The German and his learning

The common German has a peculiar relationship with his language. He considers the cultivated love that his French neighbor has for his own to be artificial, elitist and not close enough to the earth. But he also doesn't treat his language like a family farm that has been passed down from generation to generation and is used every day and needs to be maintained, expanded and renovated with a certain amount of care. One is more likely to think of an unplastered, musty, poorly lit basement room in which old stacks of magazines are moldering away, while the German keeps depositing new junk there that he has bought following some trend or on a buying whim, only to realize that he actually can't do anything with the stuff or that it is too difficult for him to learn how to use it.

Much of this junk comes from a shady thrift shop called the Anglicismen Import Thrift Store, whose goods supposedly come from Anglo-Saxon, where (or so they say) they are always a decade ahead when it comes to language fashion; but the information about its origin seems just as unreliable as that about its correct use. The German likes to gossip about this: the import dealer is dishonest, some of his goods are downright dangerous to the public; His license should be revoked and he, the German, will never shop there again; Without this newfangled nonsense we would have had a much nicer language anyway. But once the German has digested his four after-work beers, he will soon purchase the next trinket from “Anglizismen Import”.

He recently bought a strange-looking thing: the “Learning”. In English this means scholarship or education: The professor was a woman of great learning. But that wasn't what the import dealer explained to the German. Or maybe he just wasn't listening properly; That's not his strength, the German prefers to hear himself talk. In any case, he now uses the word so that he no longer has to say "teaching" or "lesson" (which would of course be called lesson in English): "I took two exciting lessons from the lecture." There is still a free spot in the basement, next to the projector, the cell phones and the vintage car.

The learning from history: The German sees English like the tech bro sees Mars - before he's even finished making his home planet uninhabitable, he wants to devastate the next one.