An Intact Sense for Class Distinction Helps to Keep the Language Precise and Beautiful

If one talks to Americans, the "stuffiness" of the English generally, but specifically of their language, is a target of frequent ridicule. Such a judgement, however, reveals an endearing lack of perception of a thing they know a fig about, but which still has a pull among the British, in spite of many strident assurances to the contrary: Class. One gets more often than not shrieks of disgust in return for mentioning the c-word, but as a matter of fact, it's alive and thriving and language is one of its main expressions.

There are, of course, other class indicators, for example at what time of the day one has what kind of meal, what clothes one wears, houses -- where and how, and whether one likes the late Princess Diana or not. The latter, in fact, managed to draw a sharply defined line between the middle classes, who adored Diana because she displayed ad nauseam all the maudlin and phoney values of which the middle classes are so fond, and the upper-classes, who hated her because she was, as "Private Eye" put it in a meanwhile removed article, "a neurotic, irresponsible and manipulative troublemaker who had repeatedly meddled in political matters that did not concern her and personally embarrassed Her Majesty The Queen by her Mediterranean love-romps with the son of a discredited Egyptian businessman".

The following (maybe, one hopes, not even apocryphal) joke puts it to a "T": Princess Diana visits the Queen Mother in hospital. Diana: [high voice] "I've come to hold your hand." Queen Mother: [even higher voice] "Piss orf!" Both, the very direct, unfussy linguistic approach and the pronunciation are proof of the old lady's impeccable pedigree.

Listening to Brits while making guesses about their social background is both, fun and revealing. The strongest class indicator of them all is the short little word "pardon". THE one big class divide between people who say "pardon" because they think (and, for the non-native bystander, quite understandably so) that it is polite, and those who consider it a horrible genteelism too unsmart for words. The latter will say "eh", "what" or "sorry" instead. Think a smoke-filled room full of crusty old colonels, all deaf, shouting at each other, hand behind ear, on the top of their voices: "EH? EH? WHAT did he say? EH? EH???" Then there is this only at first sight droll story about the little English boy who informed his teacher: "My Mummy says pardon is a worse word than fuck." Befuddled, I asked a friend, an Old Etonianin in his eighties, whether that is true, and after very short contemplation he was positive that there are occasions where a gentleman might say "fuck", but never, not to save his life, would he ever say "pardon".

So far my own fieldwork, and I have strong supporters:

Post-war Britain was much shaken by an article in the bulletin of a Finnish learned society. In a paper on "English Upper Class Usage” Professor Alan S. C. Ross of Birmingham University stated, it was in 1954, that it was "solely by its language” the upper classes were "clearly marked off” from the middle and lower classes. To prove his point, Ross listed the ways a "U-" (for upper class) speaker differed from a "non-U" speaker. For example: The former would say rich, false teeth, house, jam, jersey, and lavatory/loo the latter wealthy, dentures, home, preserve, jumper/pullover/cardigan and toilet; the former would pronounce, for example, forehead as forrid, power as par, the latter as fore-head and pow-er; and so on. "The lorst par of the British Empar" indeed! I once was asked in an upper class house (NEVER say ***shudder*** "home"!) whether I wanted to take a "shar" as the hot water supply was a bit erratic. It took me a few moments to realize that the host meant "shower".

What H.L. Mencken said 1921 in "The American Language" is still spot on:

The Englishman seldom tries to gloss menial occupations with sonorous names; on the contrary, he seems to delight in keeping their menial character plain. He says servants, not help. Even his railways and banks have servants; the chief trades-union of the English railroad men is the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. He uses employé in place of clerk, workman or laborer much less often than we do. True enough he often calls a boarder a paying-guest, but that is probably because even a lady may occasionally take one in. … He avoids displacing terms of a disparaging or disagreeable significance with others less brutal, or thought to be less brutal, e.g., ready-to-wear, ready-tailored, or ready-to-put-on for ready-made, used or slightly-used for second-hand, popular priced for cheap, mahoganized for imitation mahogany, aisle manager for floor-walker (he makes it shop-walker), loan-office for pawn-shop."

Obviously, an intact sense for class distinction helps to keep the language precise and beautiful.

