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Deutschlisch

Those stupid (germanized) anglicisms!

greenlighten

I was watching a late night show on German TV the other night and the host was interviewing a famous German actor about his new projects. It was then that he used a verb greenlighten, or to be even more precise a beautiful German past tense form of the verb: gegreenlightet. I am a huge fan of ingenious neologisms but does the German language have to absorb English words only? English words most of which have neat German equivalents. It’s always the same scheme: we take an English word that sounds ‘fancy’ and germanize it by adding appropriate endings. Boring!!

Discussion

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  1. You’re back blogging?? :) )) Great!!! I missed you lots!!!

    Kisses from Argentina! :-*

    Posted by -Pablo- | February 9, 2010, 6:22 am
  2. It’s annoying. They have a perfectly good word for this (probably several).

    Posted by ann | February 15, 2010, 8:43 pm
  3. I am surprised that an actor said that. “Greenlighten” is a wonderful peacock word for corporate hinterbaenkler tie-guys!

    Posted by Marcus | February 18, 2010, 7:04 am

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