Denglisch

Germish, also referred to as Denglisch (de), Engleutsch, Genglish or Ginglish is a jumble of English terms embedded within a grammatically German sentence (or vice versa). It is spoken in all German-speaking countries and owes its existence in part to the cultural predominance of English language pop music and international computer slang. Due to lack of rules for proper declension and conjugation forms, English words within Germish will almost always come out in some twisted form. You might well hear things like:

"Ich musste den Computer neu booten, weil die Software gecrasht ist" (I had to reboot the computer because the software crashed)

from native German speakers.

Of course, nowadays most people in Germany can speak English to some extent; that’s quite understandable, considering that English has long been considered a lingua franca of politics, science and business. The difference thing about examples like the above one is that German itself is being adapted to English.

As with other pidgins, the adaptation also takes the other route, where literal translations from popular English expression slowly but insistently swamp out the correct German words and idioms. Sometimes this makes for funny, if perfectly comprehensible new expressions:

"Das macht Sinn" (That makes sense) - formerly: "Das ergibt Sinn" (roughly: That results in something sensible)

"Ich erinnere, dass..." (I remember that...) - standard form: "Ich erinnere mich, dass..." (roughly: I make myself remember that...)

"Oh, Hölle!" (Oh, hell!) - previously nonexistent exclamation, used tongue-in-cheek and not as a real curse

"Dieser verfickte Computer" (This fucking computer) - very informal, used by people who know their idiomatic English.

"Nicht wirklich" (Not really) - formerly: "Eigentlich nicht" (roughly: Not in the proper sense). Considered mildly witty.

Some of those constructs will only be found in youth language, where it has become common, for example, to talk about "coole Events" which captures almost, but not quite the respective meaning in English.

Involuntary blunders

Of course, a decent type of Denglisch can also result from English-speaking people trying to converse in German. The unrivalled master of to-the-point German, Kurt Tucholsky, gave a parody of possible mishaps:

"Wären Sie so kindlich meine Briefmarke am Hintern anzulecken?"

Literally: "Would you be so childish as to lick my stamp's bottom?" whereas the intended meaning could have been: "Would you be so kind as to lick the backside of my postal stamp?" (arguably a rather contrived example). Here, the two prominent linguistic accidents are the notorious false friends (de:kind->en:child) (en:backside->de:hintern->en:bottom, behind).

The reverse also works...sort of. For instance, this can allegedly sometimes be heard from Germans in a fast-food restaurant:

"I become a hamburger!"

It derives its humor from the fact that the English verbs "to get" or "to obtain" translate as the German verb "bekommen", which is in turn similar to the word English word "become" (in German, the word for "become" is "werden"). So what the customer actually wanted to express was the wish to purchase a beef patty sandwiched in a soggy bun, not to become one.

Machine translations

Even when the desired effect is not comical, automatic literal translations of idioms or idiomatic language like those produced by AltaVista's babel fish can result in language that will most probably sound hilarious. Take the sentence from the German BambooWeb for instance:

Babelfish's translation from German to English (currently) is this:

For completeness, here is the result of going from English to German:

This is funny. Trust me.

Arbitrary Denglisch

Of course, this approach to a sort of interlingua can also be taken to the extremes, like in this long-famous warning sign where the influence of the German tongue is now restricted to parts of the spelling and partial literal back translations which results in a faint impression of a German computer administrator trying to make himself understood:

The experts: Attention! This room is fullfilled mit special electronishe equippment. Fingergrabbling and pressing the cnoeppkes from the Computermashine is allowed for the experts only! So all lefthanders stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies. Otherwise you will be outthrown and kicked elsewhere. Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the shufting operator!

Another example of unintended consequences in Germish is the use of the word body bag for backpacks, although the proper German word Rucksack would be perfectly acceptable in many dialects of English.

Advertising language

There seems to be a common notion that English substitutes for plain German words somehow make phrases sound more engaging and technically top-notch. German commercials or - more often - written ads thus are likely to overuse English terms:

Just as a reminder: "Handy" is the pseudo-English word for "mobile phone".

Truly marvelous inventions can be found in the field of body care:

Even some of the traditionally conservative companies tend to adopt neologisms that they consider to sound more international than their original German counterparts. Thus, the venerable "Deutsche Bahn AG" (German Rail) did not mind calling their information booths/stands "service points". The word "Kundendienst" (customer service), in contrast, has almost completely fallen out of use now (probably because it actually sounds like more of an effort to German ears than the rather noncommittal "service"). Sometimes such neologisms also use CamelCase, as in the German Telecom's former rate "GermanCall".

Some commercials are often misunderstood: