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Magdeburg (pte033/08.04.2003/14:42) - Germans are being urged to stop using English words as a protest against the war policies of the US and Britain.
A group of German linguists has compiled a list of English words that are to be banned from German common speech and substituted by their French counterparts.
Dr Armin Burkhardt, professor at Magdeburg University, said the platform 'Language in Politics' wanted to stage a peaceful protest against the war. He said: "We want to protest against the policies the US and Britain are currently pursuing. We want to demonstrate our solidarity with the French stance on the war."
The list, which is published under http://www.sprache-in-der-politik.de , suggest dropping anglicisms such as 'ticket', 'date', 'cool', 'model', and 'team', which have become an important part of German common speech particularly among young people and substitute them with French loanwords instead.
Germans are now being asked to say 'Billet' for 'ticket', 'Rendezvous' for 'date', 'Mannequin' for 'model', 'Etikett' for 'label', and 'Trikot' for 't-shirt'.
Burkhardt said: "We are not concerned about the very large number of English words that are being used in German and the purism of language. What we are concerned about is a political manifestation. The majority of Germans back the French-German view on the war and we do not want this war led by the US and Britain."
The independent platform 'Language in Politics', founded in 1991 by a number of German university professors for linguistics, critically examines the use of language in political discourse and tries to encourage a public debate. (newsfox-special Iraq)
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