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.