The Economist has an (anonymous) article on loanwords in German and the fury they arouse. It’s quite well informed, and reminds me of studying the history of the German language at university.

Germans have been resisting foreign words ever since they began writing, says Falco Pfalzgraf of the University of London. German is “watered-down and oversalted” with foreign words, said the founders of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (“fruit-bearing society”) in 1617. Such groups taught Germans to prefer Abstand to the French Distanz and Augenblick to Moment.

It mentions Lena Meyer-Landrut (it appeared on May 27) and Walter Krämer of the Verein Deutsche Sprache, who I referred to at the end of my last entry.

A Neue Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft was founded in 2007. Mr Krämer’s Verein, with 31,000 members, publishes an index of 7,200 anglicisms, four-fifths of which, it claims, crowd out good German words. A pet hate is “blockbuster”, originally a 1942 coinage for city-destroying bombs. Mr Krämer, who lost six relatives to Allied bombing, prefers Kassenschlager (“box-office hit”).

Needless to say, the comments go mad. Criticism or comment on English or German is like a red rag to some bulls. (This reminds me of Christian Säfken’s entry on the ECHR Gäfgen decision, Das Schöne am Recht: alle sabbeln mit). GlobalHelen from Canada denies the Economist’s right to an opinion:

When Brits travel to Italy or Spain, they usually do not speak one word of the foreign language and stick in their British bars together with their fellow countrymen. As far as I know, this is very unique in most European countries. Italians, the French, the Spanish, Germans, they have a different attitude, their TV and radio is full of international and multicultural programs. The majority of these people learns and speaks at least one foreign language to some extent, something you can definitely not say about the British population.

So what exactly was it that makes the British believe they are able or entitled to write – let alone make a judgment – on foreign cultures trying to save their cultural heritage in times of globalization, increasing loss of identity and alienation?

I can’t agree with everything GlobalHelen says – for isntance, I am still looking for international and multicultural programmes on German TV (all foreign films are dubbed, and even in Britain I saw Wallender in Swedish with English subtitles this May), and even cable TV has hardly anything except CNN and BBC World News, OK some French and Turkish, but Italian is an extra subscription. But I think she may be right: we Brits shouldn’t express an opinion about anything, least of all language.

Speaking for myself, I see Walter Krämer trying to defend a language against a natural process. But then I’m not a linguistics expert.

Lena Meyer-Landrut has a strange English accent in the song she sang at the European Song Contest, ‘Satellite‘.

As far as I can judge, sometimes the vowels are a failed attempt at estuary English, and sometimes they sound like Yorkshire English ‘Love, I got it bad for you’. There’s nothing wrong with having a mixed accent, but this one seems to vary throughout the song, with the weird ‘ay’ in ‘just the other day’, it irritates me. ‘Can’t go a minute without your love’ is very odd. ‘I even painted my toenails for you’ actually reminds me of the voice of Lauren Luke, who does make-up videos (she’s from South Shields).

Spiegel Online had an article in English by a British writer, Mark Espiner, who totally rubbished Lena’s accent. I thought he went much too far. I was also surprised to see real English on Spiegel Online.

But contrary to the opinions of die hard fans who insist her accent is brilliant, Lena sounds really, really weird. Her attempts to adopt the street language of London — itself a hybrid of US slang, Jamaican argot, and East End vernacular and beloved of British pop stars like Adele and Amy Winehouse, who seem to be Lena’s heroines — end up with her sounding like a Swedish speech therapist imitating Ali G. …

Lena’s isn’t a mockney accent, the affectation of London’s working-class Cockney tone that the likes of Blur’s Damon Albarn were accused of using. Nor is it the full-on “jafakean,” the fake Jamaican accent you often hear on the top decks of North London buses, as the preferred slang of the school kids who like to sound like they’re from the ghetto. Instead, it is a mixture that borrows from the two, then adds a shot of mixed-up European, presumably made up of her native German and what sounds like Scandinavian. In fact, the Scandinavian accent could be a cunning plan to win over the Oslo crowd.

In fact, Espiner seems even more incensed by Lena’s imitation of other singers than by her accent (and he obviously doesn’t like Amy Winehouse).

