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Distance beer
and
cuddling contact
: New terms from the crisis
Photo: DER SPIEGEL
When British media use words from the German language, it usually becomes martial.
The "Blitzkrieg" is often taken out of the moth box on all sorts of occasions - regardless of whether it is about football or the attacks by former US President Trump against any environmental regulations.
And the "blood sausage" is also mentioned occasionally.
Such word quotations are not necessarily flattering.
But the British Guardian has now devoted a report to the German language in which a record number of German terms appear and its creativity is praised.
The newspaper explains to its readers that word creations such as
corona
tired
mean
»tired of Covid-19«.
And that a
Corona hairstyle
of the 'corona hairstyle "was.
Also
Impfneid
rampant among the Germans straight.
In addition, the nation's "Blitzkrieg" creator yearn to
cuddle Contact
( "the specific person you meet for cuddles") and
distance beer
( »when you drink with friends at a safe distance").
The British
even
explain
the term
oversized
.
This is someone who has to attend too many video conferences.
Poor Germany.
With pleasure in the formation of speech, the newspaper reports in its online edition about a project of the Leibniz Institute for German Language (IDS) in Mannheim.
To this end, linguists have put together how creatively Germans deal with their language in times of Corona.
The researchers have now collected more than 1200 new words, so-called neologisms, in connection with the coronavirus and published them in a database.
In an average year, on the other hand, only 200 new terms would be created in this country.
No other topic has shaped German vocabulary as much as the corona crisis, the researchers report.
This is not surprising, after all, nothing has changed the lives of Germans as much in decades as the pandemic.
And that is also evident in the language.
According to Christine Möhrs, one of the participating researchers, the project tells the life stories of people during the pandemic.
When new things happen in the world, man looks for a name for it.
Those who can name things can also communicate with others.
This is especially important in times of crisis, she quotes the Guardian.
And certainly a little humor with such word creations currently also helps to survive the sometimes bleak days in isolation that many people are exposed to - whether in Great Britain, Germany or anywhere else.
Foot greeting
and
Covidiot
The article reports
happily
that the term
Covidiot
, which was actually coined in Great Britain, has also found its way into the German language.
Möhrs' personal favorite among all the terms is the
foot greeting
, because it rhymes and creation reflects the desire for connectedness.
For such compound nouns, also known as compound nouns, the article also has an explanation for people who cannot speak German.
Words combined like that could be weird for learners, they say.
But at least the German language sometimes manages to briefly and succinctly describe some complex human emotions.
Apt examples are the terms "Weltschmerz", "Zeitgeist" and "Schadenfreude".
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