pink

Pink never refers in German to the plain pink colour denoted by the word in English, but is an abridgement of the English term shocking pink. The English word pink was probably inspired by the delicate pale reds of a flower, Dianthus gratianopolitanus, known in English as pinks and in German as the sommerblühenden Nelken. It is no accident that the German word for the same colour, rosa, is also derived from the observation and cultivation of garden flowers, in this case the rose. The most remarkable episode in the fashion history of pink/rosa was the fascination for decades with pink or "rosy" skin, particularly on the cheeks, and the sale of powders to achieve this effect. When I was young, stage make-up employed the reddest of such powders, rouge, to suggest an elderly lady still stuck in the fashion excesses of her youth, and I can remember a few granddames still left at the time who made up their faces this way. However this implication would probably be lost on audiences today. Shocking pink is a 20th-century invention, and may at some point in the future be used as a figure for a similar out-of-date fashion sense. Pink, which is a false friend, is inflected as a normal German adjective. ... Read More

Wellness, die

One of the most dangerous of all the pseudo-Anglicisms, this German term can even mislead native English speakers. Yes, there is an English word wellness. Yes, it can be used in English as an arch and irritating synonym for good health. But there the resemblance ends. Die Wellness is a set of undemanding activities offered at a spa or health club for customers who are too weak, or sometimes too lazy, to take part in a proper fitness programme: massage, soaking in a hot pool or going for a relaxing stroll. The Duden Fremdwörterbuch defines die Wellness as "durch leichte körperliche Betätigung oder Anwendungen erzieltes Wohlbefinden," but this does not accurately represent current German usage. Die Wellness is not a state of being, as in English, but an action or a service. One does not aspire to die Wellness: one practices die Wellness by lying in hot water. The term is favoured since it seems exotic and virtuous, but is often a euphemism for the second rate. If a German hotel has a small pool, but no sports equipment, the sign on the door will say Wellnessbereich instead of Fitnessbereich. This Anglicism probably developed as a fragment of a longer original term such as das Wellnessprogramm and may have been helped in its spread through the German-speaking world by the title of a 1994 Anthony Hopkins comedy, The Road to Wellville (Willkommen in Wellville). It ranks as a borderline pseudo-Anglicism, since it is not completely unintelligible, but its core German meaning is inaccessible to a native English speaker. There are some indications that it may be making a round trip: it has appeared in many badly translated or badly edited English texts and may be in the process of being picked up and used by native English speakers in an abridgement of the German sense. Die Wellness is capitalized, hypenated, given feminine gender and is not inflected. ... Read More

Sonnyboy, der

This is one of the great pseudo-Anglicisms, as it is often unquestioningly employed by bilingual people. It refers to a male who radiates smiling charm. Die Sonnyboys are mostly aged between 20 and 50. The term has for example been applied in 2008 to Jürgen Klinsmann, the coach of the Bayern München football team, in praise of his amiable grin and ability to get people on his side. Der Sonnyboy is not always a positive character: he may even be a con artist. But you can't help liking the guy. We don't really have an equivalent expression in English.
Der Sonnyboy is capitalized, given masculine gender, inflected with -s- in the genitive and is sometimes spelled der Sunnyboy though the Duden prefers the spelling with -o-. Its origin is a complete mystery. ... Read More

Training, das

This requires a special long-vowel pronunciation in German, and must be pronounced either "treening" or "träning". If you are a native English-speaker, check that you have this right by saying Träääääääääning: you must not pronounce it with the English-style dipthong, or you will seem a very ignorant person. English speakers should never imagine they are any better than the Germans at pronouncing Anglicisms: in fact they are almost always far worse at it than the most ill-educated German.
So what does das Training embrace? Essentially: the word belongs in a vague zone of meaning outside Bildung, Ausbildung or Weiterbildung. The word offers a huge array of false-friend traps, and is best circumvented when doing translations.
The person who administers the training is mostly der Betreuer, never der Ausbilder, and here's where it gets complicated: most forms of das Training are not administered by der Trainer or die Trainerin, because these titles are reserved for sports coaches! Nor is the person who receives das Training to be called der Trainee, because that term is often reserved for a young university graduate being groomed in a prestigious management formation programe at a company (though I suspect some companies do use the term as high-falutin term for der Praktikant).
Often das Training is a weasel word for projects to overcome human stupidity. A talking head was pontificating on Deutschlandfunk the other night about geistiges Träääääning for people approaching old age, meaning prising the pensioners away from their tellies and making them use their intellects. A couple of days ago, two men were sentenced to soziales Training, which is a euphemism for a form of therapy to teach you stop hitting people, cease binge drinking, eat right and regularly get out of bed before 9 am.
Das Training is too narrow to include military training (Soldatenausbildung). It would also not normally be a suitable word for on-the-job training (das Anlernen, concentrating on getting the job done and ignoring all theory), although the Duden Fremdwörterbuch proposes das Training on the Job. I don't believe the latter term is in general use: in fact, its inclusion is a good example of the hit-and-miss quality of the Duden.
Das Training is capitalized, given neuter gender and inflected with -s- in the genitive. ... Read More

