Denglisch

Denglisch (German spelling) or Denglish (English spelling) is a portmanteau of the German words Deutsch and Englisch (English). The term is used in all German-speaking countries to refer to the increasingly strong influx of macaronic English or pseudo-English vocabulary into German. Many synonyms exist, including Germ(l)ish, Gerglish, Angleutsch, Genglish, and Engleutsch as well as Pseudo-Englisch. Both these and Denglish are also used to refer to incorrect English that is influenced by German.

To some extent, the influence of English on German can be described in terms of normal language contact (which is active also in the reverse direction, see list of English words of German origin). The term Denglisch is however mostly reserved for forced, excessive exercises in anglicization, or pseudo-anglicization, of the German language. The forced introduction of anglicisms, especially in marketing and business terminology, experienced a peak during the 1990s and the early 2000s, but the ubiquity of the practice has since made it much less fashionable or prestigious and since then, many publicistic commentators have argued against it.Zeit Online (itself an example of the prevalence of English loans in IT terminology) in a 2007 article, while granting the possibility of excessive linguistic purism among those arguing against anglicizing influence on German, criticises ubiquitous use of English (citing as example the fashion to label information desks at train stations, formerly simply known as Auskunft, with the anglicistic Service Point), and as an extreme case cites the pseudo-anglicistic Brain up! chosen by then-minister for education Edelgard Bulmahn as a campaign slogan in 2004. The same slogan had already been satirized by Frankfurter Allgemeine in 2004. That newspaper described how even the English-speaking sphere was mocking the unreflected and basically unnecessary kowtow as "German linguistic submissiveness".