However, whatever their merits, Ross’ "U versus non-U" observations would have remained in Finnish obscurity, had it not been for Nancy Mitford, who, in addition to being a brilliant novelist, was also (so Evelyn Waugh) "an agitator - agitatrix, agitateuse? - of genius". Mitford jumped on Ross’ concept and impishly developed it into an article called "The English Aristocracy”. Partly prank, partly accurate, the "U versus non-U" flap was eventually memorialised in Mitford's extremely witty and funny book "Noblesse Oblige", an eccentric analysis of aristocracy, Englishness and language. "Poetus Laureate" John Betjeman contributed the following poem where virtually EVERY word is socially stigmatised:

How To Get On In Society
Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.

Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.

It's ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule's comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me

Now here is a fork for your pastries
And do use the couch for your feet;
I know that I wanted to ask you-
Is trifle sufficient for sweet?

Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.

Even after almost 50 years and in spite of all passionate pledges to the contrary, the social dimension of language is still considerable. In more recent times, the as observant as funny journalist and writer Jilly Cooper started all over where Mitford stopped and cultivated those class pranks to an art form in her novels.

The bottom line is, that certain features of language are still used to put people in their place and to keep them there. Although a clever parvenu might learn "received pronunciation", as Eliza Doolittle did from 'enry 'iggins, he (or she) won't have an easy life, as the snags are many.

A biblical example of language as a gatekeeper is given in Judges 12:

4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, "You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh."
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead asked him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he replied, "No,"
6 they said, "All right, say `Shibboleth.'" If he said, "Sibboleth," because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan.

As a result of this sad story, the word "shibboleth" is used to describe a linguistic marker that distinguishes one group from another. But it's not only "U" versus "non-U", it's the other way round as well. It was George Bernard Shaw who said that it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without being hated or despised by another Englishman (or words to that effect) and people still object to people "gentryfying" their voices like Mrs. Thatcher ironing out her lower-middle class vowels or, the other way round, "plebifying" them. Jilly Cooper tells in her hilarious appraisal of British society, "Class", the as funny as sad anecdote of working class hero and heir to the Wedgwood fortune Lord Stansgate (now "Tony Benn") "yer-knowing folksily all over his electorate". "Don't call me Sir, my good man" he was heard ticking off some unhappy Labour supporter in a pub.

The bottom line is that the more precise, direct, short, simple, Anglo-Saxon (as opposed to Romanic), non-politically correct, less explanatory or unsentimental the choice of words is, the more likely it is that one is talking to a "U"-speaker. Scent, not perfume (words that come from a Huntin', Shootin', Fishin' background are obviously very "U"), jam, not preserve, cake, not gateau, to pee (or - if you like - to piss), not to urinate, house, not home, racing, not horse racing. Talking about horses… of course one "rides" not "horse rides" or, (heavens forbid!) "horse back rides". One is "rich" not "well off", "puts down" an old dog and doesn't "put it to sleep", has an "affair" not a "relationship", "dies" and doesn't "pass away". And one does definitely NOT EVER use "cute-isms" like "doggie" or "horsey" and NEVER NEVER platitudes like "pleased to meet you" or "Cheers"!

I don't quite agree with some of the learned people above who claim that the vocabulary distinguishes the upper from the middle and lower classes. I remain adamant that there are certain important and characteristic similarities between the upper and the working classes. The concept behind this, I think, is that the upper AND lower classes are oblivious to public opinion and, both for their own obvious reasons, not interested in social climbing and thus less pretentious and less interested in "education", whilst notions like "getting on in life", social advancement, and the impression one might make on others ("what WILL people say!") are typically middle class and thus lead to a more pretentious, explanatory, euphemistic, politically correct, long-winded, perceivedly "educated" sort of speaking. And as all this is happening in a society that is more and more identified by arrivistes from the (lower) middle classes, this way of speaking is on its way to become more and more the "normal English", presumably just to prove the Americans right.

Oh yes, the Americans! As an English- (as opposed to American-) speaker, in the course of my modest fieldwork, I found that the implied premiss of my little piece, i.e. "English can be stuffy depending on the class of the speaker", ought to be amended by "and Americans are the last ones fit to be judges of that". In the course of more than ten years in the Internet, complimented by a bit of travelling, I have found that virtually ALL of the lower-middleclass, pseudo-refined, Romanic abominabilites mentioned above are common American usage. In fact, there are Anglo-American dictionaries online to help the desperate.