Konzern, der

The mismatch between concern and der Konzern has caused endless grief, though the evidence suggests this is in fact an indirect Anglicism, having entered the German language via French, and thus gaining a double twist along the route. In English, a concern is any kind of enterprise, large or small, and is a useful word to describe an enterprise of a size unknown to the speaker. Judicial verdicts often use the word, since judges may not have been presented with the necessary evidence about the correct legal title of an incorporated (or perhaps unincorporated) organization that is indirectly party to the case. The word is also useful for describing an organization which is not a business, but functions in a business-like way, as in this example from the International Herald Tribune (2008-06-16) about Barack Obama's presidential campaign organization: "As the chief executive officer of Obama for America, a concern of nearly 1,000 employees and a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, Obama is more inclined to focus on the big picture over the day-to-day whirl." In German however, Konzern has a specific legal meaning as a group of companies with some kind of interlocking shareholding, an overall chief executive and a set of accounts that portrays the businesses as a single whole, where the turnover and assets of each are weighted in proportion to the parent company's equity in each subsidiary.
Konzern is capitalized, given masculine gender, inflected with -...- in the genitive and pronounced with a proper German Z that includes the T sound. ... Read More

fix

A sometimes baffling adjective that shows up in a variety of uniquely German meanings: whether it comes from French or from English is not entirely clear. It's definitely a false friend, as it is not an adjective or adverb in English.
The prime English meaning today of the verb to fix would be to repair, whereas most people would regard the sense of attach (similar to fixieren) as a secondary meaning requiring a preposition (fix something to or on, or affix it). English fix also has a common meaning of obtaining obedience by intimidating or bribing a person.
In German, a prime meaning of fix is quick: the most obvious use is in a brand of teabag, Fix-Tee, where the sense is that the tea-making is instant, and a person who is fix is a quick learner. Fix is also familiar from the expression fix und fertig (sometimes jokingly fix und foxi from the (cartoon) characters of that name), which means tuckered out or exhausted. How this entered German is unclear, since meanings allied to the French word fixe are usually spelled with an -e-: Jour fixe, fixe Idee and so on. Fix certainly sounds like pidgin English, as used by tourists or soldiers in communicating with the populace, which might explain its bizarre transformation in meaning. Fix is pronounced with a German -i-, not an English -i-, and is inflected as other adjectives. ... Read More

Sale, der

This popular German shop-window sticker, usually seen on boutiques, does not mean a Schlussverkauf, confined to a certain period, is under way, but that the shop permanently marks down the price of slow-moving goods. The 8th edition of the Duden Fremdwörterbuch pedantically gives the English meaning of der Sale, but my colleague MM assures me that out on the mean streets, shoppers interpret those "Sale" or "Sales" placards as simply meaning, "Our clothes are bargains." The placards are long-term window fixtures. When a shop really holds a sale in the English sense, the sign is changed to Schlussverkauf or Räumungsverkauf. Der Sale is capitalized, given masculine gender, sometimes accretes a terminal S in the nominative without really becoming plural, and inflects to des Sales in the genitive. The initial -s- is soft. ... Read More

Rowdytum, das

This term for hooliganism was one of the most comical expressions of East German communism, though the implications were hardly funny for the person labelled as der Rowdy. The East German courts convicted and imprisoned protesters for das Rowdytum, a catch-all offence that embraced almost any authority-defying behaviour in a public place.

This Anglicism harks back to the 19th century - the days of Karl Marx - when a rowdy was indeed a disorderly young man, as for example in a passage from the Nottingham Date Book (1852): ....

