The Traveling Word – Denglish, Yenglish, and Linguistic Globetrotters

Public Viewing in Berlin
Photo by Thalan

I love it when words go a-travelin’. I picture them walking down the syntactical breezeway on their spindly, alphabetical legs, clad in a Hawaiian shirt, a Stetson on their vowelly heads. And like some global travelers, the first thing that happens to these linguistic tourists is they immerse themselves in the local culture and gain an experience that changes them forever.

When the globetrotting word or phrase is English (or American or Australian, for that matter) and the language receiving it German, the cultural merger is known as Denglish – a melding of “Deutsch” (German) and “English.” These words have been absorbed from English into German, sometimes undergoing a semantic shift along the way so that they no longer mean exactly the same thing they did in the original language.

Here are a few of my favorites:

A Handy (pronounced “hendy”) is what German speakers call a cell phone. This word has been around so long, it isn’t really Denglish anymore but a regular German expression. And while cell phones are certainly “handy” (some would say “indispensable”), the term is based on the human appendage and not on the device’s convenience. “Handy,” in its German usage, may have been derived from Motorola’s Handie-Talkie AM SCR536, a handheld radio transceiver American troops used in World War II.

A public viewing, in American English at least, has me picturing funerals and corpses, especially when the deceased is famous. Michael Jackson had a public viewing when he died, as did Teddy Kennedy. But in Germany, you’re likely to find a Public Viewing at a soccer game. There, it refers to the live broadcasting of sports matches, concerts, or other major events on oversized video screens set up in public areas such as city squares, shopping malls, or bars.

The German term was coined in 2006 during preparations for the World Cup Soccer Championships. FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, introduced Fan Fest events, where they broadcast the matches on video screens in major cities around Germany. The reason, ostensibly, was because they’d miscalculated the number of fans attending the World Cup and didn’t have enough tickets to sell.

Interestingly, the Denglish version of “public viewing” has migrated back into English usage, at least in the media, where it is now applied to sports broadcasts. But for me, the expression will always have to do with a state funeral.

Here’s another of my favorite Denglish words: If a German speaker were to ask me to turn on the Beamer, she wouldn’t be suggesting I get into the luxury car sitting in my garage (I wish!) and warm up the engine. In German, a Beamer is not a BMW but a video projector. The term is derived from the English verb “to beam” or shine a light, which is precisely what a projector does.

Denglish also works in the opposite direction. Take the über-use of über. In American English these days, the expression is a prefix meaning “the most,” “the best,” or “the ultimate.” We have über-achievers (especially here in Silicon Valley), who are a step up from overachievers. The chocolate fudge cake you ate for dessert was probably über-yummy, and if you have a teenage girl in your family, chances are you’ve heard her refer to her brother as an “über-dork.”

The German original has the connotation of exaggeration as well – as in übertreiben (to exaggerate). But über in German can mean “across,” as in übersetzen (to translate – literally to transport words across linguistic boundaries). And it can stand on its own; über means “over” or “via” or “above.” Note that Germans always write über with an umlaut (the two dots over the u), while the term is becoming so well integrated into English that it’s often written without the dots.

Then we have the English word, “mensch” – a decent person. Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life is a mensch – a regular, stand-up guy. Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind is not. Except in German he is, because Mensch in that language means, simply, a human being, male or female, neither good, bad, nor devious. In English, though, mensch isn’t really Denglish. It’s Yenglish, because English borrowed the word from Yiddish (which, in turn, got it from German). This globetrotter has a lot of stamps in its passport.

What are some of your favorite traveling words? Any Denglish, Yenglish, Spanglish, or Franglais in your vocabulary?

It's Just Not Cricket*

(Photo: B. Sandman)

On April 2, a most spectacular event occurred: India won its first Cricket World Cup in 28 years. I know it was spectacular because even though I don’t follow much of the sport, a global cheer was heard from Indians around the world. It’s a surprise the Internet didn’t shut down with all the high-five-ing that occurred on every social media outlet the instant the winning wicket was won.

Which, of course, led to the most popular joke going viral that day: “good luck getting IT support on the phone.” Clearly, ethnic Indians everywhere were taking the day off to watch the match. And then the rest of the week to party.

But amidst all the jubilation, there was also this major feel-good moment, one I wanted to embrace but couldn’t quite wrap my head around. Indians everywhere felt united by this victory – we were all just one big, happy family. It sounded so positive, so right, but felt so … off. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, nor did I really give it much thought. (I mean, it was only cricket, right?)

Until I read this article.  

