On Good Terms : The Exchange of Certain Words May Actually Improve Global Relations

AMONG THE MANY subjects of which I know almost nothing, man would be near the top, right below cle physics and biology.

It is with a giddy lack of confidence, therefore, that I undertake this essay on the infiltration of that language by American terms.

As the British diplomat E. R. Bulwer-Lytton said: “German gives me a cold in the head.” And as Mark Twain pointed out: “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.”

That such an impenetrable tongue now finds itself infiltrated by Americanisms is called to my attention by Kevin McAleer, a young Angeleno who is in West Berlin working on his doctoral dissertation in modern European history.

As I have noted before, the French Establishment is outraged by the proliferation in French of such Americanisms as hot dog , after-shave , drugstore , snack , sexy , blue jeans , gadget , call girl and many others.

McAleer thinks that American is becoming even more pervasive in German than in English. In his two previous sojourns in Germany, he says, he hardly noticed this phenomenon.

“I was struggling with the language, but I was determined to master its every nuance,” he says.

(English classical scholar Richard Porson (1759-1808) said: “Life is too short to learn German.”)

Now that he feels more secure in the language, McAleer says, he finds himself picking up all kinds of Americanisms. “When I noticed words like easy, girls , shopping , parties , job , trend , hobby and self-made man ,” he says, “my first reaction was one of anger. What had happened to the mellifluously tortured expression I had grown so used to in my readings of Mann, Fontane and Rilke? A feeling of betrayal swept over me. To think that I had spent years learning a language whose most sublime adjective was now super . . . .”

McAleer suggests two reasons for this phenomenon: “First off, even though Germans may not be totally enchanted with Americans, they are very enthusiastic about things American; and sprinkling your speech with American words is considered rather chic. It must be added that the majority of music that young people listen to is a product of America, as are the fashions and movies that are the most popular here.”

He concludes: “I just wanted to let you know that the French aren’t the only ones being infiltrated by English.”

Meanwhile another former Angeleno, Don Wells, recently retired from KFWB after a sportscasting career of more than 40 years, writes from his new home in Aeschi, Switzerland (population 1,600), that in that town and in neighboring villages, it is common for people meeting “on the Alleestrasse or the Wanderweg to exchange a friendly greeting.”

This greeting is “Gruss” (grew-sa). Wells compares it with the British luv , which, as I have noted in a previous column, is the target of an attack by a committee of English wowsers ( wowser being an Australian word for one who is against anything that is fun.)

“Gruss produces a feeling of friendliness,” he says, “of reaching out from one’s tight, little world for a pleasurable instant shared by someone you may never get to know personally or ever see again.

“One recent morning, Uncle Willie and I exchanged that conventional greeting-- Gruss! --with two passers-by, and he said to me: ‘Can you see people in Los Angeles doing that?’ We both knew the answer.”

Wells recalls that when he served in England during World War II, the British military men were cool toward American soldiers, whom they considered “overpaid” (I have always heard it as “overpaid, oversexed and over here”), “but the ladies, especially those in the hard-working Women’s Land Army, enjoyed hoisting a pint or two with us at the Green Man Inn in Harlow, and we were ‘luv’d’ constantly.

“Casual endearment, indeed, but it produced a warmth far greater than that generated by the wee fireplace in a corner of the workers’ portion of the pub.”

Such is the power of language. This interchange of common words and phrases may do more, in the long run, to bring about international understanding than all our sanctions, treaties and summit meetings.