Now Axel Stefanowitsch has entered the fray at Wissenslogs, with Wir sind Englisch. He rightly says that we need an expert to comment on Espiner’s remarks on London and Jamaican accents (he quotes the German version of Spon).

Stefanowitsch links to Tagesspiegel and Guardian columns by Espiner, in which he reports mainly on theatre. But it seems to me, looking at these articles, that as an Englishman giving his view of Berlin, or writing in the Guardian about Berlin, Espiner is drawn by his job to make generalisations, which I don’t think always work.

Stefanowitsch points out that British English speakers don’t have a right to decide how English is spoken. He thinks Espiner probably regards Oxford English as the only correct form.

This is all correct, but it doesn’t seem likely to me that the kind of weird mixed English Lena sings in Satellite is going to take over the world.

Axel says that his English is a mixture of what he learnt at school in Germany and England, and Lena’s English will be a reflection of her language learning biography:

Ich würde mich ja um eine stimmige Aussprache bemühen, wenn mir ein gutes Vorbild einfallen würde. Aber wie gesagt, Englisch wird weltweit von konservativ geschätzten 700 Millionen Menschen im inneren und äußeren Kreis als Muttersprache oder früh erlernte und alltägliche Zweitsprache gesprochen. Warum sollten Meyer-Landrut, ich, oder andere deutsche Englischsprecher sich also auf eine bestimmte Varietät festlegen? Meine Dialektmischung reflektiert meine Sprachlernbiographie (Schulzeit in Deutschland und England, Studium in Deutschland und Texas), und Meyer-Landruts Dialektmischung wird eben ihre Sprachlernbiographie reflektieren.

But there is an interview with Lena on the Eurovision Song Contest site, and her English accent is not at all mixed there.

LATER NOTE: The Verein Deutscher Sprache thought Lena had no chance at Oslo (quoted by a commenter at Wissenslogs). Walter Krämer says Lena definitely has the talent to win, if only she weren’t singing a song in English that has no connection to Germany and doesn’t invite anyone between Lisbon and Moscow to hum along or dance along (but Schunkeln isn’t really dancing, it’s the arm-in-arm swaying Germans sometimes do in beer tents):

Seit 2002 singen die deutschen Sänger und Sängerinnen meist englisch und schneiden damit deutlich schlechter ab als in den Jahren zuvor, bemerkt der VDS. „Lena Meyer-Landrut hätte wirklich das Talent, den Wettbewerb zu gewinnen“, sagte der Vorsitzende des VDS, Walter Krämer. „Ihr englisches Lied hat aber überhaupt keine Verbindungen zu Deutschland und lädt niemanden zwischen Lissabon und Moskau zum Mitsummen oder Mitschunkeln ein“, kritisierte der VDS-Vorsitzende.

The Observer reports on calls for prisoners in the UK to be given the vote.

The government faces being hauled before the European court of human rights unless it gives prisoners the right to vote as a matter of urgency.

The article correctly refers to Strasbourg and to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. But what has the term Eurosceptics to do with this?

But any move that recognises the ECHR ruling on prisoner voting is likely to spark an angry reaction from Eurosceptics. In the House of Lords last year Lord Tebbit attacked the measure as a form of “judicial imperialism” effectively foisted on the UK by a foreign court.

A challenge within the UK would first have to go through the UK courts, which are now subject to the Human Rights Act, so the matter would probably not even reach Strasbourg.

The commenter Sverdlovsk writes:

The ECHR is not an EU institution.

It is part of the Council of Europe, which includes countries such as Russia and Turkey. It is an institution that is strongly ‘British’ in character, insofar as it was set up with strong British involvement and support – among others Winston Churchill was a strong supporter.

It’s sad that people will use this as yet another ‘reason to hate the EU’ (cf Raptorjezus), but this is what always seems to happen on these threads.

Once again, the ECHR has nothing to do with the EU.

The Times Online is about to disappear from my radar because there will be a charge for using it.

I will miss the law section.

This is no doubt why the Guardian, which I already read for news together with the Independent, has now got a law section. It’s also possible to get a weekly email newsletter called the Bundle.

Getting ready for Saturday: the German entry to the Hardchorus European Song Contest, Ein bisschen Frieden.

England

(Via vowe.net)