h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Working in an bilingual (English / German) IT company, you can probably imagine that a lot of English words are used to make communication easier.

German employees here have no problems talking about a product which can be 'gecustomized', or asking for some documentation to be 'gechecked'.

To keep the company running smoothly, we often have 'Meetings' here - which, of course, need to take place in a suitable 'Timeslot', so that all can attend.

Some of my English colleagues have even slipped English into general conversation, without the German listeners even batting an eyelid: "Dieser Text wurde gehighlighted" is a wonderful example!

I'll post some more soon, when my brain's working again.

Ich habe das File gedownloaded, aber dann ist mein Computer gecrasht!

[translation for Mod: I downloaded the file, but then my computer crashed]

I once received an email from a German university professor to inform me that my email 'wurde forgewarded' to a colleague.

and *that* was a professor? Everybody knows that it should have been 'geforwarded'



Hey inselaffe, are you just another 'one-day-fly'? Nothing on your space so no-one can contact you there?

Well, I suppose he thought that as vor- is a separable prefix, for- ought to be one too. That does make some sense. I can't think of any other germanicised English words that could fall into a seperable prefix pattern as a comparison at the moment however.

As for my space, it's empty at the moment as I only registered today, although I used to visit h2g2 occasionally a year or so ago, but then forgot about it again. I'll update things at some point.

How about 'downgeloaded' vs. 'gedownloaded' ?


Hmmm, I *like* that 'one-day-fly' up there

And if we are to use the German construction, it would surely be "forgewarded"

I am afraid I'm a purist, and if there's a German word, I'll use it.

Mainly because when I pronounce an English word no one understands me. I mean I'm not going to start prononouncing English words the German way am I? One exception might be "London" which I would pronounce the German way when speaking German because it interrupts the flow otherwise and because in cases like that I am thinking in German. And because it's the German word for "Lunnen".

forward - weiterleiten

the word "forgewarded" is meaningless in german.

Some pepole not speaking english are using these "ge-someenglishword" buzzwords.

It's a shame on the country of poets and thinkers.

The german language is one of the greatest of the romanic-rootet languages, but if some stupid marketers and would-be-cool-guys continue to anglizize it, these good and traditional language will vanish like the german alphabet. (Germany uses latin letters since 1920).


I hope you understand my post.

In shame for my fellow Germans

from united germany.

Germans!

Back to our Mongolian roots!
Let's reintroduce the Kyrillic script!

Germany never used the Kyrillic script, I guess you confuse it with Sydderlin (the old handwriting) and Fractur (the old printed version).

So Sydderlin is what we would call Gothic script?

Back to our roots everyone! Let's lose these poncy Roman letters (and if the Romans were that clever, how come they never invented the letter "u"? The emperor Clavdivs could have used it.) You English, get cracking on that runic script, and we Welsh will go back to good old Ogham!

I think I wrote that completely wrong there, should be Sütterlin.

Here's an example of what the handwritten letters looked like:

http://www.juninger.de/ahnenforschung/bilder/suetterlin_abc.gif

As Sütterlin is only used for handwriting it is not really known of outside Germany. The "Gothic" script referred to, is, I think, the type of script seen on the posters and announcements in the war films. Going through the font types in MS Word, the nearest I can find is, ironically, "Old English".

We have books printed in the old type of script dating back to the 30s - for example my father-in-law's school books (he was born in 1907) My children find it hard to decipher, although I don't have much trouble with it.

I think what you call Gothic is called Fraktur here.
It is difficult to read, although we managed. We had to, if we wanted to read any of my mother's children's books.