The Awful German Language (1880)

Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by thaumasiotes on Friday October 05, 2018 @07:11PM (#18152476)

The absence of foreign loans in German is not due to being "resistant to frivolous changes". It's due to an explicit reform effort to root out ubiquitous Latinate loans. You can do the same in any language, limited only by how much control the government has over the way people talk.

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Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by kebman on Friday October 05, 2018 @07:21PM (#18152517)

If you want, you can try Anglish. :)

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Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by et2o on Saturday October 06, 2018 @03:31AM (#18154012)

The last time I was in Germany I noticed explicitly anti-English-language grassroot campaign signs on bus stops. They are definitely worried about losing their language and perhaps the cultural identity it confers.

I alternately love and hate German. Sometimes I have to fight through sentences with 5 clauses, and sometimes you get a beautiful and concise statement.

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Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by ItsMe000001 on Saturday October 06, 2018 @04:46AM (#18154206)

> They are definitely worried about losing their language and perhaps the cultural identity it confers.

Who is "they"? As a German who also has one friend (fluent in two other languages and living abroad most of the time and married to a non-German) who is in that camp and who even collected money to give to a local German language society, this is a small minority. The majority of people could not care less. Proof: Use of English words and phrases is ubiquitous, used for shops (even that exact word instead of the German "(der) Laden"), signs, marketing campaigns, everyday language. If it didn't work or if it caused any backlash they would not do that. We even have "fake English" words: "Handy" for mobile phones (and that is the word almost everybody actually uses) :-)

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