Unstoppable March of English Threatens €S
Friday, November 19th, 2004I recently surfed over to my favorite German commentary newspaper, Die Zeit – and what did I see? An article entitled The Disaggregation Temptation – and that’s not a translation from German, that was the article’s title, which appeared (and still appears, if you’re quick) on the Die Zeit homepage together with a blurb in English. (Look for the American flag.) And the author’s by-line that follows is even “By Constanze Stelzenmüller for ZEIT.de” (my emphasis).
In short, Die Zeit is going English on us! It’s just a start for now – that’s certainly the only article in English to be found on that homepage. But if this catches on, who will love the EuroSavant anymore? Plus there’s all the Sturm and Drang that was involved in my learning this language in the first place: wasted once German on-line newspapers start coming out in the Queen’s English and then, as the other Schuh drops, all of Schiller, Goethe, and Kleist follow. (Or has it already been translated? All of it?)
On the brink of panicking, well before any settling-down to actually read Frau Stelzenmüller’s article, I tried to gauge the size of the threat. (more…)