So we know there are linguistic dividers, but what is the fascination of those Frenchified euphemistic earsores in the first place?

I think there are three main reasons. First it's to make emotionally difficult or potentially embarrassing situations more palatable ("the loved one" vs "the dead", "romance" vs "affair" or "sex"). Second to bestow status to the undeserving ("sanitary engineer" vs "garbageman") or acceptability to the unsavoury ("landfill" or "recycling center" vs "dump"; "pre-owned (or, worse, "pre-loved") car" vs "used car"). Third, and this is the worst part of it, to make the sadly not always avoidable icky "facts of life" bearable. While we can attribute the first two to a general lack of taste and discernment (they always go together with any preponderance of lower middle class values) the third one is additionally owing to the moral bludgeon American middle class women, whose prissiness is only topped by their ruthless self-absorption, are swinging to keep society clean from what they are perceiving as "unpleasant". Anybody who is able to manipulate millions of American-English speakers into re-naming rape-derived cooking oil into the "inoffensive" sounding "Canola" just because they don't like the sound of the former, is dangerous and potentially capable of ANYthing or at least so I think.

Downlevelling to the Lowest Common Denominator

Via Lawrece Auster's VFR I discovered Tiberge's blog Galliawatch and specifically the post from which I quote:

The only factors that propel a language from mere street talk to the level of a great cultural asset are the men of genius who write great literature, the poets who open new avenues of expression, leading to a higher level of consciousness, the artists, musicians, essayists, playwrights, actors, journalists, commentators, teachers, scholars, etc... all of whom use, manipulate and enrich the language with individuality, and at the same time with national pride.

Such men are inspired and inspire others. But how to bring about a return to cultural excellence in this time of spiritual impoverishment? How to generate inspiration? Lawrence Auster, who was responsible for my discovering the site, has some suggestions:

To paraphase Obama's "spreading the wealth," what they're doing now is trying to save French by "spreading the French," instead of by elevating it. Meaning, improve the quality of French among the French people. Teach great literature. Instill love of France and French culture, so that the French have something worth talking about again. Make Muslims unwelcome and start pushing them out, thus re-invigorating French identity. Dismantle the EU and the entire managerial, liberal, egalitarian, and Eurabian agenda and consciousness, which kill the mind, turn language into a PC tool to conceal instead of a tool to communicate truth. Bring back belief in truth, so that there will be things worth saying again, worth using language well for...

[...]

Once French nation and culture and its Western identity have been saved and revived, and once the French used by the French people has been improved and purified, then start to make French attractive again to other Westerners. Forget about trying to make it attractive to Third Worlders. As you suggested from the articles at that site, such efforts do not avail. Accept the fact that France cannot have an empire again, that trying to have a Muslim empire only Islamizes France, but see that French can still be saved, because the greatness and beauty of French can still have a great appeal to fellow white Westerners. Thus encourage French as a universal second language in the West alongside English. It won't be as widespread as English, of course, but the unique beauty of French and the "high" of speaking it gives French an appeal that English can't match.

What do you think?

I responded that I agreed completely with his ideas but didn't think it would happen. However, I added that my more fatalistic view is not to be taken as a prediction. One never knows how things will evolve. After all the Renaissance was ushered in by disastrous events. That could happen again.

I would add a couple of ideas to what he said. First, start teaching LATIN again, and even Greek, if you can find students willing to make the effort. Second, STOP teaching French children the "global" method of reading. This language-destroying method has had a demonstrably disastrous effect on the way the formerly well-educated French spell, conjugate verbs, and express themselves. This applies to the teaching of foreign languages as well. Third, STOP teaching French to foreigners via the "global" (or "audio-visual-lingual") method. This method can lead to chaos. Language study for older students has to be structured and grammar has to be taught systematically, whether the students like it or not. Then it is easy to make the transition to structured speech, and eventually to everyday speech. (Note: the final step to authentic everyday speech at normal speed is never easy.) Foreigners are not learning French any better than the French are learning their own language.

[...]

