was explained when I traced a pug breeder to a nearby road. Trevor kindly found a collection of German pug quotations for me.

The story is the disappearance of a 6-kilo gold-painted stone figure of a pug from a monument to Loriot, the stage name of Vicco von Bülow, who famously said that life without a pug is possible, but meaningless. The pug figure was placed on a stele by unknown persons, so it was not physically attached nor part of the original monument. It may have been blown off and shattered.

Stuttgart sucht also weiter einen Mops aus Stein, 27 Zentimeter groß und sechs Kilo schwer. Die Polizei kennt den Fall, hat aber nur so lange ermittelt, bis feststand, dass die Figur nicht zum Denkmal gehört. „Das wäre ja dann ein besonders schwerer Fall von Diebstahl“, sagte ein Sprecher. Es liege keine Anzeige vor. „Keine Beschädigten, keine Beschuldigten, keine Straftat – so ist das bei der Polizei.“

There is a lot of literature about pugs in German, not just by Jandl. I remember from Boris Godunov ein Mops kam in die Küche und stahl dem Koch ein Ei, but I am indebted to Trevor for the other link. And apparently Queen Victoria had multiple pugs (why did the Queen descend to corgis?)