“Goethe’s Wet Dream“
Hi ihr lieben
and welcome back to our Advent Calendar, day number seven. And today I have something VERY special for you…
a Facebook post.
Hot damnnnnn, that’s lit!!!
Seriously though, I know it sounds underwhelming but I really wanted to share this one with you, because it’s a great showcase for what’s going on with the German language in certain areas at the moment.
So, if you’ve spent time in Germany or you consume German Youtube or trash TV you might have noticed that people are using quite a few English words. And no, I don’t mean Computer, Tablet or Fan. Heck no.
I mean stuff like this:
- “Nicer Burger, aber die Fries waren fail.”
- “Deine Parents sind obercringe”
- “Super freshe Dokus”
- “Maria und ich haben Quality Time gescheduled um mal wieder richtig als Couple zu connecten.”
Yes. People do say that. And even write it, in reviews or so. The grammar is still German, so verbs get their ge-form and adjectives get their endings, but they’re English. And it’s not only teenagers. If someone lives in a big city and works in branches like advertisement, design, marketing, banking or some start up, then it can get REALLY nasty.
And today, you can get an impression of how nasty :).
There’s a job app called Truffls, a start up no less, and they’re kind of collecting crazy example of Denglish and use it for their own advertising. They take one quote and add a little comment to it. The layout is basically the same the Duden uses.
They usually post it on Twitter, but there’s also a Facebook collection of them. It is unbelievable.
Make sure to also read the comment under it. It’s hilarious.
So… viel Spaß :)
EDIT: Apparently, you can’t click through all of them here, so you need to use the link below to get there. It’ll take you directly to the Facebook post.
Click here to see the full gallery on Facebook
“As ASAP as possible” is my favorite.
Now… of course it is possible that they made some of them up, but I can absolutely confirm that none of this is unbelievable.
People in co-working spaces in big cities do say stuff like this. I have heard it with my own ears.
What about you? Have you heard Germans talk like this before? How would it be for you as a native speaker of English if a German were to talk to you that way while being all serious and business-y?
Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments. Hope you enjoyed this one, have a great day and bis morgen.
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