There are a number of German terms for which there are no useful English equivalents. Because of their usefulness and beauty, these terms called loan words have entered the English lexicon. While there are large amounts of useful and plenty more ridiculous English loan words in the German language, barely any made it the other way over the big pont.
When Chris Haller moved to the United States in 2004, he knew the obvious Kindergarten and Bratwurst and over the years discovered lesser known Germanisms like Kitsch, Doppelgänger or Schmutz. If only folks in the US would learn about them, he thought, and what about all the other fun German words? The ones daisy-chaining multiple Nouns to build fun words like Fussballgott?
I'm not sure what the purpose of this is: whether to take revenge on the English language for the excess of anglicisms in German, or whether to fill in these putative gaps in our ability to express things.
I'm separated from my OED at the moment or I would show that some of these actually started in British English, i.e. this side of 'the big pond'.
Via Nürnberger Nachrichten.
Experten kratzen sich angesichts dieses Trends zu Germanismen den Kopf. Auch Stefan Brunner, Leiter der Sprachabteilung des Goethe-Instituts in Washington, hat keine Erklärung für das Phänomen gefunden. Ein Grund könnte in der Herkunft mancher US-Bürger liegen. Immerhin behaupten 17 Prozent von ihnen - also rund 50 Millionen -, deutsche Vorfahren zu haben. Und Deutsch rangiert nach Spanisch und Französisch an dritter Stelle der Popularitätsskala.
LATER NOTE: The Bremer Sprachblog has taken up this very article (Nürnberger Nachrichten) and had great fun with it.
Defined tags for this entry: Englishlang, Germanlang
fernetpunker: according to the Nürnberger Nachrichten article linked, Blitzkrieg became popular again during the Iraq war, although I would not have associated it with that.
Sauerkraut seems less problematic to me, as it refers to a mainly German food, although we do say sourdough for Sauerteig. I don't really understand Bratwurst, since it seems just like sausages to me, but many Germans would disagree!
Kann das Ihrer Meinung nach richtig sein? Es hört sich recht unplausibel an.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus%27s_reindeer
In Kommentar 12 wird Karl-Heinz Frieser zitiert. Das Wort wurde schon 1935 in Deutschland benutzt, deutsche Emigranted brachten das Wort ins Ausland. Hitler sagte, es sei in Italien erfunden usw.
Jetzt muss man sich fragen: wo hat der Stern die Informationen her (von AJP Taylor?), und wieso wird behauptet "Entzückt die Sprachforscher" - welche Sprachforscher?!