ENGLISH SWEAR WORD ENTERS GERMAN DICTIONARY!

Oxford English Dictionary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well that’s going to cause a shitstorm! Oh, the swear word is ‘SHITSTORM’. Anyway, its been included in Germany’s equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary after being voted the ‘Anglicism of the year’ in 2012 with a jury saying: ‘shitstorm’ fills a gap in the German vocabulary when established German words, including ‘Kritik’, meaning criticism, were not descriptive enough.

The word appears to have gained appeal in Germany during the financial crisis. However, language purists in Germany fear the amount of anglicisms creeping their way into everyday vocabulary. For example, last month Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn launched a campaign to roll back the use of English, issuing staff a booklet of more than 2,000 German phrases that should be use instead of the corresponding Anglicism. Germany’s loss! What they need 2,000 phrases to say, we Brits can say in 100. I understand France too is rolling back the use of English, but not I hasten to add the hundreds-of-thousands of French hommes and femmes who have migrated over to London in the last few years, nor probably the French MP for their ‘Paris-on-the-Thames ward! 37-year old mother-of-two, former lawyer Axelle Lemaire, a Socialist, has become France’s first ever MP for compatriots living in Britain, and I bet she swears like a trooper! “F**k me,” she must shout when entering a London restaurant. “Call this SERVICE…why I can get way worse in Paris!”

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