Kanake (colloquial language)

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Kanake or Kanak , often incorrectly Kanacke , is a colloquial word that has been used in German-speaking countries since the middle of the 20th century to describe people of foreign descent , mostly from the Arab , Persian , Turkey or Southeastern Europe , or those who which appear to be typical of these countries.

It is used both as a swear word and now as a simple, casual everyday term and self-designation .

Word origin

Kannakermann was a common name for comrades from Polynesia or Oceania among German seafarers in the late 19th century . Since they had a reputation for being particularly capable and loyal comrades, this term was used for this group mostly in a positive sense and often as an "honorary title" for particularly good comrades of European origin.

The word is borrowed from the Hawaiian kanaka for man, the name of the Polynesian natives of Hawaii for the Kanaks of New Caledonia .

The spelling Kanacken has been used as often as Kanaken for many years, but according to Duden it is still a misspelling.

Kanake as a swear word

Kanake has recently been used in Germany to refer to immigrants with a southern appearance. At the time of the recruitment of guest workers in the 1960s to 1970s, often used against Italians , Spaniards and Greeks , the term is now mostly aimed at people with roots in the Orient (including Turkey , North Africa , the Middle East , Iran and Afghanistan ) and more rarely also of Southeast European or South Asian descent. The word is not ethnophaulism (disparaging people's name in the narrower sense), as it is applied unspecifically to any ethnic group .

Nevertheless, the background of meaning, which has changed slightly over the decades, only includes certain groups of immigrants. White migrant workers from Western countries, but also from Slavic countries such as Russia or Poland, as well as “typically Asian”-looking people from China, Vietnam or Thailand are rarely referred to as Kanaks. The term is also rarely used against blacks.

Kanake as a self-designation

Since the 1990s, the term has increasingly been used in Germany as a conscious self-designation by mostly young migrants. In this way, the swear word is revaluated in that it loses its degrading character through "appropriation" and is intended to become an expression of one's own, positively understood identity. As a foreign name, the name Kanake is still clearly offensive.

Even Germans without a migration background sometimes refer to themselves as Kanaks with a similar motivation. For example, football fans of Schalke 04 and other Ruhr area clubs like to refer to themselves as "Ruhrpottkanaken" in order to express their special connection to their home in the Ruhr area, but also because they are insulted by other fans with this expression. German rappers without a migration background use the expression for themselves, for example to express that they too are socially disadvantaged. There is also a punk band called the Ruhrpottkanaken .

Kanak Sprak

Derived from the word Kanake , the designation Kanak-Sprak or Kanakisch , also "Turkendeutsch" or "Kiezdeutsch", is common for a German sociolect , who was developed mainly in urban areas by the next generation of mostly Turkish migrant workers and has its own language structures and styles.

While the term Kanak Sprak was originally created in 1995 by Feridun Zaimoğlu with the book Kanak Sprak - 24 discordant tones from the fringes of society in the awareness of discrimination and integration problems , the sociolect is due to the comedians Kaya Yanar ( What are you watching ?! ) and Erkan and Stefan ( Bullyparade , headnut.tv , Kinofilme) was caricatured, came into fashion around the year 2000, and is used in German rap  - in the sense of an ethnic pride (ethnic pride).

See also

literature

  • Michael Freidank: Kanakisch-Deutsch: the most blatant language book ever. Frankfurt am Main 2001.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ How “Kanake” became a racist hate word , welt.de, April 18, 2016
  2. ^ History of the guest workers: Kanake. Planet Wissen, January 5, 2016, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Livia Loosen: German women in the South Pacific colonies of the Empire: Everyday life and relationships with the indigenous population, 1884-1919, transcript Verlag, 2014, p. 496 [1]
  4. ↑ Matthias Heine: Kanake: A South Sea word became a swear word in German - meaning of the loan word Kanaka from Hawaii . April 18, 2016 ( welt.de ).
  5. ↑ Language variations in German ghettos , by Donja Amirpur, 2007 ( Memento from October 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / noam.uni-muenster.de
  7. ↑ Die Welt April 5, 2006: Kanak Sprak

Web links