Denglish - Destroying our planet

Many regular visitors to this website will be familiar with my profound hatred of hybrid interlanguages, that is the result of one language unnecessarily using modern vocabulary from another, where appropriate terms already exist.

For me, this primarily concerns English terms used in French, German, Spanish and Dutch, but it is most prevalent in German, and has created a horrible phenomenon called Denglish.

Throughout history, languages have borrowed words from other languages to enrich their vocabulary. English itself is not as "pure" as say French or German, which have a clear, direct Latin and Germanic heritage respectively. Whilst English is considered a Germanic language, it is in fact a diverse mix of several languages.

A survey of 80,000 words from the Shorter Oxford Dictionary revealed that only a quarter of English words are actually "native", inherited from Old English, which in turn was influenced by Old Norse when the Vikings invaded. Another quarter comes from French, and another quarter from Latin. Five percent comes from Greek and the rest come from other or unknown sources.

Words borrowed from other languages are absolutely fine, if there is no existing alternative. When chocolate was introduced to this country from the New World, they had no name for it in English, so the sensible thing to do would be to use an anglicised version of the word where this strange, exotic delight came from.

Germans do this to some extent. Whereas we "unfriend" someone on Facebook, they entfreunden. This is a literal germanicised version of the word that has been adapted to German grammar rules, with ent- being a negative prefix, like "un-" or "de-" in English, freund meaning friend, and the suffix -en indicating a verb.

But when Germans want to chillen, surfen the Internet, go to eine Afterparty or talk about "ein Shitstorm", this gets ridiculous and redundant. There is so much English used in German today that they feel the need to have an Anglicism of the Year competition, which this year was won by "leaken" - to leak.

Personally, I think this is happening more so in German than other languages due to the lack of national identity following the war and the influence of the presence of the British and American military in Germany afterwards. But the Germans have re-discovered their identity, following the reunification of the country in 1990 and events such as the Football World Cup in 2006, which have proved it's okay to be German, to wave the German flag and to speak the German language.

Whilst the German youth may think its cool to use English words and phrases like these, older Germans are not so happy about this bastardisation. The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Society for the German Language) and the Verein Deutsche Sprache (German Language Association) were set up preserve the language, and they believe there seems to be this attitude that English is somehow 'better' than German, and that German somehow sounds old-fashioned, particularly for a certain group of people.

The easy thing to do would be to blame English and English speakers, but this would wrong. Whilst the use of English is growing internationally, it is native speakers of other languages who choose to learn it and then adopt its vocabulary into their own languages. We Brits who do speak foreign languages, on the other hand, would rather speak them in their purest form and we prefer for our language not to be abused in such a way.

Now, you may ask, "Language Man, why do you hate Denglish so much?" Well, the problem with introducing English terms into other languages, for which there is actually an existing term already, is that the meaning may become blurred and get lost in translation. Just look at "ein Handy", a mobile phone, and "ein Beamer" a video projector.

More complicated examples can cause hell for us translators, because although we may see an English-looking word in a text, it often looks out of context due to the change in meaning and we may not fully understand what is actually meant. If I'm wearing a "Smoking" in German, it's unlikely that most will know I'm actually wearing a dinner jacket, and what is a "Streetworker" in German? Someone who collects money for charity on the street or someone who helps homeless people? Or perhaps a 'lady of the night'? No, it's actually a social worker.

Besides excluding older Germans from their own language, Denglish diminishes cultural boundaries and increases the likelihood of all of Planet Earth's cultures and languages merging into one, which perpetuates the stereotype held mainly by Americans that Europe is one country and everyone speaks English there.

So, Denglish ranks number one on Language Man's list of things that are going to metaphorically destroy our planet. In preparation for the end, I shall put on my Abendanzug rather than my Smoking.

Des aventures toulousaines - Part 3: Des aventures polonaises

A mere three or four weeks into the job at Saint Exupéry, I was informed that I was going to Poland. I didn’t know quite how to react to this at first because it came very abruptly and I had never imagined going to Poland. I’ve got nothing against Poland or the Poles, but as much as I love travelling, I feel out of my depth when going to countries whose language I don’t speak, and I didn’t really know much about the country or its people. Nevertheless, a unique opportunity arose and I would have been foolish to turn it down.

