Humorous examples of Chinesified English – Chinglish – have recently become a global phenomenon, and the inimitable Miles Kington popularised mangled mixtures of French and English in his hugely popular Let’s parler Franglais series. However, unfortunate fusions of German (Deutsch) and English – i.e. Denglisch – haven’t yet become quite as well-known.
In order to make a pint-size contribution to remedying this deficiency, here are some prime examples which I’ve come across during my recent travels in Germany (all on my way to the archives, of course!):
Curious Denglisch #1: Would you trust this coiffeur with your lovely locks?
If only they’d called it “www.killerhair.com”, they’d have been fine…
Respectively, the signs in the window are advertising the “Men-Style-Killer-Paket”, the “Big-Killer-Paket”, and the “Basic-Killer-Paket”… Enough said?
Curious Denglisch #2: The interestingly-named clothes shop, “mister lady”, advertising a “Freaky Sale”, Bahnhofstraße, Nordhausen.
Sadly, all the clothing on sale inside was disappointingly normal…
Curious Denglisch #3: That unfortunate neologism, Verkaufshits…
As my friend James Bramley put it: “It’s what happens when you accidentally eat it…”
On this note, Jeremy Leaman of Loughborough University comments:
“Not exactly Denglisch, but nevertheless a source of much hilarity on first acquaintance: in a Service Station heading east out of Zürich (Thurau, I think), the menu included the alluring item of ‘Sonntagshit’ one year and, the next, ‘Tageshit’. I was fed up to discover this year that the place has been taken over by McDonald’s. Sic transit etc!!”
Any other examples of curious Denglisch to report? If so, do share them…
Archive Tales 
You can find lots of material in Engleutsch/Denglisch/Gerglisch if you Google any of these.
Best wishes, John Partridge, Hon. Lecturer in German and Linguistics, University of Kent
LikeLike
On my first visit to Germany as an A-level student in the 1980s, I was struggling through the local newspaper and reading about a well known song contest. The key word was awkwardly divided in a narrow column to produce the memorable and somehow appropriate
Eurovision-
shit
Mark Allinson, German dept., Bristol University
LikeLike