Aktuellism

Public Viewing or Rudelgucken?

So, it happened, the Sommermärchen is over. It’s a pity but it’s high time I started writing about other stuff again and being among 4 best football teams in the world is (or at least should be) still a big thing for this young guys.

My today’s topic is a kind of a bridge between football and language. I’ve had a discussion with my friends recently about the term Public Viewing (which I also used in my post in English). They said they read that it’s another one of those Scheinanglizismen (fake anglicisms) in German like handy or beamer.

I decided to pursue the issue and indeed found out that especially in American English the term public viewing is most commonly used for the viewing of a body of a deceased person at a funeral or things that are shown to the public. The new football-related meaning, however, seems to set foot gradually also in the English language, British being the fore worker here probably just because of the British football craze being much bigger than the American. Alternative terms I found include: public screening, (outdoor) viewing party and watching the match in the pub/on a big screen.

The Germans themselves tried to come up with a good German-origin equivalent. The success of Rudelgucken wasn’t overwhelming, though…