The reason behind the Poland voyage was an E.U. cultural exchange programme. One class from the Terminale year group (the final year of school) had struck up a partnership with counterparts at a school in a town called Stalowa Wola, in south-east Poland, and in November 2009, the time had come for a 10-day visit to see the Poles. This programme had been going on for a few years so luckily the two French teachers who went on the trip, Rémi and Fabrice, had been there before and knew what was going on, rather than the E.U. just firing us in a tin can at 500 mph towards Poland and then leaving us to sort ourselves out.

I had only known my class and the teachers a month or so beforehand, so I was a bit anxious about going. I didn’t know where I would fit in; although I was closer in age to the students, who were all 17-18, I was still technically a teacher, and that’s how I thought they saw me. The class had got on quite well with Rémi, or rather Mr Weissberg, as he was still (relatively) young. He went to uni in Brighton and to me he sounded like a native English speaker. Really, it could have been just like a lads trip to Poland...with some kids tagging along.

Our prestigious Welcome Ceremony

So, Toulouse airport, at ridiculous o’clock, waiting for the flight to Warsaw via Frankfurt in my Toulouse rugby t-shirt, this was the start of a very long journey to Stalowa Wola: two two-hour Lufthansa flights, then a six coach journey. Great. Luckily, I had brought some reading material: a Polish-French phrase book, and in my capacity as a language teacher, I took it upon myself to educate the kids with some Polish phrases, principally one that translated as “elle est belle comme un petit phoque” or “she’s as pretty as a seal”. This must say a lot about Polish girls.

After a long coach journey through Warsaw (consisting of tall concrete slabs) and the Polish countryside, which we didn’t see much of as it was dark for much of the journey, we arrived fairly late thanks to the lack of motorways in Poland. The kids were promptly paired up with their counterparts after the awkward silence of meeting for the first time, similar to your first boy-girl disco, and they drove off home for the night. Us three teachers were then assigned a Polish teacher to stay with. Fortunately, I wasn’t completely alone with a stranger in a country I had been in for a few hours, as the teacher had a daughter who one of our students was paired up with.

Breaking the ice

The Polish teacher I stayed with was lovely, and had a really nice, comfortable house, with lots of wood panelling so it felt like a cosy forest cabin. She cooked a mixture of Polish and international food for us each night, and laid on a more than satisfying breakfast each morning. She later explained that the Polish prided themselves on hospitality, and it would have been rude not to take advantage of this. I offered to help with the washing up but it turns out that this can be insulting from a guest to a host. Fair enough.

Bonding session

The next day was spent at the local high school. There was a rather prestigious welcome ceremony in the gymnasium in front of the whole school, with personal introductions for us teachers, followed by the French and Polish national anthems (not the Welsh or British one though), and then a sort of play, with Polish students acting out various French and Polish historical figures (no Welsh or British ones).

There were some educational parts to this programme too, so the school had organised loads of activities for the kids. The first one was a sort of ice-breaker session. I can’t remember the particularities too well, but it seemed to involve tying an elastic band to everyone’s finger...and passing stones to each other on spoons...

< Part 2: Une Ville des Arts 

> Part 4: Des Petits Phoques 

How to get more people to take the stairs

Taking the metro to work each day can be quite monotonous. But here's an ingenious idea to make it fun to take the stairs instead of the escalator at Odenplat station in Stockholm, Sweden.

Who vs. whom

"Learning a foreign language helps open your eyes to how your own language works." This is one of those marketing hooks that we hear all the time from language teachers to encourage people to branch out linguistically - but it is actually true. If I hadn't studied other languages, I wouldn't get so wound up about grammar mistakes in English.

Who vs. whom is a classic debate. When should we use 'whom', or should we even use it at all? Well, here's the answer:

When should we use 'whom'?
Firstly, in the highest possible degree of layman terms, we use 'who' when talking about the person doing something, and 'whom' about the person having something done to them. Sorry if that sounds dirty, but here are some examples:

"Who saw you? It was the girl who saw me." The girl is the one doing the seeing, therefore we use 'who'.
"Whom did you see? It was the girl whom I saw."  I saw the girl, so it is the girl being seen rather than doing the seeing. So, we use 'whom'.

Secondly, we use 'whom' with a preposition (words like 'to', 'from', 'with', 'of', 'on', 'under', etc.). So: "the boy whom you wrote the letter to", although that opens up another can of worms on whether we can end a sentence with a preposition (but we'll save that for another week).

If this is still confusing, there's a handy rule to help. You can substitute 'he' or 'she' for 'who', and you can use 'him' or 'her' for 'whom', i.e.:

• Who went to school with you? He went to school with you.
• Whom did you go to school with? - You went to school with him.