A return to the teaching of the classics is one very good way of re-stimulating interest in the languages of Europe, including German and Castilian Spanish, which is very difficult - has anyone tackled Don Quijote in Spanish? The original version used to be read in American universities, but that would be very rare today. However a solid background in Latin would facilitate access to the great literatures of Western Europe...

As for German, it was quickly phased out (again, not entirely) after 1968. Nobody was willing to make the effort. Dumbing down the mind, and jacking up the grades became the unexpressed and inexpressible goals of American education.

Finally, what would happen if we suddenly began making intellectual demands on hedonistic young people, or people from different cultures who simply do not have the background to do rigorous work? Would there be violence? Is dumbing down a defense against revolution? Would it be better to just close the schools? I have often thought so, but people turn in disgust from such suggestions. They say "education is our future." That's what we all fear, isn't it?

It is indeed!

I do not speak French well enough to express an educated judgement about that specific language here, I just never liked it on a gut level because I subjectively perceived it as effeminate, a VERY subjective and probably unjust assessment. I was taught English, French and Latin at school and when I had to choose between the latter two I chose, silly and immature as I was, Latin because it seemed to me the lesser evil (and predictably I wasn't very good at it, which I still deplore and always will) and because I liked the Latin teacher marginally better than the French teacher. I do, however, cherish the basic understanding of language with which my Latin training, imperfect as it may have been, endowed me. I love my native language and I love English, which I speak and write well, I love Shakespeare, that unique all-time chronicler of humanity, I love the intriguing details of that language, its intricate times and mysterious prepositions which I have yet fully to master, its subtle societal implications and snobberies, some of which I am still discovering, a fact that, curiously, led to an even more intense dislike of French because of all the French-based politically correct linguistic abominations which are polluting the English language, most of them via the American backdoor.

I am sure I said something to the same effect before, but any English speaker who uses words like "romance" or "lingerie" ought to be clobbered to death with a leather-bound volume of Burke's Peerage.

But I digress and my lack of affection for the French language doesn't change the truth of what Tiberge and Lawrence Auster are saying, nor, indeed, the point I am trying to make: To place the 'dumbing down the mind, and jacking up the grades' of which Tiberge is speaking and the '"spreading the French," instead of by elevating it', as Lawrence Auster puts it, into the framework of my yobbofication -- a downlevelling to the lowest common denominator -- theory.

Yobbofication, as I understand it, has hijacked each and every nook and cranny of our Western culture, triggered by the progressive goals, most of which were defined in the Sixties and early Seventies, some much earlier. Whether the problems of race, class, general equality or equal opportunities were tackled, it all ended in new injustices instead of ending the old ones. The following examples are randomly chosen and their order is purely random as well:

Initially, the target was to allow Blacks to become worthy members of the community and to end hatred. Now in countries with a considerable black population whites have become quasi-legitimate targets of black savagery and black gutter-culture has become a defining part of the mainstream.

I wrote at VFR:

I used to be crazy about the Olympics until they became totally commercialized and meaningless sometimes in the Eighties and with the Olympic Games going on now, I am reminded of those black American athletes of the past who have been such a credit to their country... The first Olympic Games I was able to follow were the 1960 Games in Rome and I remember how impressed I, a little girl, had been by Wilma Rudolph. Blacks of the generations to which Owens and Rudolph belonged were forced to play their game by the white man's rules. Then they were granted equal rights and sometimes along the way they got (or better: were given) the idea that they were actually superior and deserved preferential treatment. The frightening "yobbofication" (I have made up that word myself for want of a better one) we are currently watching with all its horrific consequences, is a result of white cowardice and a perverted notion of equality and justice. When the eternal truth that people are indeed NOT all equal is given up and ethics, morality and communication are geared to the lowest, instead of the highest, denominator, something horrible will happen, and it has.

Initially, the target was to give women the right not to be treated as second-class citizens. Now female "empowerment" has undermined literally all traditional institutions and values.

Initially, the target was to end a humiliating situation for homosexuals. (Didn't all of us know at least one of those inoffensive, pleasant, mostly elderly, quiet, educated, middle class couples?). Now we are forced to watch (and even to approve of) debauchery and depravity that defies description.

