"Check" it!

English is cool here. This means that advertisements* -- although ostensibly in German -- will consist of as much as 80% English words ("Laser shows! Gratis drinks! Die Night wird awesome!"). Rappers will try to sound tough by spitting lines like "Kein Gangster auf der Street ist so beliebt bei den Kids." And pretty much everyone drops English words into their everyday speech.

When I first arrived in Austria, I was very paranoid about this. Is this person just saying "Beste Party Ever" or "That's it" because I'm around, and I'm missing out on some Ur-Austrian expression that they would normally say?

Slowly, though, I've been realizing that that's just the way German works. In fact, I'm often the one who looks silly for using German words, when everyone just uses the English one. When I wanted to know what to pack for my work at Uni Wien last summer, I looked in my favorite online dictionary / Austrian lifeline for the best translation of "dress code," and proudly wrote in my email to my boss, "Gibt's Kleiderregelungen?" "Nein, es gibt keinen Dress-Code" was her response.

Sometimes, though, German uses words that, at first glance, look like English -- but will confuse the living daylights out of you if you are actually a native speaker of English (or, as German speakers would say, "eine Native Speaker"-- even though everyone is a native speaker of something!). Here are some examples, for your (Schaden)freude:

Patchworkfamilie = blended family (i.e. one with stepsiblings and such)
"Do you say patchwork family in English?" asked one of the English teachers at my school. "I have no idea what that means," I responded. "Are you serious? Fuck!" said another English teacher within earshot. "I've been teaching that to my students for years." Hence my necessity in the school.

die Mail = an email; mailen = to email
So when an Austrian tells you he's going to mail you something, check your inbox, not your mailbox!

das Mobbing = bullying
I first heard this term in connection with "cyber-mobbing" while out with friends. "What the hell does that mean?" I asked them, thinking I would get to correct their English. But no, although it sounds like what the entire female teenage population of Austria would do to Justin Bieber if he ever decided to touch down in the Land der Berge, this is the actual German word for kids beating each other up in the hallway and such.

der Security = bodyguard
As in: "He was accompanied by two Securities."

das Handy = cell phone
I told my college roommate about this, and she spent several weeks secretly trying to get our German exchange student friends to say "Handy" when they meant cell phone.

der Beamer = projector
I consider this THE SIGN that an American has been in Austria too long -- they ask for a Beamer when they're speaking English, like everyone else, and mean something to project (ok, "beam" -- I never said these words don't make some sort of sense!) their Powerpoint with, not a German car. (And while we're on the subject of MS Office products, the spreadsheet program is called Ex-CELL. Not EX-sill.)

extra = for the express purpose of
Part of me wants to avoid using this word. But it's just so handy (see what I did there?). Look at how many words you need in English to express the same concept! Maybe we could start saying "zusätzlich," the actual translation of "extra"?

checken = understand
From whence comes the title of this post: Things I will never "check," not because I don't care enough to überprüf them, but because I just do not understand what goes through people's minds when they come up with this stuff. "We need a new word. We could create a new German word -- our language does, after all, lend itself quite nicely to building new words out of combinations of other words (see: ausliefern, Zusammenarbeit, Frauentutorinnenausbildungsseminarvorbesprechung). But English is cool, gell? So let's use an English word. But not the ACTUAL WORD FOR THIS CONCEPT IN ENGLISH. Let's take an English word with a somewhat-related genesis but totally different meaning."



* On a somewhat unrelated note, I heard an advertisement on the radio yesterday for "der echte Klassiker aus Amerika" (I have no idea what product this was), where they had some guy speak German in an American accent. I wasn't sure whether to be offended or jealous -- I wish people got paid to write scripts for me; maybe then I wouldn't make so many fucking grammatical mistakes all the time. But I do love having an accent, so ...