Do we actually need to use 'whom'?
Using 'whom' sounds old fashioned to most, and many don't use it at all, so do we still need it? Yes and no. No, because we don't really need it in grammatical terms. We still understand the whole meaning of the sentence without it. Besides, language changes all the time; we don't use 'thou' or 'thee' anymore, so why should we hang on to 'whom'?

It's all about style - it is still used to indicate what kind of register of language we want to use: we often use 'whom' if we are using high-register, formal, written English - probably because it is seen as old-fashioned. Read The Independent or The Times and you will still see 'whom' widely used. Equally, we avoid using 'whom' in informal, conversational English. We hardly use it when speaking and sometimes we don't use it when we're writing, just read The Sun for example.

Use 'whom' to talk like a sir

We can therefore deduce that 'whom' is not completely useless as we can use it to establish what kind of a relationship we have with the person we are speaking to (or rather with the person whom we are speaking to - but I do not wish to establish such formality with the readers of this blog).

So no, we don't need to use 'whom', but you can use it to sound elevated and to talk like sir. 

So is that 1-0 to us commoners over the grammarians?
Well, if you want to put it that way. I don't feel that the militants have a case when they try to force others to use 'whom' for the sake of it when its grammatical function is redundant.I could make a very long list of grammatical structures that we have stopped using over the past century. That's a natural process in language, something which some users of Twitter need to understand - the ones who kick off about Twitter's suggestions of "Who to follow".

English is a particularly dynamic language. We lack complicated, unnecessary elements of grammar that our neighbouring languages have retained. We don't have adjective endings like you see in other Germanic and Romance languages. Nor do our nouns change depending on their grammatical role in the sentence, like they do in Slavic languages. What English learners love most about the language is that we have minimal conjugation, that is changing verbs to fit the person (whom) we are talking about and which tense we use. Just look at French:

I work............................Je travaille
You work. (singular)............Tu travailles
He works.........................Il travaille
We work..........................Nous travaillons
You work (plural)................Vous travaillez
They work........................Ils travaillent

Only one change here for English, but six varieties in French. Then six more each for each tense. English has had a metaphorical clean up of its bedroom and thrown out all the old junk that it doesn't need anymore, where French has just left its bedroom in a state, hoarding a load of old junk it doesn't need.

Does that mean I don't have to stick to grammar rules in English.
No. Absolutely not. It's "should have" not "should of". 'Your' and 'you're' mean different things. And you don't use an apostrophe when making words plural - it's 1960s, not 1960's, and chips instead of chip's. That ends this post as Doctor Whom is on TV.

Des aventures toulousaines - Part 2: Une ville des arts

I went to the school beforehand to meet the teachers and some of the students. Blagnac was a leafy suburb with houses slightly bigger than other areas of the Toulouse and many had pools -an immense contrast in working in one the wealthiest areas of Toulouse with living in one of the poorest, although I did love where I was living - just a few metro stops to town, right by the river, right by the stadium, near the markets, and my landlady was fantastic. She came with me to help me set up a bank account, which can be intimidating if you’re not up to scratch on financial terminology in French. She also introduced me to her side of Toulouse - a city of art. Not just pretty paintings, but the broader sense of the word: engaging local people in cultural events and projects and allowing people to express themselves vocally, visually and so on. She showed me the range of initiatives she had been involved in to engage the residents of the high-rise, low-income, inner city district of Empalot. The one that impressed me the most involved installing massive black and white canvas pictures of local people at the top of the high-rise blocks of flats (see right).

Of course, I spent the weekends exploring the city. €10 a month for unlimited bus and metro access was a bargain, but also well worth purchasing was a year’s access to VélôToulouse, the extensive bike hire network in the city, for €25. No-one does these cycle-hire schemes like the French. Modern and comfortable 3-speed bikes in good condition could be hired from dozens of stations around the city, each spaced about 100 m apart, and thanks to Toulouse traffic, I often got off the bus early to cycle the rest of the way home. And with a smart card, it was so quick and easy to just pick up a bike, ride away and drop it off at any other station. After paying the subscription fee, the first 30 minutes of the ride were free every day and €1 per hour thereafter. The same kind of scheme has been installed in London and I hope it will catch on in the rest of our major cities.

One bizarre thing about Toulouse is the severe lack of taxis. I saw about three taxis in my entire year. With the metro and buses stopping at 1am, these bikes were my most frequent way of getting home after a night out. Luckily, I can handle my drink!