Initially, the target was to make up for the worst of the gross injustices humans are bound to create, now we do not have limitless estate- or corporate powers anymore, but a welfare state that has crippled people's initiative, will to perform and pride.

Initially, the target was do do away with bigotry, racism, xenophobia and hatred, now we are grovelling before an alien death cult in the name of "religious freedom", "equality" and "multiculturalism".

Initially, the target was to spare some poor souls who had been, by sheer naivity, lack of knowledge and general incompetence, impregnated out of wedlock by some ruthless male a fate of social ostracism, now Little Miss Homebreaker gets an interview in a national glossy magazine right beside the interview with the cheated-upon wife.

Initially, the target was to allow people, who didn't have the money to buy formal clothes, to participate in certain social gatherings, and the outcome is a horrible display of tastelessness, vulgarity and lack of discernment throughout all classes, at each and every occasion, and at all times of the day.

In the same spirit, initially, the target was to do away with arrogance, class consciousness, racism and un-niceness generally and the outcome is the death of togetherness, family, marriage and a -- you've guessed it -- despicable display of tastelessness, vulgarity and lack of discernment.

In all those cases, society hasn't elevated "Les Damnés de la Terre" up, but stooped to their level in a sad travesty of justice because the basic truth that NOT all people are equal has been first denied and then vilified and, like people, societies that deny the basic truths of life will get sick.

Take any recent political happening and try to apply my "yobbofication" theory. It will work a treat. Take, for example, Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter! I'd say that in times when we dared calling "nice girls" by that name, nice girls didn't become pregnant. Full stop. Even if the supervision wasn't 24/7, it was understood that, at that age, a relationship with a boy or man intimate enough to get one pregnant was out of the question, contraceptives or not. One respected one's parents and -- yes -- one was afraid of the social consequences as well. But it is elitist now to remind girls of the fact that they are "nice girls". They don't have to fear social consequences anymore (that would be authoritarian) and they don't have something like a "reputation" to lose anymore (that would be sexist) and to be "authoritarian", "sexist" or -- Heaven forbid! -- "elitist" is almost as anathema as being "racist".

Take, to bring this to an end, Tiberge's 'dumbing down the mind, and jacking up the grades', take Lawrence Auster's '"spreading the French," instead of by elevating it', both fit perfectly the picture of downlevelling to the lowest common denominator. I remember, being child-, sibling-, nephew- and nieceless myself and, then, too young to be familiar with children attending Gymnasium (the German version of a grammar school) anyway, how horrified I was when I realized that a friend's son had to write a "critique" of a penny dreadful for his German class when he hadn't even been introduced to the classics or anything else that is good, beautiful and timeless in German literature. That was roughly 30 years ago. Have things improved since then? You must be joking.

Losing our language because it is dumbed down to a simplified everyday-version even a moron can understand means to lose the ability to express our thoughts -- and, finally, to HAVE thoughts. And that is what it is, at the end of the day, all about.

An Evil Guide through Cross-Cultural Communications

Germans have a reputation of being intolerant. That is not true. But maybe it's just their lack of self-confidence that passes only too often as tolerance. I'm discussing issues such as the ubiquitous humble caving in to an alien death cult at my other blog, everyday issues that are more a matter of manners and style than of survival I discuss here. So let's talk about the ever-increasing distortion of our language by Anglicisms, which, I hope, even those with no knowledge of German will enjoy.

The German language comprises about 500,000 basic words, which include now several thousand Anglicisms, a development that has all people with an intact sense of what makes a language precise, correct and -- last but not least -- beautiful, reeling. But different from the French who actually try to curtail the Anglification of their language by law, Germans, who have otherwise rules and regulations to govern each and every passing wind, have limited their interference to an addition to the teacher's curriculum, offering help on how to spot Anglicisms. Teachers seem to bother very little about the growing use of Anglophone colloquialisms anyway, be that because they consider it a mainly temporary thing or because they believe that colloquial language is not a matter of education at all, or maybe because of that obnoxious 'the-Hun-is-either-at-your-throat-or-at-your-feet' phenomenon. However, the outcome is the reason for what The Times called German "linguistic submission".

