Lübke English

The term " Luebke- English " was a kind of English texts known to result from a simple translation of the individual words from the German. Through different grammatical structures and idioms of the languages ​​as well as words with different meanings in this case arise often misrepresentative in English to even amusing texts.

Coinage and reception

Luebke- English was named after the German President Heinrich Lübke, allegedly led the English language to such constructions. For example, to Heinrich Luebke during a state visit of Queen Elizabeth II, while they waited for the start of a horse race, said: Equal goes it loose, what should mean equality we go. However, this and other alleged quotes were inventions of the Mirror editorial staff. As the " head of state with the reported miserable English proficient " you have such quotes but it certainly given him credit for the Frankfurter Allgemeine opinion. As an expression of many contemporaries, " word for word through the world language to shimmy and reels ", have this peculiarity German " input into the collective memory" found. Lubke's voice efforts are not only difficult to be occupied anecdote to the great state visit by the Queen in 1965.

However, this form of media reception was favored mainly by lack of language skills not Lübke, but by its general " clumsiness ". So reminded the Business Week on a Speech Lübke in Helmstedt, " when he could not think of the name of the city, although he was at the station right in front of an appropriate sign. " In historical retrospect, the English Lübke weaknesses are in the foreground. The Germanists Georg Stötzel and Martin Wengeler see this Luebke- quotes as well as the FILSER- letters in a context of the emergence of a specific German - English untranslatable language mix culture in which tradition Helmut Kohl had entered not only, but also others such as Günther Oettinger that the Focus called " Lübke heirs ". Guido Westerwelle tried to avoid embarrassment by not wanted to reply to a question asked in English at a press conference in Berlin, but also earned him criticism and malice.

As word games or howlers has often found in the entertainment field use also the prototype of the " Luebke -English". Since the 80s, is for simple translation of individual words from German, the term english for runaways in use, after a sketch by Otto Waalkes, in which, after Sprachkursart each set is housed in two languages ​​, usually only in German and then awkward in English.