By the 20th century, it had been used so often as a figure of speech that its meaning was much weakened: a rowdy child is merely one who is playing vigorously, and a rowdy party is one where the music is loud: in both cases the implication is that I am annoyed at the noise (but could be over-sensitive).

Since German has retained the old sense, and only the old sense, the word is a false friend. The Duden Fremdwörterbuch no longer has das Rowdytum (if it ever had it) and only has der Rowdy. Das Rowdytum, which has acquired a standard German nominalizing suffix, is capitalized, given neuter gender and inflected with -s- in the genitive. ... Read More

Pony, das

In German use, das Pony is generally restricted to the tinier riding-school horse, and is not applied to what was once called a cow-pony, the small but wiry horse used by the cowboy. This Anglicism undergoes a major vowel change from an English dipthong to a very pure German -o-. At Gartenhaus, a hamlet southwest of Magdeburg, a riding-school sign advertises Ponnyreiten with a double -n-, a phonetic spelling that catches the pronunciation rather better. Though not strictly speaking an Anglicism, the lookalike word of masculine gender, der Pony, is a false friend for many translators. Der Pony arose as an abbrevation of der Ponyfrisur and means a fringe hanging over the eyes like that worn by every well-groomed Shetland pony. For any educated German speaker, there is no reason for confusion, but English speakers who are not sensitive to word genders may be tripped up. A BBC report notably muddled this in the summer of 2005, quoting German newspapers as saying that a woman suspect wore her hair in a pony-tail. In fact, the suspect had her collar-length hair styled to fall over her forehead. The BBC account was quietly corrected. ... Read More

Ice-Tea, der

This is a semi-generic spelling which is apparently derived from a single German product, Lipton Ice Tea. Canoo appears to indicate that both der Ice-Tea or das Ice-Tea (genitive of both: des Ice-Teas) are possible, whereas the native German form, der Eistee, is strictly of masculine gender. It is arguable whether der Ice-Tea is a true Anglicism at all, since it appears to be Unilever's own orthographical back-formation from Eistee, which has morphological similarities to der Eiswein, die Eiskrem and so on. However it is possible that Ice-Tea (Unilever does not use a hyphen) is an Anglicism derived from iced tea (note the -d-). This topic would require research in 19th century dictionaries. Eistee is an oddity among Eis words, which generally refer to foods that have been frozen or objects found in snow, whereas Eistee is chilled, never frozen. Iced tea is so named because one ices it by pouring cold tea onto several lumps of ice in the glass. Ice-Tea (capitalized, hyphenated in standard German) is a false friend, but is redeemed from being a pseudo-Anglicism by the fact that the lost -d- is not audible and does not greatly hamper understanding for a monolingual English speaker. ... Read More

Rocker, der

One of the most interesting Anglicisms, since it has two distinct meanings in German. The most common sense of der Rocker - a member of a motorcycle gang - conserves an almost forgotten term from 1960s England, when gang warfare broke out between the Mods, a motor-scooter group, and the Rockers, a motorcycle gang. Der Rocker of today is not connected to the English gang of long ago, but is usually a member of the German branch of the Hell's Angels. Because the matching term in English is obsolescent, the motorcyclist sense is a false friend and effectively a pseudo-Anglicism. Derived terms include die Rockerbande, die Rockergruppe, die Rockergang (all motorcycle gang), das Rockermädchen, die Rockerbraut (both biker gang moll) and die Rockerkluft (motorcycle-gang clothing). The other sense, often an abbreviation of der Altrocker, connotes an old-fashioned rock musician and is readily intelligible in 21st century English. Capitalized, given masculine gender and pronounced with an uvular -r-. ... Read More

Shooting, das

Das Shooting is a pseudo-Anglicism for a photo session, for example when photographers pose models and products for a poster or advertising picture. In its fuller form, das Foto-Shooting, the expression may just be intelligible to a monolingual English-speaker. ... Read More

Jury, die

An import via French that comes very close to being a pseudo-Anglicism, die Jury is the German word for a panel of judges at an art show, for a film festival or for a literary prize. Manfred Höfler (Dictionnaire des Anglicismes) traces this usage in French back to 1794. It is certainly a false friend: for many English speakers, the known distinction between "judge and jury" is actually a mental obstacle to a correct translation. The word has apparently made a round trip back into English in a highly specialized expression, a juried art show, meaning an exhibition selected by a panel. Feminine gender and pronounced with a non-English -zh- at the beginning and an uvular -r-. ... Read More