Everybody knows the Brit who sticks his finger into the water anywhere on the globe, licks it and states: "Saltwater -- British!" But everybody knows, too, the German in Tyrolean hat and loden coat, who tries to go by as an Englishman on the strength of his mediocre language skills. Maybe I ought to say "used to know" because Tyrolean hats and loden coats are not worn anymore by those not yet in their nineties, but the archetype remains and I do not even WANT to know what they are wearing nowadays. The outfit may have changed, the attitude hasn't. I used to sell souvenirs at Blarney Castle as a student and when I encountered compatriots it seemed only natural to me to addrss them in German, but I found out quickly that they were positively miffed because somebody had rained on their linguistic parade, however poor.

I confess, I am a tiny wee little bit of a language purist and try to avoid Anglicisms wherever feasible, although I'm not dogmatic. I translate a lot of technical stuff and walk the tightrope between technological precision and linguistic aesthetics on a daily basis and I probably crashed more often than I realize. I like to play games with my bilingual friends, bantering faux Germanisms and Anglicisms at wit, but at least I know what I'm doing. To know the rules means to be allowed to play with them.

But what really puts me off is the everyday, unthinking, unnecessary, slack, vain and dumb usage of Anglicisms. With them, even a suburban bimbo thinks she gets some sort of cosmopolitan airs and graces and even an advertising agency from Wuppertal, Bergkamen-Oberaden or Buchloe manages to appear like a globalized multinational organization or so they think. But isn't that what all German companies above a certain turnover-level want to be: Global Players! (This is Neudeutsch, by the way.) Never mind that their clients haven't the foggiest what they're getting sold, and the customers, users and consumers further down the food chain even less. That all those pretentious phoney-, malaprop- and dumb-isms go together with a hearty distaste for the American culture of which most of it is derived is an issue too "political" to be discussed her, but I had to mention it as not to burst.

Another thing is the absolutely loathsome way of giving German films English titles, because they sound less awful that way, mainly because hardly anybody understands what they stand for anyway. If those morons would only know the agony to be asked by one's bright, 80-ish mother what "Suck my Dick" (Yes, the title of a German film!) means, they'd never do it, but then they probably don't HAVE bright mothers or they wouldn't be morons.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.

Here is some practical advice for those on both side of the fence, Germano- AND Anglophones, how to avoid the worst pitfalls:

First, there is the recurrent problem of which German article goes with which English word, a problem, for which I don't have a solution to offer save: avoid them (the English words, I mean). I am very tolerant and thus I will put up (although not gladly) with professional linguistic monstrosities like Team-Building-Event, but I will NOT stomach any straying into the private sphere. It is Körper NOT body, one has a Verabredung NOT a date (and yes, there IS enough time for the three more syllables!) and spätes Frühstück NOT brunch.

A more funny (ha ha, not peculiar) aspect of the bastardization of our language is the growing number of embarrassing English words in German -- a damn nuisance as well, but at least entertaining. Ever seen "Big Willy, der Superspender" (Big Willy, the super donor) toilet roll dispensers in public lavatories? Or "Children's Strip Tickets" (special public transport tickets in Munich for children)? Or the cotton wool wads called "Balls"? Why on earth they have to use the English plural and not the German one, which would spare them the embarrassment, is beyond me, but maybe it's not 'cosmopolitan' enough. (Just for the record, be careful if you talk to a German about "eggs" = "Eier". It might cause intense discomfiture!)

On the other hand, don't be puzzled or embarrassed by words that contain "Fa(h)rt". Yes, it's pronounced just like that, but rest assured, it's just derived from the verb fahren - to drive and thus bears no discomforting connotation. Einfahrt means way in, Ausfahrt means way out, or exit off a motorway. Fahrt means a car-, bus, coach or train journey, Fahrtzeit is the time taken for same journey. There are many more compounds, just watch out.

Then there are those phoney Anglicisms, which aren't known in English or, at least, to fox the unwary, not in that context, like Military for three-day-eventing (because it was originally an officers' sport), Smoking for dinner jacket/tuxedo, Handy for mobile/cell phone, Dressman for a male model, Whirlpool for Jacuzzi, Zappen for channel hopping or Cut for morning coat. To most English speakers aspiring to learn German it is most confusing and to those Germans walking the opposite way disappointing to learn that their English vocabulary is -- not English at all.

