Every year I seem to get the following narrative poem in the mail. And for some reason it makes me laugh every year as well. Most of you might be familiar with it, but for the ones who aren’t — here it is: a linguistic concoction of German and English.
And the children happy are,
When the Glatteis on the street,
And we all a Glühwein need,
Then you know, es ist soweit:
She is here, the Weihnachtszeit
Every Parkhaus is besetzt,
Weil die people fahren jetzt
All to Kaufhof, Mediamarkt,
Kriegen nearly Herzinfarkt.
Shopping hirnverbrannte things
And the Christmasglocke rings.
And the Mother in the kitchen bakes
Schoko-, Nuss- and Mandelkeks
Daddy in the Nebenraum
Schmücks a Riesen-Weihnachtsbaum
He is hanging off the balls,
Then he from the Leiter falls…
Finally the Kinderlein
To the Zimmer kommen rein
And it sings the family
Schauerlich: “Oh, Chistmastree!”
And the jeder in the house
Is packing the Geschenke aus.
Mama finds unter the Tanne
Eine brandnew Teflon-Pfanne,
Papa gets a Schlips and Socken,
Everybody does frohlocken.
President speaks in TV,
All around is Harmonie,
Bis mother in the kitchen runs:
Im Ofen burns the Weihnachtsgans.
And so comes die Feuerwehr
With Tatü, tata daher,
And they bring a long, long Schlauch
And a long, long Leiter auch.
And they schrei – “Wasser marsch!”,
Christmas now is in the …
Merry Christmas, merry Christmas,
Hear the music, see the lights,
Frohe Weihnacht, Frohe Weihnacht,
Merry Christmas allerseits…
There is this association called Verein Deutsche Sprache e.V. They try to preserve the German language and keep out the invading anglicisms.
“Wir schätzen unsere deutsche Muttersprache, die “Orgel unter den Sprachen”, wie sie Jean Paul nannte.”
http://www.vds-ev.de/
With this blog entry I have become a black sheep.
