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"Tainted" German vocabulary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 16 12 August 2010 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Ahaha, I would never have thought of it that way. Heilen and its extended family have just such a strong meaning on their own, in a physiological as well as psychological/religious sense. On the other hand ... ugh, Heilpraktiker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5767 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 10 of 16 18 October 2010 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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To bring up another word which I have difficulty writing down and actually using in a non-historical context, does the word "Reich" tend to be avoided nowadays or is it acceptable? For example, how would you refer to the Roman Empire, or any other empire for that matter? For example the British Empire or that of the ancient Sumerians. Would "Reich" be used or would an alternative be preferred, like Empire or Imperium? I assume that some of these are referred to so frequently that there are a set expressions for them - would the same word be used to translate "empire" in all cases?
Thanks, Jack. Edited by LanguageSponge on 18 October 2010 at 3:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 11 of 16 18 October 2010 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's silly making a few random words taboo. As far as I know the Nazies spoke German. Switch to English. Make the entire German language taboo. Every single German word. If you are offended by them. Otherwise live and let live. They are just words. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5767 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 12 of 16 18 October 2010 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
In principle I agree with that - but since some people are offended by the use of certain words in a certain context, I'd rather know which words may cause offence and use them carefully. If no-one were offended then that would be great but until such a time comes, I'd prefer to learn what to avoid. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 13 of 16 18 October 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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"Endlösung" is an obvious one to avoid. I don't think English speakers hear alarm bells
talking about a final solution, but it's very powerful in German. "entartet" and "rassefremd" are others. "Blut und Boden" "Propaganda", "manipulieren" (can be used, but only with a strong negative connotation) "Leitkultur" is seen as such by some, but some politicians find it okay to use. I don't think Sudetenland is bad, but perhaps the professor was thinking of the "ewig gestrigen" that are calling for German areas (esp. beyond Oder-Neiße) to be given back even today. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5436 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 14 of 16 18 October 2010 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||
That is not a taboo word. It is used in chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science for various different phenomena, see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entartung Most of your other examples are no generic expressions but belong only to the context of rassism and/or antisemitism, so they don't interfere with normal language usage. The word "Leitkultur" was created in 1998 and therefore cannot be contaminated. But it's a good thing you mentioned it, because this shows the absurdity of the whole subject. If someone wants you to be a Nazi then they will find a way to defame you. Once I was called a Nazi, because I used the word "Ordnung" to describe the structure of compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach. Edited by OlafP on 20 October 2010 at 5:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 15 of 16 18 October 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard that German boxers have to be very careful what they say in their post-fight interviews: if they start talking in positive terms about "..mein Kampf", they could be in REAL trouble!
LOL :-D Seriously, I tend to agree very much with John Smith and OlafP. I believe that most of the the actual former Nazis are dead now, aren't they? And the remaining few will also be checking out of Hotel Vaterland sooner rather than later. So at some stage we younger generations have to draw a line in the sand and move on from this nonsense, I think... Edited by Romanist on 19 October 2010 at 11:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 5193 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 16 of 16 19 October 2010 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I find the political connotations of language fascinating. In Greek, for example, there was an extremely intimate interaction between the register of the language used and political orientation -- to the point where you could determine exactly where on the spectrum between communist and ultra conservative a newspaper sat by examining the register of its language: pure demotiki on the left and the katherevousa on the right with a combination of the two indicating a more centrist ideological orientation.
In fact, after the 1967 coup the extent to which the military junta was associated with a particularly inept, harangueing form of the katharevousa, basically killed it off, leading demotiki being made the official language of government and initiating a series of orthographic reforms that removed poly-tonic marks and simplified spelling. And even now, tracing can still be found, with certain usages being associated with right or left leaning politics. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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