Another phenomenon that will never cease to amaze me is the thing that easiest identifies a German as such as soon as he opens his mouth. What is that? Neither, as one might think, the too moist and somewhat awkward pronunciation of the tee-eitch or the artless flat "a". No, it is the stubborn mix-up of "vee" and "dubbelyou"! I could, to a certain extent, understand why Germans pronounce both alike and like "vee", because the German language has no "dubbleyou", but if it were only that easy! It drives me positively up the wall when Germans say (and you can bet your ass that they ALWAYS do) "Gone vith the Vind", yet, at the same time, "Miami Wice". WHY?

Then there are certain words that need to remain untranslated because they are, well, untranslatable. Mainly because they don't have an equivalent in German as the underlying concept doesn't actually exist here. "Sophisticated" is a word that you'll find untranslatable, simply because Germans ARE hardly ever sophisticated. The same applies to "understatement". Not that all Germans are braggarts, but the particularly British notion of understatement totally clashes with the German inclination for straight-to-the-point openness or, as some would call it, rudeness. So, dear native English speaker in Germany, beware of understatements, because telling your colleagues -- or, Heavens Forbid, your boss! -- that your vocational efforts "aren't going too badly" will seriously dampen your career prospects. To clue you up on straight German talk, and I hope this will give the native English speakers among you an idea about cross-cultural communications with Germans: I once used to work for a chap who asked his sales force, when sales figures turned a bit sour, whether they would like to pick up their teeth with broken fingers because he was soon going to use a baseball bat on them, and as he was a strapping seven-footer (no kidding!) that was doubtlessly quite an incentive. I really liked that chap. He had a priceless sense of humour and we got on like a house on fire.

Reversely, "Innigkeit", "gemütlich" or "schwärmerisch" are words that are not translatable into English at all, because they are weighed down with a wealth of late 18th and 19th Century German literature that starts with the Blue Flower of Romanticism, ends with the Holocaust and is incomprehensible to anybody who hasn't gone through the agony of a German higher education. "Intimacy", "enthusiastic" or "cosy" don't even BEGIN to cover them, but then, English Romanticism culminated in Miss Marple Novels and not in the Holocaust.

But I digress… Lets talk about euphemisms, a term that does exist in German (Euphemismus, derived from Greek euphEmismos, from euphEmos auspicious) according to Merriam-Webster "an agreeable or inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that might offend or suggest unpleasantness. In English and specifically in American English, "vandalism", for example, might go under the euphemism of "souvenir hunting", but anything like that would be considered deeply cynical by Germans, as German usage knows generally very few euphemisms, as shown in the case of the unlucky chap who used an understatement to the detriment of his career. Likewise, no German dinner party hostess would be upset if you told her that her pork belly tasted "interesting". She'd take your word at face value and be happy to have offered you a new prandial experience. And where an American may comment "You're looking very healthy these days" (and an educated Englishman would, of course, not comment AT ALL), a German would simply say "You've grown quite fat", without necessarily intending any insult. That said, quite a few (not all) Germans are fond of deliberately hiding her bloody-mindedness behind this German trait, which they call then "honesty". Which is isn’t.

Going to Germany? Wanna know more? Ask me!

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Thanks to Gudrun Eussner and her thoughts on the German- versus the English Romantic Period.

The Big Brother of Bargains

I have been to IKEA on Saturday night one week ago because I was tipped off that they have exactly the sort of kitchen sink I am after. They usually cost a bomb, not to speak of the fuss to fit it in a modern kitchen.


Just for illustrative purposes: this is a similar one from Villeroy & Boch. I think in England it's called a farmhouse sink.

I went there, they had the sink I want and even a fitting floor unit. They even have a kitchen that would complement the style and period of the house and the kitchen is even affordable and of good quality. A different question is what will remain of the bargain once we have paid somebody for assembling the units, because I am past the age where I joyfully assembled yards and yards of BILLY bookcases. However, I put that firmly in some remote corner of my memory because I really like that kitchen. IKEA is like that.

There are so many good things, and the fact that I am reminded every second minute of my lengthy stay there why I hate that damn place, turns that perversely into something irritating. Oh, how much would I like to show them the finger and stay away for ever, but alas, I can't afford it. The ultimate humiliation!

