The Language

As a non-native English speaker it can sometimes be difficult or awkward to use a language I did not grow up with (my English teacher actually failed me in verbal English - in High School). But it also makes me allergic so to say, to 'add' words to my native Danish - not mine (as it have not really developed for the last 9 years), but the language in general. I do not listen to a lot of Danish, I normally get my daily input from online news papers, and sometime I really get worked up over 'add' words which do not fit into the context or simply look like they are used by the writer just to "look" cool.. no good.

All languages have developed over the years (maybe except for Icelandic... they where cut off from the rest of the world for a while), and every language borrows words from neighboring languages, which means that in Danish there are German, Swedish (god forbid), English, Latin and so forth words, which have over the years found their way in, so that they are a part of the language, natural language development.

Thanks to the TV, movies and the internet it has now accelerated to the extent that people use English (actually American English which is even worse) words in combination with Danish where the words are used out of context. Which makes it very annoying for a native Danish speaker who is using English as the first language. It would be as using käfer (German nick name for the VW Beetle) when describing a normal beetle found in nature, if one would know that the käfer is a beetle (tough a car) then one would also know what the person would talk about, but otherwise be utterly lost.

Now in English it's slightly different, here words are created (or developed) so that they describe something for which there earlier wasn't a word, or simply because the object for which the word is being used didn't exist before. Like 'Social Notworker' which is a person who is so busy with social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc) that this person does not find time working (nerds are like that - non-nerds think so). Unfortunately these words also find their way into other languages, and by that pollute them, why not use local words instead?

Paul McFedries have created a website for these words (the English ones); called wordspy.com, have a look and see how bad it can get.....

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