If you want a lot of fun examples of Denglish (not to be confused with Germlish), take a look at the book Modern Talking auf deutsch by Walter Kr?mer. It has some interesting German words that are supposed to be English, such as “goal-getter”.
Hi Jamie
I suspect that Walter Kr?mer himself finds the examples of Denglish anything but fun. He’s one of the people at the forefront of the movement to ban “Denglish” from the German language.
I’m not sure what his opinion of the word “Handy” is, but I doubt that anyone would be able to remove this word from German. “Handy” means “cell phone” or “mobile phone” in German. (If memory serves me correctly, “Handy” began life with the meaning “cordless phone”.) The word “Handy” is used by literally everyone here and many Germans believe this word and its meaning come directly from English.
Amy
I’m not completely sure the book is meant to be funny, but it’s funny nonetheless.
Yes, this is one of the first words I have to eradicate when German managers and engineers come to the States, although it’s pretty well-known among those people before they come that it’s not English. Although we usually say cellphone, I let them say mobile phone, since that is also used. The next thing I have to decide is whether to train them to stop pronouncing “mobile” as [mobajl]. If they’re going to be in North American for a long time, I train them to stop that pronunciation, along with other spelling pronunciations like [dajrekt], etc. Too many of those can make the person sound like a circus ringmaster.
Well, the pronunciation of the word ‘mobile’ is a real challenge to Germans because T-Mobile is a German company and their name is pronounced T-[mobajl]. So, here we have a case where a German company chose an English word which they pronounce in their own special ‘Denglish’ way. I bet that 99% of all Germans would frown upon anyone who pronounced ‘T-Mobile’ in correct English.[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, question-response: Good game, wasn’t it?[YSaerTTEW443543]
As far as I know, [mobajl] is not wrong in the UK, or at least I hear British people say [mobajl] sometimes.
Catherine Zeta-Jones pronounces it T-[mobajl] on the TV commercials in the US, but we don’t notice anything strange, because she’s British. If they had some American actress on the ad pronouncing it the same way, we’d think she had literacy problems.
It’s part of that US/UK difference I mentioned somewhere here before, that spelling pronunciations in which vowels are pronounced according to their names in the alphabet are used by many cultured, erudite people in the UK, but are considered ignorant-sounding in the US. If you watch some documentary on British archeology narrated by some presigious English scholar, he is liable to be using many of the same pronunciations that are used in American TV shows to indicate that a hillbilly character is illiterate.
Not only is it not wrong to pronounce ['m9ubail], it’s the standard pronunciation on this side of the Atlantic, as far as I know and can tell.
Hmm, don’t know. I have a friend from Bangor, Northern Ireland who pronounces the word ‘mobile’ the American way.[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, question-response: Which day is the safety inspection?[YSaerTTEW443543]
The standard US and Canadian accents are heavily influenced by Irish speech. In fact, it’s not unusual to mistake people from certain parts of Ireland for Canadians.
Also, many of the latterday pronunciation changes that occurred in England after North America was settled did not reach either Ireland or America, so Irish and American speech largely reflect an earlier stage of the English language.
Thank you Torsten for passing on this thread to me. What can I say? The few Canadians I know sound quite Northern American to me. They have always been quite eager to stress that, apart from putting an affermative “aye” after each regular sentence, their pronounciation of the word “about” is different from the way that the yanks pronounce it and sounds more like “a boot”, which is true…
However, as far as similarities between Irish and Northern American people are concerned, it is probably fair to say that both varieties of the English language are ‘rhotic’ (the "r"s are pronounced) and people tap the "t"s (so that they sound more like "d"s, e.g. in letter). That distinguishes them from most British accents (exception Cornwall and Eastern Scotland). But I still think that Irish accents are more similar to British accents.
As for the word “mobile”, even in Ireland there are many ways to say it. In Dublin, where I’m from, you’d pronounce it “moubojl”. In Northern Ireland it’d sound a bit more Scottish like “moubejl” and in the rest of the country probably more like “mo:bajl”.
I think that whoever came up with this slogan did so in Yodamode.
“Help you I can.”
“Impossible is nothing.”
well wait… actually Yoda would likely have said, “Impossible nothing is” or “Nothing impossible is”.
I don’t like this slogan,cause it’s not true!
Hi Che,
Do you know any advertising slogans that are true? If so, do you like them?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, question-response: How close are you to completing the paperwork?[YSaerTTEW443543]
Hi Torsten
I think none of advertising slogans are true… this is all to earn more money…
Hi Che,
Do you think that there are people who ‘believe’ in advertising slogans? How do you think does advertising and ‘earning money’ work?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, talks: Radio commercial for an invisible dog fencing system[YSaerTTEW443543]
I think there are very few people who beleive in advertising slogans ,it just increases interest and the product sells better…
Of course advertising and ‘earning money’ work ,cause in the other case owners of the product wouldn’t have spent so much money 
Hi Jamie,
I’ve just heard Jim Boulden of CNN say “T-[mobajl]” although he is American. Maybe this was because he works in London for CNN Europe?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, photographs: A child in a cart[YSaerTTEW443543]
Maybe, but an American’s interpretation might be that to work for CNN he probably has to be an elitist with Euro-envy and feels that pronouncing certain words like the British will make people in other countries accept him as not being a “real” American. There are some Americans who think this way.
It could also be down to his cosmopolitan heritage. Or he simply wants to convey the impression of sounding international/neutral.