The English language is threatening Europe’s different cultures. Nobody can really stop it, it is happening every day at an intimidating pace. Two countries particularly affected are France and Germany, both of which possess very old and meaningful languages, which are in danger of eventually dying out as more and more English enters their vocabulary. Action needs to be taken immediately, otherwise languages and thereby cultures will soon be lost. People will lose their identification, which lies in both culture and language.
Or is this really true?
As a German, I am perfectly aware of all the discussion relating to this, which has been going on for years. It is true, indeed, that the vocabulary of French as well as German does contain an increasing amount of English words. However, these include terms which usually find their origin in the digital arena. The internet was invented, so were computers and laptops, MP3 Players and so on. Very often technical devises, invented in the English speaking world, which have not been given a translated name in German or French. This is especially the case in France, where every single English word entering the language is given an equivalent in French as to protect the language. However, the English terms tend to spread before the new terms are even invented, and very often it becomes impossible to replace it by the new one after this fact. But if these terms describe things originating from the English or American culture, do we really need to make up new terms for them?
Another very important thing to consider is the effect the infiltration of the English language has on culture. Any given language does contain some cultural value, as culture has always influenced language and vice versa. So the possibility of losing some of our cultural identity by losing some of our language must not be ignored.
One of the brothers Grimm was particularly engaged in linguistics. If you change a few words of his writings, you could simply reprint it onto the German language today and no one would notice that it is not current. He criticized exactly the same issue of language encroachment which is criticised today, only that the role now given to English was back then attributed to French and Latin. Grimm was furious that many words of French and Latin were becoming part of the German vocabulary, while there were perfect German options available, yet these words are now considered totally German. We may indeed have adapted the spelling and the pronunciation, but that does not make the words any more “originally German”.
It is true that some of our cultural value gets lost, or “replaced”, as some new word enters our language instead. However, in the past, it was not just about using French words; we copied their style of planning streets and partly adapted to their style of living. So by including French terms, we could also say, we enriched our language alongside our culture. This may actually give a truer idea of what really happened. Today, we include English terms in our language, and our cultural identity is surely modified by that, but is it actually oppressed? We have adopted the Bachelor-Master system for University, we have a strong economical connection to the US and to England, we promote exchanges – and still expect all this to have no influence at all? It is a shame that we do not see how much we gain by including elements of another culture in our own.
What really struck me at the beginning of my time at Oxford, were the many German terms I came across in English Textbooks. The English did not seem to bother changing particular expressions from German, “Gestalt-Psychology”, “doppelganger” or “angst” were just a few of them. The English, it seems, do just the same as we do. And this is only for German, not including all the French or Latin expressions in English.
All the languages mentioned here have their origins in the Proto-Indo-European Language. And over time all the different languages have split from it, evolved, and finally become their own. They have influenced one another ever since and developed further. Why can we not focus on the obvious enrichment this gives to our culture instead?