Novelist Manu Joseph crystallized my sentiments perfectly when he called this group hug “a deceptive sense of wellbeing.” In India alone, Joseph so aptly explains, daily life “is a fierce contest between the affluent and the educated on the one side, and the brooding impoverished on the other. The pursuit of India’s elite is to protect themselves from India – from its crowds, dust, heat, poverty, politics, governance and everything else that is in plain sight. To achieve this, they embed themselves in their private islands that the forces and the odors of the republic cannot easily penetrate.”

And, he says, “The islands that protect Indians from India are simple and material: A luxurious car with an unspeaking driver who works for 12 hours every day at less than $200 a month, or at least an S.U.V. with strong metal fenders that can absorb routine minor accidents. A house in a beautiful residential community that the Other Indians can enter only as maids and drivers. Membership in an exclusive club. Essentially a life in a bubble…”

Joseph’s theory brings to mind the title of an old book, A Million Mutinies Now, in which Nobel-winning author V.S. Naipaul calls post-colonial India “a country of a million little mutinies.” In the 20 years since he wrote this travelogue, the disparities have only widened – maybe it’s a billion little mutinies now.

Our group hug wasn’t even fleeting – it was just delusional.

Within a week of India’s World Cup victory, two of the country’s activists went on hunger fasts to force the government to introduce anti-corruption legislation. Though the divide between the haves and have-nots are appalling, and the nation’s bureaucracy and corruption staggering, these powerful stances reminded many people of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance movement and aroused feelings of patriotism among even the most skeptical. Again, global cheers – way to go, men! Show them how it’s done.

Within days, the men called off their fasts when government officials agreed to form a committee aimed at studying the corruption committed by, er, government officials. Woohoo… we … gulp ... won.

Meanwhile, not far off in the Middle East, change has arrived sooner. The ongoing Arab Spring is far from over, but it prompted one observer to wonder if the “heady jasmine scent from North Africa” could “waft across the Arabian Sea to India.”

Soon, I’m thinking, very soon.

In the meantime, there you have it – everything I know about sports, in a nutshell.

* My thanks to Alli for this great headline. "It's just not cricket" is an Aussie term that means "having something that is unjust or just plain wrong done to someone or something. It comes from the game of cricket, which is regarded as a gentleman’s game, where fair play is paramount."

Bending the Rules

Growing up in Tehran, my husband watched John Wayne movies and Roadrunner cartoons, but he never developed an appreciation for Iran’s art cinema. “The films stop in the middle of the story,” he complains. So when it comes to choosing which Iranian movies to watch, I’m usually the one who makes the decision.

One film we both love is Offside, written and directed by Jafar Panahi. It tells the story of six female soccer fans who disguise themselves as boys and sneak into a World Cup qualifying match at Azadi Stadium in Tehran. As the English subtitles state during the opening credits, the Iranian authorities ban women from men’s sporting events. Part of the film was shot during a real-life World Cup qualifying match between the home team and Bahrain.

The disguises are flimsy—two of the girls try to comply with Islamic modesty practices by wearing scarves under their baseball caps, while another wears a military uniform that does little to hide her womanly curves. Separately, they are quickly found out and placed in a makeshift holding pen outside the stadium to await punishment for breaking Iran’s gender separation laws. They follow the game blind, able to hear but not see the action behind the wall of their “jail.”

Panahi tells his story with humor that points out the absurdity of imposing a custom in a society where strict gender separation is not part of the culture. When the women plead with their guards to let them watch the game through a crack in the wall while waiting for the authorities to decide their fate, they receive the official line: the ban is to protect them from the foul language of men in the excitement of the game.

“We promise not to listen,” one girl replies.

What I find delightful about this film is the way it reflects an aspect of Iranian society that has long fascinated me: ordinary people tweaking the rules of their restrictive world to live life on their own terms, and to hell with the consequences. Pushing the envelope of acceptable social behavior has become almost a national pastime among young, upwardly mobile Iranians.

As a visitor to the country, bending the rules is not an option for me. Partly out of respect for the conservative segment of Iranian society, but also because I don’t know where to draw the line. Which rules are flexible and which ones are carved in stone?

When I bring up the subject, a common response is, “we don’t know where to draw the line, either,” usually accompanied by a nonchalant shrug. But they do know. Relatives tug at my scarf on a trip to the upscale Tandis mall in North Tehran. “Show more hair. You look too Islamic.” But on visiting an important shrine near Tehran, I found that the chador was mandatory attire (fortunately rented at the door) and had to ask some helpful ladies for a crash course in the proper way to wear it. They giggled at my attempts to walk with the huge cloth wrapped around my body—and without falling flat on my face.

With each trip to Iran, I understand these nuances of social behavior a little better, but I won’t be watching any soccer games from the bleachers in Azadi Stadium any time soon. The locals can tweak all the rules they want. I’ll sit back and watch Offside one more time.