by Brooks Riley
We gave them ‘okay’, they gave us ‘Angst‘ (Did they ever!). We gave them ‘cool’, they gave us ‘kaputt‘. We gave them ‘laptop’, they gave us ‘Weltschmerz‘ (Thanks for that.). We gave them back ‘hamburger’, they gave us ‘Frankfurter‘. We gave them ‘showtime’, they gave us ‘Schadenfreude‘ (just what we needed). We gave them ‘zap’ (which became ‘zapp’), they gave us ‘Zeitgeist‘. We gave them ‘rock ‘n roll’, they gave us Recht und Ordnung (not that it’s helped). We gave them ‘Happy Birthday’ (the lyrics and the music), they gave us ‘Gesundheit’ (the verbal amulet against a cold).
And so it goes, the ebb and flow of language exchange. In reality, Germans borrow more from English than we do from German. But this has much to do with ad campaigns in search of short, catchy words to get the message across, instead of the traditional three-or-more-word pile-ups. These days, who has time to read a 34-letter word, let alone twitter it? That’s why words like ‘tip’ (which is spelled ‘tipp’) and ‘okay’ enjoy universal acceptance.
Years ago Volkswagen tried to introduce the word ‘Fahrvergnügen’ (driving pleasure) into the American language in an effective attempt to grab your attention, so that they could sell you a car. You might still remember trying to put your mouth around the word before it slipped into oblivion stateside as soon as the ad campaign was over, and rightly so. ‘Driving pleasure’ is an American invention, one of our pursuits of happiness, and immune to German invasion, although it could be debated who has more Fahrvergnügen hurtling down their respective highways.
Given globalization, why aren’t there more verbal transactions going on? Every language can lay claim to inadequacies and English is no exception. Take the word ‘nonsense’: The German exclamation ‘Quatsch‘ (pronounced ‘kvatch’, meaning ‘nonsense’) is an onomatopoetic grenade that explodes from the mouth in reaction to a blatently wrong declaration by someone else. Compared to it, the exclamatory ‘nonsense’ seems faded, almost quaint: So do ‘ridiculous’ and its abused cousin ‘absurd’. Even ‘rubbish’ is in remission. It’s no wonder that ‘bullshit’ is knocking at the door of respectability.
The German language may have a reputation for exhaustively long words, but when it’s pithy, it’s penetrating: The word for ‘scene of the crime’ is ‘Tatort’, a linguistic slamdunk.
And then there’s the economical ‘doch‘, an invention that should have been imported years ago. I say, ‘The world won’t end today.’ You answer, ‘Oh yes it will.’ A German answers, ‘Doch‘, a four-letter contradiction instead of a four-word one. ‘Doch‘ has an elegant finality about it—having the last word without spelling it out. ‘ You’re not going out dressed like that!’. ‘Doch.’ Try to argue with that.