Sky once more, that goes under the hat string, now you can slide down my humpback and blow me in the boots!!!

Or so


In the late 70s there was a famous Swiss cartoon swissifying English with such lines....I haven't found it yet on Google

As for the original question of this thread, for me it happens frequently that English sneaks into my Swissgerman or that I (shame on me) forget the word in my dialect, but know it in English

It's a "direct translation" with the correct word order ;-)

A "literal translation" from German to English would be: "Have you today birthday?".

The main point is "sein" vs "haben", "is" vs "have".

There used to be a German paperback book, or possibly even a series of such books featuring funny illustrations. The captions were in particularly odd Denglish. I think the title of the book was "English for Runaways".

There was a similar book for Dutch English called "I always get my sin"

the Since / Seit phenomenon.

since many years... as opposed to 'for many years'
since a long time (ago)...

Yep, it was something along those lines, yet the English for Runaways (English für Fortgeschrittene), is something different from those cartoons I was on about.

GRRRR, old age creeping up on me, I see the cartoons in my minds eye, but can't work out who drew them.

Yeah, or das Video ging viral.

If anything, in German things are virulent (which again is a so called "Fremdwort" but they belong to the language, accepted by Duden).

Ah, that reminds me of "œuf, œuf, qua lac je", which is French for "ei, ei, was seh' ich".
It was used to take the piss out of the German-Swiss, speaking French.

Definitely "frigo". Has lived with us for ever.

I've been really struggling for a long time to learn some French without 'replacing' my English. It took me about 4 years until finally my brain accepted that French is a distinct language

Hi all

Nice to read such supporting posts. I see quite of you are in the " house."

"I have a birthday today and I was born in 73. I think I'll go to the copierer and print some invitations for my party."

That's like scraping fingernails on a chalkboard.

What about expats who drop lots of foreign words into their English just to show off? I find that very irritating!

I have an Australian colleague in Geneva who loves to use lots of French words or even full French phrases in her sentences, which is rather embarrassing when we are on a video call with people from all over the world.

I'm quite sure she does it to show off, but it hard not to wince because the pronunciation is off most of the time, or even grammatically incorrect. Yet, I don't want to sound rude and ask her to speak in English ...

Or maybe this only works in French? I can't imagine dotting my English with German words and expecting people to understand what I'm saying, especially if I'm talking to people with no knowledge of German.

Maybe someone in Romandie could clarify??

I didn't think I was too bad at it until I was chatting to my two brothers, one who lives in Austria. It wasn't until my non German speaking brother stopped us and told us to stick to English that we realised we had the odd German word stuck in. "Parkplatz" was the only one I can remember now but he asked about a few others. He understood them from context but I was suprised we'd even used the words.

As far as switching back and forth, that happens all the time when I'm talking in work with natives and non-natives alike. Sometimes it's a word that's in common usage at work, other times it that one party or the other has forgotten the word in English or German and sticks in the German or English instead.

I agree with you. But I couldn't help noticing, that your handle crème brûlée misses three "accents", an accent grave, an accent circonflexe and an accent aigu.
Does happen, doesn't it.

I personally believe it's a laziness of the brain. In spite of loving to talk to people who speak both English and German (because it's so comfi) I concentrate on keeping the languages apart when ever I notice I'm not.
The older I get, the more my mixing bugs me. Maybe I'm worried about alzheimer.

When agreeing to meet at half six, I always need to think whether it’s 5:30 or 6:30

I have a Hungarian friend who peppers her German speech with very odd words. I initially assumed they were Hungarian words but have since worked out that they are not . So one day asked her and she insisted that it was all correct German. So I checked the dictionary and every single one of those peculiar words was actually German . So shame on me for assuming otherwise.

Absolute no. German has not into my English at all crept.

I make a photo.

Mais, oui I'm part French, so the missing accents irritates me even more But as we are on an ENGLISH forum, I purposely left off the accents because you don't usually see them in an English context ;-)

That one's Super.

Natürlich.

Interference doesn't have to be laziness of the brain. It could be the opposite, too eager to integrate new stuff, etc. Everyone's brain programing and agility is different, how it corresponds to one's effort is different. It can be lazy to assume or expect laziness, in fact. The Teacher Rule No. 1.

I think my Aussie English is being affected by German in the following ways:

* In typical Aussie fashion I will always choose a German word if it is shorter than the English one (eg "genau" instead of "exactly")
* Swiss think I'm British when I talk English
* I swear in Swiss-German
* My English grammar is twisting to the extent that some people think I'm quoting Shakespeare.