Germans probably only got major exposure to the bom chicka wah wah phrase during an intensive TV advertising multinational campaign for Axe hygiene products in 2007 that showed teachers and shop assistants going into instant sexual arousal after smelling the scent. The phrase is explained at the Urban Dictionary as a spoken representation of an electric-guitar riff from 1970s porn movies that gained wider currency through an episode of the US TV series Friends. It essentially means, "We are making a transition from social distance to sex." Its reprehensible use in the TV ads did not seem to excite any particular criticism in Germany, partly because it was not completely understood in German-speaking lands. I have not seen bom chicka wah wah in print in German, but I would suppose it would need a certain amount of respelling to fit German orphographic conventions: perhaps bum tschika ouau ouau. Representing wow or wah with the German alphabet is difficult. ... Read More
chatten
All the excitement of instant messaging is subsumed under this rather ugly and misleading little Anglicism. The woeful Duden Fremdwörterbuch (8th edition) offers this inadequate definition: über Tastatur u. Bildschirm elektronisch im Internet kommunizieren. Perhaps dictionary makers do not go online.
Internet chat began as a service called Internet Relay Chat, abbreviated to IRC, and its common current incarnations include Windows Live Messenger and Skype Chat.
Whereas naked chat in English in ambiguous - it could mean any kind of casual conversation in a real or virtual space - there is no ambiguity about chatten, which is online, text-based and synchronous, and does not include non-synchronous E-mail, mailing lists or online form filling. In this sense, chatten should be seen as an abbreviation of a longer, compound expression in English (online chat or internet chat). Failing to restore the compound form where the context requires is a pitfall in German-English translation.
The Duden has not only netted chatten, but also der Chat, die Chatgroup, die Chatline, der Chatroom, der Chatter and die Chatterin. Unaccountably (it puzzles native speakers too), the Duden offers a different vowel for der Chat from that prescribed in the other words.
Personally, I find this word ugly and weak in German. It doesn't sound funny or cocksure, as it does in English. Sometimes people move house to a wrong neighbourhood that does not suit them, and chatten does not sound at home in German. Its first consonant does not fit the German flow and the word is too short and indistinct for its new neighbourhood.
Chatten is spelled with a double -t- and inflected, and its derivatives agglomerate into larger words.
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Butterfly, der
Not a delicate morphed insect, nor a lightweight boxer, but an arm-curl device on a home-exercise machine. The arm curls are accomplished by holding the handles of the Butterflyarme and drawing them to the centre near the chest. The Duden does not list this concrete meaning, but recognizes three uses of of der Butterfly for sports movements in ice skating, gymnastics and swimming. Der Butterfly is capitalized, given masculine gender, inflected to des Butterflys in the genitive and pronounced with a German -u-. ... Read More
Caravan, der
Der Caravan, like its derivates das Caravaning and der Caravaner, is an entirely unnecessary synonyn for der Wohnwagen. The stress pattern does not follow the strong-weak-strong pattern of English, but stresses the -ca- only. Not to be confused with die Karawane, pronounced with a terminal vowel, which, like caravan refers to groups of travellers crossing a desert, or sometimes to the pack of riders, support cars, officials and TV teams rolling along in a bicycle race. French has la caravane in all three senses. According to the Petit Robert, the meaning of a closed trailer fitted out with beds entered French in 1930. There is however no evidence that der Caravan is anything but a (mere) Anglicism. It is possible that the English sense of humour led to caravan, an old word of Persian origin being transferred to a gypsy-style home on wheels: the OED dates the first use of caravan in this secondary sense to 1674 and the joke, if there was one, is lost on us today. ... Read More
Briefing, das
A term common in the advertising industry, das Briefing is given neuter gender, is capitalized, spoken with an uvular -r- and used with quite a narrow meaning: it refers to the formal and initial verbal explanation by the customer to the advertising agency of the task at hand. The agency then forms a set of proposals and presents these to the customer, beginning with das Rebriefing, a formal summary by the agency of what it has understood the task to be. If the task has been misunderstood, the customer may interrupt and offer their own Rebriefing, which effectively terminates the meeting. For other uses of the English briefing, such as instructing police or soldiers about a mission, the Germans would say Aufgabenstellung. ... Read More
Biker, der
This Anglicism is ambiguous in German, since it can mean a motorcycling enthusiast, usually enclosed in sinister protective clothing and riding a large and loud two-wheeler, but can also interchangeably mean a completely innocuous bicyclist. The latter sense is possible in English, but is faintly ironic, whereas these values do not apply in German at all. Der Biker (genitive: des Bikers; feminine form: die Bikerin) is capitalized and is pronounced more or or less in English fashion. ... Read More
Beamer, der
A German (and Dutch) term for a computer projector, and not a slang term for a BMW car, as "Beamer" is in English. This false friend catches many Germans (and some English-speakers) out and is an eminent example of the pseudo-Anglicism, since the projector meaning utterly baffles the monolingual English-speaker. The genesis of der Beamer (genitive: des Beamers) is unknown, but many Germans remember the Star Trek catchphrase "Beam me up, Scotty," and associate it with this. ... Read More
checken
Teenage slang of unknown genesis for realizing what the speaker is talking about, as in, "Du bist so doof. Du checkst nichts." (You're so dumb. You just don't get it.) The term,which occurs in the teen talk on the German soundtrack of Shrek 3, may be derived from the confirmative English expression in two-way radio, "Check!", meaning "I understand." Inflected into a German verb. ... Read More
Casting, das
An audition. This noun (initial capital obligatory) has no affinity with the English verb cast in the sense of forming metal (Gießen), throwing a dice (Werfen) or placing a fishing-line well away from shore (Angeln). Its ancestor is an English noun, the cast, meaning the team of actors or singers chosen to represent the dramatis personae in a play or opera, and its derived verb, to cast, for the director's action of selecting a cast for a film, play or opera. No one could call this an elegant verb, for it still has that makeshift feel which attaches to English nouns when they have been converted into verbs for want of anything better to use. An odour of jargon hangs around it, since it is hardly a term that a child would readily understand, and the passiveness of the actor or singer who is cast gives this verb an impersonal, blunt tone. When the credits roll up at the end of a film, the person responsible for hiring the members of cast will be mentioned with, "Casting: Joe Bloggs", among the grips and the gaffers and other strange professions, and the gossips may wonder if some of the ingenues were not chosen on that mythical item of Hollywood furniture, the casting couch.
Having arrived in German, das Casting has suffered yet another shift of meaning which brings it to the verge of being a pseudo-Anglicism, for it no longer denotes a professional skill or task, but an event: ein Casting is an audition or talent quest, and not just to choose a cast, but practically any sort of performing talent, or even models for a photo-shoot. Der Casting-Show is a television talent-quest programme in the style of American Idol, where the audience enjoys hearing the talentless or unfortunate excoriated by the panel. On the return journey into English, casting can be a dangerous false friend, since most of these meanings are not found in the English lexicon and preceding the English word casting with the indefinite article "a" suggests to an English ear that the word is being used as an adjective. A German may say, "I am going to a casting," and I would wonder: a casting what? A casting appointment? Or a casting couch?
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