I had a week or so to settle in before I started work at Saint Exupéry. The school itself was very modern, only opening in 2004, and had 1500 students aged from 15 to 20. For the 15-18 years olds, it was their local high school, but for the 18-20 year olds, it was a specialist school, apparently only one of five schools in France to offer the chance to specialise in aviation mechanics, due to its proximity to the Airbus headquarters at Toulouse Airport. This was great for me as I wanted to be a pilot when I was younger, and I could adapt my lessons around aviation, which I did for the older students. But for the younger pupils, their lessons were based on whatever was in the news. Fortunately, 2009/10 was an eventful year so my students were introduced to the likes of Susan Boyle, Jedward and most excitingly, the new PM, David Cameron.

I did find it hard to plan lessons. I had next to zero teaching experience so I had to improvise a lot. Most of the time, I didn’t even have to actively teach. The best way to help the students improve their English was to just talk with them. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. The teachers were quite happy with this and so were the pupils, because they could talk about whatever they wanted, and they were secretly learning at the same time.

In all honestly, I don’t think I could have asked for a better school. It seems like everyone there wanted to learn English. They even put up with some of the more boring lessons. But I wasn’t a teacher after all. I was only 20 at the time, very close in age to most of the pupils, so I didn’t want to be seen as a teacher, just someone to casually practise English with, in a less formal and more relaxing setting. Something I saw more of on the school trip to Poland...

< Part 1: La Ville Rose

> Part 3: Des Aventures Polonaises

Obituary: Nicolas Sarkozy

Sarkozy's presidential campaign poster
reads "A Strong France", subjected to
parody of course (see below)

I love a good election. It's just under a week to go until the French choose their president for the next 5 years. France has been run by a centre-right president since 1995, but seems to have had enough of Nicolas Sarkozy's increasingly right-wing policies and is ready for a change.

Sarkozy was elected narrowly - by 53% against 47% for the Socialists, but a month into his term, his party, the UMP, won a majority in the general election.  

Nevertheless, he has been progressively alienating more and more people further into his term. He got off to a bad start even before his presidency as the Foreign Minister by denouncing those involved in the 2005 French riots as "racaille", or "scum", which may well be true, given the British public's perception of those involved in similar riots in London last year, but it's not very wise for a senior politician to be so blunt when trying to win votes.

"A Mad France"

There have been numerous controversial laws that have been passed during his leadership - most infamously the so-called "burka ban". Seen as an attack on Muslims not conforming to his view of French society, it is now illegal to wear any item of clothing that covers the face, with notable exceptions such as a motorcycle helmet. Equally, he attempted to strip French citizenship from naturalised citizens convicted of a serious crime, which was later ruled as unconstitutional.  

He has also implemented typically conservative policies, such as reducing taxes for the wealthy, raising the retirement age and revoking inheritance tax, but he has spearheaded E.U. attempts to improve the economy and led the military intervention in Libya.

A man of vanity, Sarko was voted one of the best dressed men by Vanity Fair, and even had French magazine, Paris Match, digitally remove a love handle from a picture of him. No-one can accuse the 160 cm (5ft 5in) tall man of having Short Man Syndrome.

As with many democratic countries, it's usually a two-horse race: Labour vs. Conservatives in the UK or SPD vs CDU in Germany - and France is no exception. The centre-left Socialists' candidate, François Hollande, has been the favourite to win for some time, perhaps chosen by the anyone-but-Sarkozy voters rather than for his policies or his charisma, or lack thereof. 

"A Free France"

Hollande comes across as confident, experienced and determined, and is trying too hard to position himself as a liberal socialist by proposing a 75% tax rate for earners of more than €1 million, supporting gay marriage and adoption, pushing renewable energy and planning to recruit more civil servants.

It seems that the election has come at the right time, with a change of government more likely at times of economic problems, but we've seen it all before...promises, promises and more promises, possibly making this article redundant.

Whatever the outcome and despite his legendary gaffes, France will have had a more memorable leader over the past five years (albeit in the same way that Sivio Berlusconi was memorable) and it is worth remembering what he actually has accomplished since 2007: abolishing tax on hours worked over the 35-hour week, his work towards peace in the Middle East, and forging closer relations with one of France's closest allies and neighbours, the UK, damaged by the likes of the ungrateful De Gaulle and corrupt Chirac.