There are so many things that make IKEA a pain in the proverbial. I don't mind so much the "Something for Everyone" approach and I remember fondly that my husband and I got there 30 years ago lots of nice things for our first household, specifically a solid big pine kitchen table, something that wasn't on the stuffy German furniture shops' map then, so IKEA's "otherness" was more of an attraction than the fact that their furniture was reasonably priced. Decades later, IKEA has safely arrived in the mainstream (or has the mainstream arrived at IKEA?) and "Something for Everyone" has been firmly replaced by "Everything for Everyone". IKEA evokes an image of one megalomaniac seller who offers no choice or difference between the up- and the downmarket, styles or lifestyles, and the resulting taste-hotchpotch is scary. IKEA is the shop for the ultimately insecure. Buy here and no one will ever accuse you of having bad taste. It's all not ugly and it's all the same and even the things some may DO consider ugly, as I do, are, so to say ideologically, beautified by labelling them "retro". I do not think that, for example, the popular Sixties/Seventies style with its geometric patterns and nondescript, characterless colour schemes (mostly white with one or two not-quite-primary colours or catsick yellow and dogturd brown) hasn't got a single redeeming quality, yet the majority of the fabrics offered are designed that way.

How this all-inclusive taste brew is concocted is no secret. The ikea.com website reveals:

At IKEA we design the price tag first and then develop the product to suit that price.

A prescription for staunch individualism if I have ever seen one.

All this is mirrored by the fact that everybody is addressed by Big Brother IKEA in the countless messages, posters and placards as "Du" and now, I think, a brief linguistic digression is in order:

English, with its one and only "you" for everyone, familiar or strange, stands alone here. All the other Indo-European languages, including German, have both, a formal "you" and a familiar "you." The familiar "thou" and its "thee," "thine," and "thy" derivations died out in English long ago. However, the German familiar address "du" is related to the archaic English "thou." This becomes more clear, if one remembers the so-called "d<-->t/th shift" between German and English, which becomes apparent in many word pairs, for example Leder/leather, Feder/feather, tief/deep, tot/dead or rot/red.

But the difference doesn't end at a grammatical rule: the cultural gap is deep and wide. Anglophones are not used to making the distinction between the familiar and formal you and the "first name" situation doesn't even begin to come close to it. Germans are very much aware of it and can become very uncomfortable when the Du/Sie rules are broken. They tend to keep their distance longer with acquaintances than the English do, for example, colleagues who have worked together for years may very well go on addressing each other as "Sie". It does not mean they are unfriendly, but they are maintaining the important German division between friends and acquaintances. Using the "Du" without being invited can be offensive, and indeed it even may be considered legally as a verbal slander in certain situations. Using the "Sie" can be even more offensive, although in a more subtle way and without any legal consequences.

I am amazed at myself just HOW much that irritates me.

As my egalitarian inclinations have always been rather underdeveloped and as I am, additionally, mildly claustrophobic, rubbing shoulders with the masses has always limited my enthusiasm for otherwise pleasurable exploits. However, I am pleased at the fact that, here, a Saturday night is not nearly as crowded as it would be in an IKEA store back home in the West, so I can at least do my figures in a quiet corner of the almost empty restaurant. (As an aside: I seem to remember that the IKEA restaurants used to offer excellent snacks. Now the grub is -- just -- edible. Whether that is a reflection on how long I haven't been to one or a manifestation of the East vs. West gap, I don't know.)

One of the good things is that the ikea.de website just offers to sell furniture and stuff and spares us the embarrassing do-gooder rhetoric ikea.com indulges:

Low prices are the cornerstone of the IKEA vision, business idea and concept. The basic thinking behind all IKEA products is that low prices make well-designed, functional home furnishings available to everyone. After all, our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people.

We are constantly trying to do everything a little better, a little simpler, more efficiently and always cost-effectively. All IKEA units play an important part in creating our low prices which we are then able to offer our customers.

As it is so amazingly often the case with do-gooder blah blah, this rhetoric, too, stands on clay feet.

As does mine. IKEA will go on beating that egalitarian old nag they are riding to death and corrupting the social and linguistic awareness of the Germans in the process, and I -- I will surely buy that kitchen because there is no satisfactory alternative.