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.