"A Dead France"

A Certain, Well-Off, Elitist, Cynical,
Racist, Disdainful and Warmongering
France

Des aventures toulousaines - Part 1: La ville rose

Never had my gut feeling been so wrong. I remember the night when the phrase “butterflies in my stomach” didn’t even come close to how I felt. It was 2 a.m. on a September morning in 2009. The car was packed and ready to go, and my parents and I were about to leave for a journey that would take us through the Channel Tunnel, across France, down to Toulouse. It was the fear of the unknown in what would actually become the greatest year of my life to date.

As part of my Year Abroad, I chose to work as a part-time English language assistant in a comprehensive school: Lycée Saint-Exupéry, in Blagnac just north of Toulouse – a city I had no prior knowledge of.

I spent the summer casually researching the city to see what I could expect: was it young or old? modern or old-fashioned? belle or moche? But it was a stressful time, as time was quickly running out to find somewhere to live, which involved ringing up people in France and speaking French. Terrifying. Luckily, I found a flatshare in a bright apartment that was really close to the city centre, overlooking the River Garonne, and more importantly, the city’s main stadium. And I got to live with French people! My lovely landlady, Isabelle, who introduced me to the arts scene in Toulouse, and Kévin, an 18-year-old lad in his last years of school, who I didn’t really see much of.

Breathtaking views in the Pyrenees

So, we set off on the epic drive, stopping overnight in Le Mans, arriving at a holiday home south of Toulouse where we would spend the week first, and I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the year. We spent the week touring the south-west of France, taking in small, picturesque towns such as Albi with its striking cathedral, tranquil Pau in the mountains and chic Biarritz on the coast. We ventured into the lush, green Pyrenees which were yet to be covered in snow, where I discovered a language that even I, Language Man, had never heard of, called Occitan – somewhat between French and Spanish – which I would later find out more about and base my university project on.

One of the many bridges in the
centre of Toulouse beautifully
lit up at night

The time came for my parents to abandon me and leave me to fend for myself. I spent a few days settling in and getting to know the city by hiring a bike and exploring the narrow streets, checking out the markets, seeing the sights, and also arranging to meet up with other English-speaking assistants in the city. I quickly got to know Place St Pierre – the hub of la vie nocturne in Toulouse – and made some Anglophone friends. Now I felt a little bit more relaxed and ready to start at school...

> Part 2: Une Ville des Arts 

Why aren't Germans prouder of their music?

iPhones are great. You can download an app that allows you to listen to hundreds of German music stations using your 3G or WiFi connection. This is a great idea for getting into what I like to call "German mode" when doing university work for German, or doing German translations at work, like I do.

There is one flaw in this, however. I have yet to find one of these German radio stations playing music in German. I've heard Robbie Williams, Seal, Kelly Clarkson, Ed Sheeran, Cee Lo Green...you get the idea - only music in English.

Germans are naturally within their right to listen to music in English. After all, it's "cool" for the youth on the continent to speak in and listen to anything in English, but to the entire detriment of their own language?

As well as being one of the traditional heartlands of classical music and famous for its cabaret (more so in the Anglosphere thanks to Liza Minelli), Germany actually produces some excellent contemporary music, albeit influenced by British and American music.

Main genres to come out of Germany in the past few decades include:

• Schlager, similar to 80s style pop ballads (don't deny it - you sing along to "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle whenever it comes on the radio)
• Neue Deutsche Welle [New German Wave], which derives from the British punk scene of the 70s and 80s
• Hamburger Schule [Hamburg School], experimental underground pop music,

These days, the German music scene is dominated by simple pop-rock music (my favourite band is Wir Sind Helden), heavier rock and metal music (I think Rammstein are still going) and punk music is also still active (such as Die Ärtze [The Doctors]) and I think most are familiar with the ambassador to German techno and electronic music: Kraftwerk.

Naturally, this kind of stuff isn't played on the radio in the UK because it's all in foreign. We already speak the world's lingua franca so there's no need for us to broadcast the music of other cultures. Whilst I resent this and naturally encourage Brits to learn more languages, I don't anticipate music in the language of our neighbours becoming popular any time soon. In fact, musicians of such countries seem to have to release music in English in order to make it in the world of music. David Guetta, Enrique Iglesias, ABBA...the list goes on.

But what shouldn't happen is that music by artists from a non English-speaking country sung in English becomes so popular in said country that it becomes impossible for an artist releasing music in that country's native language to make it. Otherwise, we are slowly destroying multiculturalism, uniqueness, diversity and everything else that is great about Planet Earth.