Lübke-English

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A type of English text was known under the name "Lübke-Englisch" , which was created through a literal translation of the individual words from German. Different grammatical structures and idioms of the languages ​​as well as words with different meanings often result in texts that are distorted or even amusing in English. Lübke English can contain “ false friends ”, but has nothing to do with Denglish in the real sense .

Concept coining and reception

Lübke-Englisch was named after the Federal President Heinrich Lübke , whose knowledge of English supposedly led to such constructions. For example, Heinrich Luebke to during a state visit by . Elizabeth II , as they waited for the start of a horse race, said: Equal goes it loose, which direct it goes off should mean. However, this and other alleged quotations were inventions by the Spiegel editorial team. As the “head of state with the proven miserable knowledge of English”, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine , one would have trusted him with such quotes. As an expression of many contemporaries, "to shimmy and reel through the world language word for word", this German peculiarity has found "entry into collective memory". Lübke's language efforts are not the only anecdote that is difficult to substantiate about the Queen's great state visit in 1965.

However, this form of media reception was favored not mainly by Lübke's lack of language skills, but by his rapidly progressing cerebral sclerosis , which led to difficulty finding words. In addition, Lübke liked to ignore existing speech manuscripts and tried to speak freely. For example, Wirtschaftswoche recalled a speech Lübke gave in Helmstedt, "when he couldn't think of the name of the city, even though it was right in front of a sign on the train station." In historical retrospect, Lübke's weak English are in the foreground. The German scholars Georg Stötzel and Martin Wengeler see these Lübke quotes as well as the Filser letters in connection with the emergence of a specific German-English untranslatable mixed language culture, in whose tradition not only Helmut Kohl but also others such as Günther Oettinger have entered , which the Focus calls "Lübke's heirs". Guido Westerwelle tried to avoid embarrassment by refusing to answer a question asked in English at a press conference in Berlin, but that also earned him criticism and malice.

Like word games or style blossoms , the prototype of "Lübke-Englisch" has also been widely used in the entertainment sector. Since the 1980s, the expression english for runaways (supposedly “English for advanced learners”, literally “English for those who have run away”) has been used for simple translations of individual words from German , based on a sketch by Otto Waalkes , in which each sentence is based on the type of language course is brought in both languages, mostly in German and then clumsily in English.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: gonna learn from Luebke . Hamburger Abendblatt. January 16, 2006. Retrieved February 5, 2010.
  2. ↑ Christoph Winder: What shalls . derStandard.at. September 26, 2006. Retrieved February 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ concrete 3/2006, p. 74: “In truth, the alleged Lübke quote 'Equal goes it loose' [...] is an invention of the Bonn Spiegel correspondent Ernst Goyke, called Ego [...] All other contributions to the» Lübke -Englisch "In the week after Ego's story, Spiegel editors wrote the false senders for the magazine's letter to the editor."
  4. ↑ Alex Westhoff: Knowledge of English - I understand only railway station! faz.net, November 5, 2013
  5. ↑ There is also the disappointed question of the state guest in Marbach (am Neckar): “Where are the horses?”
  6. Jump up ↑ The most embarrassing mistake by politicians. wiwo.de, September 10, 2012
  7. ↑ "Filserbrief": literally for documents with gross spelling and style errors and the associated difficulties of understanding.
  8. ↑ Georg Stötzel, Martin Wengeler: Controversial terms: history of public language use in the Federal Republic of Germany. Walter de Gruyter, 1995 (p. 263 - excerpt online at Google Books )
  9. ↑ Lübke's heirs: "Politicians heavy on the wire". Focus Online, January 27, 2010
  10. ↑ Westerwelle 'Plucks Chicken With Press Speaker' Germans Poke Fun at Their New Foreign Minister (2009, GW was Foreign Minister-to-be) at spiegel.de (in English). In this article, the Lübke quote from 1965 is moved to a castle garden. They have been waiting for The Last Post to begin .