For tourists

Visiting Prague over the weekend, I noticed how differently English was used there than it is in Berlin. I noticed that I felt very different, walking through Prague and seeing English, than I feel in Berlin. In Prague, the English on signs and menus was very clearly targeted to tourists. This probably has to do with the fact that Prague is a more touristy city than Berlin is, and that far more people learn German as a second language than learn Czech. All of these photos are from Berlin, and they show English in the places you might not find it in Prague. In Prague English was visible on menus, on tourist t-shirts, on "open" signs and the innumerable money exchanges. "FitnessFirst for ladies", though, is the kind of thing that is clearly targeted to locals--most people don't go to the gym while they're on vacation--so why is it in English? If the English in Berlin isn't for tourists, who is it for? As always, Berlin is more complicated. All I know is that I felt very different navigating Prague and its English than I do interacting with the English in Berlin.

Imports and Exports

All four of these signs were from a short walk through Prenzlauer Berg, where English seems to be particularly popular. I don't know how most Germans feel about the prevalence of English in their daily lives, but I do wonder if it makes a difference that in the places it is primarily visible, it is commercial. I mentioned my project to my German language partner, and the example she immediately thought of was "sale". When German shops want to get rid of last season's stock, they have a sale--and they advertise it as such. I have to wonder what it says about English-speaking cultures and the English language that it has been absorbed into other languages for commercial uses. English steals vocabulary from other languages all the time, but the main example I can think of is Latin, and Latin appears in English mostly in religion, law, and academia. We import other languages mainly for specialized uses, but we export it in the true sense of the word--in business.

Sale on steaks and nails

Yet more English signage, all of these on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse near Alexanderplatz. I went into a souvenir shop underneath the Fernsehturm, and eavesdropped on the interaction between the woman in the shop and a couple of tourists. The tourists weren't speaking German (Russian, maybe?), but they also clearly were not speaking English--yet the woman chose to address them in English. I don't think I ever realized until I got to Europe how much English has become a lingua franca. This makes me look back to interactions I've had, where I speak to someone in a shop in German, and they answer in English because they know my German isn't very good. I always assumed something about my accent told them I'm an English-speaker, but now I wonder if it's just that that's the language you switch to if you know someone doesn't speak German but don't know what language they do speak. Another instance of English as lingua franca was at the Humboldt's language party, where English was the only language we all spoke, even though no one but me was a native speaker.

I'm now wondering how much the prevalence of English signs is influenced by English's status as a lingua franca.

U9

Yesterday I rode the U9 from one end to the other and back again.

First I took the U8 to Osloer Strasse, which is sometimes its end point when it doesn't go all the way to Wittenau. I was on one of the older trains, where the cars are separate and you sit facing people in groups of four rather than in rows along the walls. On the way there a group of people got on the train, blasting music and singing along to it. One of them wished the train a "Happy Halloween!" although he was obviously German--apparently that phrase is too concrete to be translated into German. After they got off everybody else on the train sort of laughed together. That's probably the only time I've seen a train car full of strangers really interact.

 I'd never been to Osloer Strasse, so I left the train station and wandered around. The neighbourhood seemed slightly similar to our neighbourhood, with quite a few Turkish shops and apartments above them, but it had a somewhat different feeling to it--wider streets, and maybe less of a concrete identity. I circled the block and then got back on the U-Bahn, this time the U9 to Rathaus Steglitz. In the U-Bahn station at Rathaus Steglitz I saw signs pointing to Das Schloss. Naturally, I assumed that if I followed the signs they would lead me to a castle.

They led me to a shopping mall.

The area around Rathaus Steglitz was an odd mix of new stores, old buildings, and historical sites. Wikipedia tells me this is Berlin's second largest shopping area, which I didn't know beforehand. That big brick building (the Rathaus itself, I believe) in the last photo had cafes and a U-Bahn entrance at the bottom. The square, bordered by shops, had a Holocaust memorial. Across the street from the mall was another old building, the Schwarze Villa.

Maybe I've spent too much time on the east side of the city and haven't explored the west enough, but areas like Steglitz or the Ku'damm feel much less Berlin to me. Malls in general always feel oddly American, even if many of the stores in them wouldn't be found in the US. Architectural cohesiveness aside, places in Kreuzberg or Mitte I've spent time in feel much more cohesive in some indefinable way. The combination of crowded shopping area with beautiful old buildings here feels strange in a way that isn't present in other areas.

I didn't spend very long in Steglitz. Malls make me uncomfortable.

Who can read this?

 More English in Berlin, Weimar, and Oranienburg. This week I was thinking about who is able to read these English signs. It occurred to me that former East Germans wouldn't have learned English in school the way West Germans would have--they'd be more likely to learn Russian. Is this another source of Ossi-Wessi division? Language can be a very political thing, both in how it is used and in which language is spoken or allowed to be spoken or taught. The English in these three photos seems pretty likely to be directed at and/or created by younger people (and I know "sexy" is pretty much assimilated into German), but older East Germans might have a different relationship to English in their surroundings than other Germans do.

That last photo--no one would ever name a tattoo parlor in the US that, would they?

A funny thing happened on the way to the Bahnhof

I was just telling a friend about my day, and I said, "Today I went to a concentration camp and then I got lost and found a castle."

He said, "That sounds like an indie film."

Life is so much more entertaining if you pretend you're in an indie film. You wander the streets of a slightly creepy German town, fail to turn left towards the train station, and pass a building with the window moulding painted on. Then you go over a bridge and find an unexpected castle (Schloss Oranienburg).

In a proper indie film, when we got "kontrolle'd" on the train (checked for valid train tickets) I'd have had a ticket for the wrong zone and would have had to have a slightly surreal interaction in German with the Kontrolle lady (actually that happened to the English man sitting behind us and the lady spoke English perfectly well).

Berlin's the perfect city for an indie film. Actually, People on Sunday is the Berlin indie film for 1930.

Ausgang City, Back-Factory Closed

Since arriving in Berlin, I've noticed the language that is used in public places--signs, graffiti, and so on. Often, that language is not German. My second or third day here I went to a fast-food Asian restaurant where they were serving chicken. Not Hähnchen, but Chicken. English is often inserted into signs in strange ways, and I always notice it. I've begun to wonder about the reasons for it--is it something similar to the way Americans sell shirts with Chinese characters on them? Is it cool to put English in your sign or your menu? Or does it mostly happen in places targeted to English-speaking tourists? Or has German truly assimilated these English words?

In some cases it's obviously an instance of the first reason. The brand name on the garbage cans in the WCs at Buchenwald was "Triple Willy", which obviously would never be chosen by a native English speaker. Other times it's less obvious why things are in English, as with the "closed" sign in the last photo.

There are far more examples of this than I've managed to take photos of, but I plan to begin to document the random acts of English signage I see, and try to determine their reasons.